Metallic Minerals Announces Start of First Phase Drilling at La Plata Silver-Gold-Copper Project in Southwest Colorado, USA
July 20, 2021 at 12:45 pm EDT
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Metallic Minerals announced the start of the first phase of drilling of up to 2,000 meters at the La Plata silver- gold-copper project in southwest Colorado along with an update on exploration activities to date. This initial diamond core drill program is designed to test and confirm mineralization in the central porphyry system, which hosts an historical resource estimate, as the first steps toward developing a new NI 43-101 compliant resource estimate. The road accessible La Plata project covers 33 km2 approximately 26 km northwest of Durango, Colorado within the historic high-grade La Plata mining district located at the southwest end of the prolific Colorado Mineral Belt. Mineralization is related to a large-scale precious-metals-rich porphyry copper system with associated high-grade silver and gold epithermal vein and replacement deposits. Project Highlights: Drilling to date within the central porphyry system has defined a northeast trending, near vertical zone of copper- silver-gold mineralization covering an area of at least 3 km by 1 km with over 1 km of vertical relief that remains open to expansion along trend and to depth with excellent potential for additional discoveries. Surrounding the central porphyry system is an associated high-grade silver and gold-rich epithermal system measuring at least 8 km by 2 km that hosts 56 identified vein, replacement, and breccia structures. Historical production from some of these high-grade structures exceeded 1,000 grams per tonne ("g/t") silver and over 15 g/t gold with some of the richest deposits delivering true bonanza grades for silver and gold1. Drill hole LP-03 intersected 395 m of porphyry style mineralization grading 0.57% copper equivalent (0.51% Cu, 6.3 g/t Ag, and 0.017 g/t Au) including 108 m grading 0.75% copper equivalent (0.65% Cu, 7.7 g/t Ag and 0.034 g/t Au) starting from surface and with the hole ending in mineralization. Exploration in 2021 is designed to expand known zones of mineralization and to advance a new NI 43-101 compliant resource estimate for the central porphyry system. Project History: The La Plata district has a long and rich history of mining with the first silver deposits discovered in the 1700s by Spanish explorers. High-grade silver and gold production has been documented from the 1870s through the early 1940s from vein structures, replacement bodies and breccia zones at over 90 individual mines and prospects. From the 1950s to 1970s, major miners including Rio Tinto (Bear Creek) and Freeport-McMoRan (Phelps Dodge) explored in the La Plata district focusing on the significant potential for bulk-tonnage disseminated and stockwork hosted
mineralization2. Freeport-McMoRan retained ownership of claims in the district until 2002 when they sold their holdings to the current underlying vendors during the lows of the last metal price cycle. A total of 54 drill holes totaling 14,400 m have been drilled on the property since the 1950s which confirm the presence of large-scale, multi-phase porphyry system with significant silver, gold and copper. This large-scale mineralized system is associated with a 10 km2 strongly magnetic signature with intense hydrothermal alteration. Metallic Minerals is the first company to complete significant exploration on the La Plata project in nearly 50 years applying modern technologies and deposit modeling techniques. The Company sees the potential to rapidly extend the size of the known mineralized system and to identify and expand the higher-grade zones within the broader porphyry and epithermal mineralized zones. Fieldwork completed by Metallic Minerals at La Plata to date has focused on resampling of drill core and underground sampling, surface mapping, and soil sampling. In addition, the Company has flown airborne resistivity and magnetics, completed a preliminary ground-based induced polarization survey and analysis of multi-spectral remote sensing data to establish mineralized anomalies and domains for the various styles of mineralization. This work has identified at least 25 anomalous targets within four broader target zones showing excellent potential to extend resources outside of the main historically recognized mineralized areas. Allard Zone: Drilling to date on the Allard zone within the central porphyry system has defined a northeast trending zone of copper- silver-gold mineralization that begins at surface and continues to a depth of at least 850 m and more than a kilometer of strike. Recent underground chip channel sampling by Metallic Minerals within the Allard tunnel has confirmed a true width of 98.2 m grading 0.55% Cu Eq. across the zone including 61.6 m grading 0.65% Cu Eq. Historical drill hole LP-03 intersected 395 m of porphyry style mineralization grading 0.57% copper equivalent (0.51% Cu, 6.3 g/t Ag, and
0.017 g/t Au) including 108 m grading 0.75% copper equivalent (0.65% Cu, 7.7 g/t Ag and 0.034 g/t Au) starting at surface with the hole ending in mineralization. Copper Hill Zone: Copper Hill is one of several additional parallel zones of copper and precious metals mineralization have been intersected in drilling, located 1.5 km to the southeast of the Allard zone it is also associated with significant platinum and palladium mineralization. The Company completed systematic analyses of unsampled core from the Copper Hill target area which returned significant results in an area with little previous drilling. Two zones of copper and precious metals mineralization were encountered in this drilling with an upper zone grading 0.27% Cu Eq. over 207 m and a lower zone of mineralization grading 0.44% Cu Eq. over 44 m with associated gold, platinum, and palladium mineralization. The Copper Hill target area represents a significant platinum group element-enriched copper mineralized target more than a kilometer vertically below the high-grade surface mining at the Copper Hill prospect and is completely outside of the historic resource area.
Metallic Minerals Corp. is a Canada-based exploration and development stage company. The Company is focused on copper, silver, gold and other critical minerals in the La Plata mining district in Colorado, and silver and gold in the high-grade Keno Hill and Klondike districts of the Yukon. Its flagship Keno Silver project is a 100%-owned, brownfields property consisting of 171 square kilometers (km2) in the historic Keno Hill Silver District of Canadaâs Yukon Territory. The La Plata project covers 44 km2 within the high-grade La Plata mining district located at the southwest end of the prolific Colorado Mineral Belt. The Company holds 100% interest in 26 miles (36.4 km2) of creek and bench mining rights along the Australia Creek drainage, in the Klondike gold district near Dawson City, Yukon. It owns 100% interest in mining rights consisting of 10 claims totaling one mile (1.6 kilometers) along a bench of Dominion Creek, in the Klondike gold district near Dawson City, Yukon.