Yamana tests silver ‘pockets’ at Martha

As its share price begins to drift back to normal levels, Yamana Resources (YRI-T) is encountering more bonanza-grade silver intersections at its Bacon property in southern Argentina.

During the final stage of a 69-hole drill program on the Veta Martha prospect, Yamana completed 15 holes. Nine of these intersected significant silver grades, ranging as high as 30,972 grams per tonne over narrow widths.

The prospect, a southeasterly striking quartz vein in rhyolite, had already yielded silver grades of 1,000 grams per tonne or better from 39 holes (T.N.M., May 31/99). The new intersections show grades comparable to those reported earlier.

The intersections are also showing significant gold grades — in some cases, more than an ounce per ton. Most true mineralized thicknesses on the vein are between 1 and 5 metres.

Typical of the recent drilling was hole RC-51, which intersected a 9.5-metre length that carried an average of 5,392 grams silver and 9.3 grams gold per tonne. Shorter intervals in that 9.5-metre intersection graded as high as 15,444 grams silver and as low as 625 grams. The true width of the vein as intersected in RC-51 is 4 metres.

The drill holes at Veta Martha have been testing a series of four “pockets” of high-grade silver mineralization at shallow depths. These occupy several shoots along the southeasterly striking Martha vein system. Some, but not all, of the silver appears to have been leached and redeposited as supergene mineralization; the rest appears to be primary, and some intersections at depth below the level of weathering carry grades of 1% silver and higher.

The shoots on the Martha vein appear to plunge moderately to the southeast, and three of the pockets are still to be drilled off down-plunge. Earlier diamond drilling on deeper parts of the vein established the plunge of the structure but was too widely spaced to intersect the possible down-plunge extensions of the high-grade pockets.