New Shoot Provides 0.56M Of 3,572 Grams Silver Equivalent Per Tonne
Outcrop Gold Corp. (TSXV: OCG) has made its fifth discovery at the San Juan shoot within its 100% owned Santa Ana project in north Tolima, Colombia.
Assay results from the newly discovered San Juan shoot return 1.79m of 1,329 grams silver equivalent per tonne and one metre of 988 grams silver equivalent per tonne.
Drilling continues in the San Juan and El Dorado targets 1.5 kilometres apart in different sub-parallel vein systems. San Juan is 150m north of the Roberto Tovar shoot along the same vein system. Open high-grade mineralization extending south from Roberto Tovar will be tested in the San Antonio target.
“San Juan is the fifth high-grade shoot discovered at Santa Ana in twelve months,” CEO Joe Hebert said.
“Exploration at Santa Ana has been very efficient producing a high-grade shoot on average for every 2,100 metres of drilling. More importantly, San Juan represents a unique exploration opportunity being that it is a blind discovery made by drilling below shallow anomalous shears near an adjacent known shoot. Outcrop is working to develop geochemical and structural vectors to blind mineralisation.”
Sixty-seven holes have been drilled on Santa Ana for a total of 11,486 metres. El Dorado and San Juan have drill holes in progress and assays are pending for six holes. The San Antonio target will be tested after El Dorado, San Juan and Roberto Tovar are defined along their surface trace. An additional 4,600 metres are planned in this first phase of exploration drilling, which is anticipated for completion in early 2021.
Mr Herbert said drilling on San Juan to date reflects only its southern margin and not its central core. Like Roberto Tovar, intercept thicknesses may increase within the shoot core and grouped parallel veins may occur. At the depths drilled, San Juan is inferred to be a separate shoot 150 metres north of Roberto Tovar but with very similar geometry. Both Roberto Tovar and San Juan are high angle.
The structure containing the San Juan shoot continues to the surface above the elevation of high-grade mineralisation as anomalous shears containing small amounts of weakly mineralized epithermal quartz. An observation within the controlling structure but above high-grade suggests that elevated arsenic, cadmium, antimony, lead, zinc and minor tungsten, tin, and lithium depletion might be pathfinder elements in fluid outflow zones above shoots. This geochemical signature may lead to a model for drilling blind mineralization. Importantly, Roberto Tovar and San Juan provide a density of two large shoots within less than 600 metres of vein.
For an epithermal vein-system, the shoots at Santa Ana are exceptionally large, typically over 200 metres in length as a trace at surface and over 250 to 300 metres down-dip within the vein. All shoots are open at depth and most shoots are also open in at least one direction along their surface trace.
The Santa Ana project comprises over 25,000 ha located in northern Tolima Department, Colombia, 190 km from Bogota. The project consists of five regional scale parallel vein systems across a trend 12km wide and 30km long. The Santa Ana project covers a significant part of the Mariquita District where mining records date to at least 1585. The Mariquita District is the highest-grade primary silver district in Colombia, with historic silver grades reported to be among the highest in Latin America from dozens of mines.
