LATIN AMERICA — Ulysses hunts for gold at Halley

Improving political circumstances have a way of turning interesting showings into promising exploration projects. As tensions in Peru relax, good geology can once again get itself noticed.

Ulysses International Resources (URI-V) has concluded a 3-year option agreement on showings in the department of Apurimac, about 450 km southeast of Lima.

The main property, Halley, is crossed by a recently upgraded national highway connecting the cities of Nazca and Cuzco. The

25-sq.-km property has several known gold prospects and old small-scale mines.

Gold and silver mineralization at Halley is in breccia bodies that lie in a sequence of quartz sandstones called the Soroya formation. The Soroya sandstones are intruded by quartz-porphyry dykes that show strong sericite-clay alteration.

The brecciated quartz sandstones are all mineralized, with gold grades generally running between 0.5 gram and 30 grams per tonne.

A northwesterly striking fault crosses Halley, but in detail, much of the mineralization appears to be in fractures running parallel to a northeasterly striking fold plane. The local fracture system does not show a prominent structural grain, possibly suggesting that the pattern derives from vertical resurgence or collapse.

A large number of old adits that dot the hillsides at the property have been the centre of Ulysses’ effort so far. Old workings on the Quilca breccia showing have been chip-sampled, yielding 5.8 grams gold per tonne over 43 metres and 4.4 grams over 13.9 metres.

The old workings followed high-grade veins, but President Paul Sarjeant notes that that the sampling program included chip samples in all three dimensions, which prevented any sampling bias. “We’re not trying to chase the best numbers

we can, we’re trying to find out what’s there.”

Three separate adits have been sampled, with gold grades reliably clocking in above 0.5 gram. Some chip samples have graded as high as 53 grams.

A second showing, the Llamakensa prospect, has a northwesterly trending gold zone, about 175 metres in strike length, that has turned up chip samples grading up to 24 grams gold and grab samples as high as 81 grams.

A tentative exploration program for Halley includes 1,000 metres of drilling in the first year of the option period, with 1,500 metres more in each of the second and third years.

The second property, Leoncocha, lies 10 km northeast of Halley and shares the latter property’s setting of brecciated Soroya sandstones. The 21-sq.-km property represents a grassroots target, with some surface gold showings but no detailed sampling.

Preliminary grab samples from the mineralized zones have yielded gold grades up to 0.7 gram.

Ulysses’ exploration plans at Leoncocha include a short mapping and sampling program, to be followed by more detailed work in the second year of the option agreement, including about 2,000 metres of drilling.

Ulysses is earning an 85% interest in the two properties from Riflo, a private Peruvian company. Under the terms of the option agreement, Ulysses will be paying US$1.4 million in option payments; 60% of the amount has been loaded on the final year. The company’s US$5-million work commitment is flexible; it will be carried out on Ulysses’ schedule and does not prescribe the amounts to be spent on either of the two properties.