Intrepid enlarges Salvadoran gold target

Drilling by Intrepid Minerals (IAU-V) at the Aldea Zapote exploration concession, east of Metapan in the northwestern corner of El Salvador, has extended the property’s known silver mineralization down-dip and traced its continuation across a fault.

The drilling, part of a 2,500-metre program being financed by Apex Silver (SIL-X), is testing extensions of an epithermal silver system, called Cerro Colorado III, which outcrops over a 100-by-100-metre area atop a hill. The new drill holes extend the known zone into a valley east of the hill.

Drill hole CC3-9, at the southern end of the target zone, intersected a 30-metre interval of mineralized breccia grading an average of 145 grams silver per tonne, with 1.28% zinc. Higher-grade sections of the mineralized interval ran as high as 457 grams silver, with zinc and lead credits.

Collared to the northeast, and testing an area just north and downdip from CC3-9, hole CC3-10 intersected 22 metres grading 264 grams silver per tonne, plus 2.69% zinc, 0.83% lead and 0.3 grams gold per tonne. Again, narrower widths of the intersection carried higher grades, including a 7-metre section that ran 526 grams silver per tonne.

Further north, CC3-11 intersected 25 metres grading 103 grams silver, 0.2 gram gold and 2.05% zinc. This intersection represents the farthest extension of the Aldea Zapote mineralization now known downdip, apart from a hole drilled in 2001, which encountered similar mineralization at comparable depth about 25 metres to the south.

Updip and south of CC3-9, hole CC3-12 intersected a 19-metre interval running 35 grams silver per tonne, with 1.76% zinc.

Collared near CC3-10, but testing across the Quebrade de la Mina fault, which is believed to cut off the mineralization, near-vertical hole CC3-14 cut 39 metres grading 36 grams silver and 0.9% zinc. An 8-metre section at the bottom of this interval ran 82 grams silver and 0.96% zinc.

Drilling in 1999 and 2000 farther up the hill encountered significant silver grades over widths comparable to the new intersections. Geologists from Intrepid interpret the drill results as indicative of a zone of mineralization 15-55 metres wide, at about a 75-metre vertical depth, with average silver grades of around 300 grams per tonne. Deeper mineralization is thought to be a feeder zone.

Further drilling will concentrate on dip extensions and on strike extensions to the north, and some drilling will be done to test possible continuation of the mineralized zones toward another showing, San Casimiro, about 650 metres to the northeast.