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| CARLIN - RAIN Gold Trend Properties |
| POKER FLATS GOLD PROPERTY |
POKER FLATS GOLD PROPERTY, Elko County.
RMIC Gold is the underlying owner of the Poker Flats sediment-hosted Carlin-Rain type gold prospect, which is located in southwestern Elko County, 10 miles southeast of the town of Carlin. The property is situated along the eastern side of the Piñon Range, adjoining the newly-announced Emigrant Springs gold mine of Newmont Mining Corporation. Poker Flats comprises 73 lode claims, and has been optioned by Mexivada Mining Corp. (MNV.V, WWW.MEXIVADA.COM. Several holes have been drilled on certain parts of the property, with one being a gold-mineralized hole by Euro Nevada (1984-4) with assayed gold mineralization at a depth of 100 metres below the surface in the Webb Formation. Poker Flats was one of the first gold properties staked in the Rain District, by “Turk” Montrose in 1981.
Exploration Model: The Poker Flats property is situated within the southern part of the 100 million ounce, sediment-hosted Carlin gold Trend. The Rain sub-district hosts a drill indicated resource of up to 10 million ounces of gold in deposits - all of which have been discovered and partially mined over the past 20 years. Most of the ounces discovered and mined to date were by Newmont from the open-pit Rain Mine, formerly known as a barite deposit, as well as the Saddle-Tess deposits, and the +1,000,000 ounce Emigrant Springs gold mine. Poker Flats may be a southern extension of the Emigrant Springs gold deposit system.
Deeper, higher-grade gold deposits include the yet-to-be mined Saddle deposit at Rain, which was reported by Newmont’s former exploration manager Dave Mathewson to contain as much as two million ounces of high-grade gold, a World-Class system, at a depth of approximately 1500 feet from the surface, including a 1,000,000 ounce core zone that grades 0.60 oz/ton gold (D. Mathewson, pers. comm., 2003). The southern part of the Piñon Range also hosts several significant sediment-hosted, Carlin/Rain-type gold deposits, including (Fig. 1) Pony Creek (+1,250,000 oz.), Trout Creek (800,000 oz. Au), Bullion, Dark Star, and Dixie Creek. Another high-grade Saddle-analog deposit is Barrick’s Meikle Mine deposit at Goldstrike. This is a fault-controlled deposit that contains more than 7,000,000 ounces of gold along only a 1 km. strike length of the Post Fault system, mostly in fractured Siluro-Devonian lower plate carbonate rocks.
The Carlin-type gold bearing ore solutions were channeled upward along the Carlin Trend typically along major NW- to NNW-trending fault zones along sheared and rifted basement rocks, inboard from the North American continental margin, 36-40 Ma ago. Carbonate and calcareous silty strata were the preferred host rocks for these fault-controlled but sediment-hosted gold deposits, but nearly all rock types have been mineralized where the mineral system was strong enough. The classic example of this is in the Betze Pit area at Goldstrike, where even calc-silicate rocks and "diorites" locally are of ore grade. The gold deposits in the Rain sub-district are similar, but often show a control by N- and WNW-trending fault zones, where associated with Eocene mafic and felsic dikes. At Rain, the jasperoidy stratigraphic contact between the Devonian carbonates and the overlying calcareous silty rocks of the Mississippian Webb Formation was a preferred site for ore deposition.
The former Nevada Pacific - Placer Dome JV reported on September 9, 2002 that they had intersected possible Rain-type gold mineralization on the western extension of the WNW- Rain Fault system, 3.5 miles west of the Saddle deposit, associated with alteration and with felsic dikes exposed at the surface. Mill City International acquired the intrusive- and sediment-hosted gold targets at the Webb - Devil's Gate contact at Pony Creek, where Agnico Eagle encountered calcite-pyrite mineralization at the bottom of their last 2002 drillhole, presumably near the contact with the eastern facies Devil’s Gate Limestone. This property was optioned by Grandview Gold, who presently has been drilling the property. Frontier Pacific is presently drilling the Dixie Creek deposit, situated noth of Pony Creek, where a +1,000,000 ounce gold resource has been extrapolated and reported upon.
Location, Claim Status and Accessibility: The Poker Flats property comprises sixty-five unpatented 20-acre lode claims, in three non-contiguous claim blocks located south of Newmont's Emigrant Springs property in Sections 14, 23 and 26 in T. 31N, R. 53E, and Sections 18 and 30 in T. 31N, R. 54E, Elko County. No 3rd party claims are present within the Poker Flats claims area, but certain of the surrounding lands are private or have been staked by 3rd party claim holders, including Royal Gold and Newmont. The surface and mineral rights are controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. RMIC Gold has to date filed and recorded 29 claims with the Elko County recorder and the BLM. No contest to title has been filed by 3rd parties. The claims area is accessible year-round via good but unmaintained dirt ranch roads off of the county-maintained Bullion Road, which connects directly to Elko.
Geology and Geochemistry: The Poker Flats property area is situated along the faulted eastern side of the Piñon Range, south of the Rain and Emigrant Springs mines. The Range trends north/south for at least 50 kilometres, and is made up of a series of horst and graben blocks that are cut by WNW-trending tear-transform faults separating fold-thrust nappes of the Roberts Mountain Thrust system, one of which hosts the large, high-grade Saddle and Tess series of gold deposits, along the Rain Fault, west of the Rain Mine. Similar faults host felsic and mafic dikes, barite veins, and gold mineralization elsewhere in the Piñon Range. The central core of the Piñon Range to the west was domed extensively, partly by intrusions of Tertiary felsic dikes, sills, plugs and stocks, and presumably also by folding. The intrusives range in size from a width of a few feet to sills with a diameter of over 1200 metres, are frequently extensively altered within the graben, and host gold mineralization locally. A post-mineral Miocene (?) basalt flow unit crops out at Poker Flats on the western block in Section 14, which may have been associated with the mafic dikes which occur near ore in the Emigrant Springs gold deposit.
A thick section of eastern facies, Lower Plate Devonian dolomites and calcareous sandstones of the Nevada Group forms the exposed base of the system at Poker Flats, and are overlain by a Rain District ore host, the upper Devonian Devil’s Gate Limestone, a medium- to thick-bedded, light- to dark gray, fine-grained locally coralline limestone with local silty, sandy, shaly, and chert-pebble conglomerate interbeds. The Devil’s Gate contains local ”zebra”-banded ferroan dolomitic sections (Smith and Ketner, 1978; Jackson and Ruetz, 1991), perhaps similar to the highly favorable ore-host syngenetic to replacement units at the Meikle and Rodeo Mines in the Goldstrike-Blue Star gold sub-district of the Carlin Trend (Emsbo and others, 1999). No good descriptions of karsting have been given for the Devil’s Gate, but post-mineralization collapse breccias are present at Rain, apart from a brief mention by Jackson and Ruetz (1991). A “pothole” solution collapse feature is exposed on the hill of Devil’s Gate Limestone adjacent to the Poker Flats claims in Section 18, on the north. This “pothole” is filled with banded, laminated sediments of the Webb Formation that were later mineralized with gold in sample PF03-4, as listed in Table 1 below.
The early Mississippian Webb Formation, the primary gold ore-host unit in the Rain District, unconformably overlies the Devils Gate, and is up to 500 feet thick in the Rain area (D. Mathewson, pers. comm., 2002), and thins to the SE. It contains local limestones (Tripon Pass member) and sandy units. The Webb is a sedimentary flysch unit composed of platy, calcareous to carbonaceous mudstones and siltstones with thin platy limestone beds. At the Emigrant Springs gold deposit, 4 km north of Poker Flats, a laterally very continuous (over 5.8 km in length) gold-bearing jasperoid unit occurs at the contact of the Webb and Devil’s Gate. Webb Formation siltstones host the gold mineralization in the east claimblock at Poker Flats. The Webb Formation has been described by Jackson and Ruetz (1991) as follows:
“The base of the formation is usually composed of a gray to gray-green, often carbonaceous, shaly siltstone that varies in thickness from nil to over 15 meters (50 feet). The basal siltstone is overlain by a sequence of platy limestones and calcareous, gray to gray-green siltstones and shales. A bed of massive limestone, up to nine meters (30 feet) thick, is often contained within the calcareous unit, and in places strongly resembles limestone of the Devil’s Gate Formation. Capping the calcareous section is a sequence of brown to gray or greenish-gray siltstone and shale, often with thin arenaceous or calcareous interbeds. Thicknesses of the individual lithologies vary considerably, and facies changes over short distances are common.”
Mineralization: The Poker Flats property covers 3 high-priority exploration target areas: 1) East Target: the southern exposed, faulted down-dropped margin of a body of Devil's Gate Limestone and Webb Formation rocks, the host rocks for gold deposits in the Rain District. WNW- to ENE-trending fractures of Rain Fault-trend, filled with calcite and some quartz, cut the Devil's Gate along the northern edge of the RMIC Gold claimblock, where surface samples containing as much as 0.02 oz/ton gold have been found by Carl Pescio. The main ore potential should be on the down-faulted, SE corner of the RMIC claimblock in Section 18, south of WNW-trending interpreted Rain Fault - parallel major structures (see Figure), where no holes have been drilled. Newmont (Dave Mathewson) drilled a number of holes to the north of the Property, along the Emigrant Springs Fault. Franco Nevada (geologist K. Thomson) drilled 4 holes in 1984 (Fig. 1) into the Poker Flats area, and the fourth hole, in the NE corner of the eastern RMIC claimblock, intersected the jasperoid-bearing Webb - Devil's Gate contact, and 4.5-6 metres feet of 0.022-0.04 oz/ton oxide gold mineralization in Webb Formation siltstones, beneath gravels at a depth of approximately 100 metres. A proven gold target is present here, that is untested along its strike extension to the southeast.
2) The Section 30 target, which was studied by BHP under the direction of Dr. Jeffrey Jaacks, geochemical savant, and 4 holes drilled. Several open pittable gold targets remain untested in this exciting target area, which was described by a former Newmont top geologist as being his favorite untested area along the Carlin Trend. Thre sets of faults are present here, 1) N-S faults extending south from Emigrant Springs' eastern gold feeder rift system, 2) northeasterly-trending faults that perhaps parallel an old paleo- continental shelf margin, and 3) WNW fractures and faults that may parallel the gold feeder Rain fault.
3) The third, West Target areas, in Sections 14, 23, and 26, are located along the southern projection of the main Emigrant Fault system, which is the primary gold feeder which controls certain gold-jasperoid mineralization in the core of the Emigrant Springs district. Two holes were drilled here (by Newmont??) in the northern part of the RMIC Gold claimblock, along a NNE-trending cross-fault that may be post-mineral in age, but RMIC does not have and has not seen any data for this work. The main, N-S trending Emigrant Fault gold feeder system appears to be marked on the claimblock by the presence of a Miocene post-mineral basalt flow, with its western boundary being the main, Emigrant Fault. The main gold target here is the upthrown block, located east of the Emigrant Fault, near the Miocene volcanic unit. This West Target has never been adequately drill tested, is many kilometres in length, and may be one of the best untested gold targets along the main Carlin Trend.
TABLE 1.
RMIC GEOCHEM DATA COMPARISONS, POKER FLATS PROPERTY
Sample No. Location Rock Types Gold Ag Hg Ba As Tl_
(ppm)
PF03-4 Poker Flats Ddg, karst, hem, barite, Si vns 0.255 0.09 1.28 2580 118 .85
153336 PF East Target N65W-sheared Ddg, cc-Si vns 0.072 0.02 1060 115 20
168960 same Decalcif. Ddg, sandy, wk. hem 0.012 0.03 0.40 454 11
168961 same Ddg, float/subcrop, Si,cc, hem 0.032 0.43 3.65 1290 231
ES-03-6 Emigrant Spgs Webb Fm. silicified siltstone 0.511 3.2 2.38 2010 314 <10
ES-03-12 Emigrant Spgs Webb Fm., Si-hem feeder(?) 0.807 1.6 1.19 930 745 <10
PS-03-1 Pony Spur Ddg Limestone, lim. alteration 0.027 nf 3.64 1060 857 23.
Geophysical exploration, including Gravity and CSAMT should be conducted to delineate the structures, tectonic blocks, and resistors-conductors associated with alteration and possible gold mineralization, prior to exploration drilling this highly prospective target area. Such geophysical work, perhaps followed up by a soil gas geochemical survey (e.g. J. Jaacks), could also define possible WNW-trending Rain-parallel fault targets that could hold high-grade Saddle-type gold deposits. Poker Flats holds good potential to yield an economic gold deposit of the Rain-Emigrant Springs or Saddle-Tess type.
Summary: The Poker Flats target areas cover 65 claims along the two major mineralizer feeder faults in the Emigrant Springs district, just south of a new OPHL gold mine about to go into production by Newmont. The Poker Flats claims have not been tested adequately by exploration drilling, but such initial drilling did yield one ore grade hole in an untested area. Alteration and mineralization are developed along these structures and in karst “potholes” within Mississippian Webb Formation sediments, as well as cutting through altered, mineralized Devil’s Gate Limestone strata. Vertical displacements on the eastern fault system have dropped the target gold horizon under shallow surface alluvium to very favorable depths of approximately 300 metres for drilling on the property. Alteration at the surface is best seen as limonite-jarosite-hematite with local barite. Excellent potential exists at Poker Flats for the discovery of a new series of sediment-hosted gold orebodies at the upper contact of the Devils Gate Limestone. Such ore perhaps could be processed by Newmont at its new mine, or the resultant mining project joint-ventured with Newmont.
The property areas are uninhabited, easily accessible to drilling, and have no known environmental or social problems attached to them. Sufficient sources of groundwater for mining likely are present at depth. No significant cultural or environmental obstacles are foreseen to such a new mine development at Poker Flats. The presence of large mining plants nearby at Carlin, with excess capacity and already formed sub-corporations offering custom milling, means that the capital costs to construct a mine at Poker Flats will be much lower than in most other localities. There also is a large, well-trained mining workforce in the area. Poker Flats therefore offers excellent potential to host economic gold deposits amenable to mining, in an area receiving substantial attention recently from the exploration and mining community.
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| DIKE and PONY SPUR GOLD PROPERTIES |
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DIKE and PONY SPUR GOLD PROPERTIES
ELKO COUNTY, NEVADA
RMIC Gold controls the Dike and Pony Spur sediment hosted Carlin-Rain type gold properties, which are located in southwestern Elko County, 24 miles south of the town of Carlin. These properties are situated along the western side of the Piñon Range, 16 miles south-southwest of the Rain Mine, Saddle, Tess and Emigrant Springs gold deposits of Newmont Mining Corporation. Dike comprises 62 lode claims and Pony Spur comprises 12 lode claims, have been optioned from RMIC Gold by Sage Gold Inc. (SAGE: CNQ, www.sagegoldinc.com). No holes have been drilled on either property.
Exploration Model: The Dike and Pony Spur properties are situated within the southern part of the 100 million ounce, sediment-hosted Carlin gold Trend. The Rain sub-district hosts a drill indicated resource of up to 10 million ounces of gold in deposits - all of which have been discovered and partially mined over the past 20 years. Most of the ounces discovered and mined to date were by Newmont from the open-pit Rain Mine, formerly known as a barite deposit, as well as the Saddle-Tess, and the Emigrant Springs gold deposits.
Deeper, higher-grade gold deposits include the yet-to-be mined Saddle deposit at Rain, which was reported by Newmont’s former exploration manager to contain as much as several million ounces of high-grade gold, a World-Class system, at a depth of approximately 1500 feet from the surface, including a 1,000,000 ounce core zone that grades 0.60 oz/ton gold (D. Mathewson, pers. comm., 2003). The southern part of the Piñon Range also hosts several significant sediment-hosted, Carlin/Rain-type gold deposits, including (Fig. 1) Pony Creek (+1,250,000 oz.), Trout Creek (800,000 oz. Au), Bullion, Dark Star, and Dixie Creek. Another high-grade Saddle-analog deposit is Barrick’s Meikle Mine deposit at Goldstrike. This is a fault-controlled deposit that contains more than 7,000,000 ounces of gold along a 1 km. strike length of the Post Fault system, mostly in Siluro-Devonian lower plate carbonate rocks.
The Carlin-type gold bearing ore solutions were channeled upward along the Carlin Trend along major NW- to NNW-trending fault zones along sheared and rifted basement rocks, inboard from the North American continental margin, 36-40 Ma ago. Carbonate and calcareous silty strata were the preferred host rocks for these fault-controlled but sediment-hosted gold deposits, but nearly all rock types have been mineralized where the mineral system was strong enough. The classic example of this is in the Betze Pit area at Goldstrike, where even calc-silicate rocks and diorites locally are of ore grade. The gold deposits in the Rain sub-district are similar, but often show a control by N- and WNW-trending fault zones, where associated with mafic and felsic dikes. At Rain, the stratigraphic contact between the Devonian carbonates and the overlying calcareous silty rocks of the Mississippian Webb Formation was a preferred site for ore deposition.
The former Nevada Pacific - Placer Dome JV reported on September 9, 2002 that they had intersected possible Rain-type gold mineralization on the western extension of the WNW- Rain Fault system, 3.5 miles west of the Saddle deposit, associated with alteration and with felsic dikes exposed at the surface. Mill City International acquired the intrusive- and sediment-hosted gold targets at the Webb - Devil's Gate contact at Pony Creek, where Agnico Eagle encountered calcite-pyrite mineralization at the bottom of their last 2002 drillhole, presumably near the contact with the eastern facies Devil’s Gate Limestone.
Location, Claim Status and Accessibility: The Dike property comprises sixty-six unpatented 20-acre lode claims, contiguous in three claim blocks located north of Willow Creek in Sections 24 and 36 in T. 29N, R. 52E, and Section 30 in T. 29N, R. 53E, Elko County. No 3rd party claims are present in the Dike area, and the surface and mineral rights are controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management,. RMIC Gold has filed and recorded two of these claims with the Elko County recorder and the BLM, and has maintained current paper on the remaining claims. The claims area is accessible year-round via good but unmaintained dirt ranch roads east of Highway 278, south of Carlin.
The Pony Spur property comprises 12 contiguous unpatented 20-acre lode claims along the west side of the Piñon Range in the Pony Creek area, in Section 28 of T. 29N, R. 53E. Third party claims are present adjoining the east side of the Pony Spur claims, owned by Mill City International and recently optioned to Grandview Gold Inc. The surface and mineral rights are controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. RMIC Gold has not filed and recorded these claims with the Elko County recorder and the BLM, but has maintained current paper on the claims. The claims area is accessible mostly year-round via good but unmaintained dirt ranch roads along Pony Creek, east of Highway 278 south of Carlin, except during winter when significant snowfalls have occurred.
Geology and Geochemistry: The Dike and Pony Spur properties cover a WNW-trending tear faulted portion of the western side of the Piñon Range. The Range trends north/south for at least 30 miles, and is made up of a series of horst and graben blocks that are cut by WNW-trending tear-transform faults, one of which hosts the large, high-grade Saddle and Tess series of gold deposits, west of the Rain Mine. Similar faults may host mineralization at Dike, Pony Spur, Pony Creek, and Dixie Fork. Mineralized pyritic northerly-trending high angle faults have been found at Dike, which may be feeders similar other "northers" such as at Lone Tree, Emigrant Springs, and elsewhere in the Eocene sediment hosted gold belts of northern Nevada.
Paleozoic rocks are exposed within the Piñon graben, and include Silurian and Devonian “Lower Plate” carbonates that lie beneath the Roberts Mountain Thrust (“RMT”) fault system, and Mississippian to Permian age clastic- and lesser carbonate rocks. These rocks were cut by numerous low-angle faults and associated high-angle tear-transform faults separating fold-thrust nappes of the RMT system, similar to those in the main part of the Carlin Mining District.
The central core of the Piñon Graben was domed extensively, partly by folding and presumably also by Tertiary felsic hypabyssal rhyolitic intrusions comprising dikes, sills, plugs and stocks. The intrusives range in size from a width of a few feet to sills with a diameter of over 4000 feet, and frequently are extensively altered within the core of the graben. The intrusives host low-grade gold mineralization along with barite at Pony Creek, where lessee Mill City International has calculated a resource potential of +2,500,000 ounces of gold, This intrusive body is located less than a mile east of the Pony Spur claims, and a similar intrusive may underlie the domed block of Devonian Devil’s Gate Limestone along the south margin of Pony Spur.
Felsic dikes with a WNW-oriented, Saddle-type structural trend and containing silica drusing, limonite/hematite boxwork/gossan zones, fine pyritization in intruded host rocks, local barite veining, and anomalous trace element geochemistry, also occur on the Dike lode claims (#59), intruding altered Upper Plate sedimentary rocks. Similar dikes are present at Dixie Fork with arsenopyrite-pyrite mineralization.
Just-completed re-mapping and sampling at Dike show that the most prominent features are N- and WNW-trending sets of high-angle fault structures, which extend eastward to intersect the western boundary of the Piñon Graben near Mill City’s inferred intrusive-hosted gold resource. The WNW-trending structures are approximately parallel with the main ore-hosting fault system at Newmont's high-grade Saddle deposit, and are associated with quartz-eye felsic dikes. Other newly-found northerly-trending structures also occur at Dike that carry oxidized sulfide mineralization, argillization, Fe permeation, and local silicification. These occur in Upper Plate clastic rocks, which usually are barren of gold mineralization. Certain areas of Upper Plate rocks above mines are hematitically altered, as above Newmont’s Leeville deposit, and such alteration is also present at Dike and Pony Spur.
Pony Spur has altered and mineralized Devil’s Gate Limestone and Webb Formation mudstones exposed at the surface along a fault that bounds the upthrown footwall block on the south side of the main gold target zone. The target area is at least 2,500 feet long on the RMIC Gold claims, and then extends further eastward on to claims held by Mill City International Corp., and for an undetermined length to the west, toward Dike. The contact of the Devil’s Gate Limestone with the Webb Formation at Pony Spur would be sub-parallel and steep but at a slightly flatter angle dipping to the east, into the adjoining graben block to the north. This is the perfect configuration for the formation of a Meikle/Saddle type high-grade gold deposit at depth, and it has never been tested by drilling.
Recent sampling indicates a strong barium-arsenic-selenium-zinc anomaly in Upper Plate sandy rocks near felsic dikes in the Dike property area, and anomalous gold, barium, arsenic, and very high thallium at Pony Spur in Devonian Lower Plate carbonate rocks. These are highly prospective settings for hosting significant, hidden gold deposits of OPHL disseminated types similar to the Carlin Mine (in Roberts Mountain Formation), and to the underground, high-grade, fault-hosted Saddle-Meikle type deposits in the northerly trending structures which cut the Vinini-Woodruff thrust plate at Dike. Mapping and interpretation by the U.S. Geological Survey shown on the enclosed section has Devil's Gate - Popovich Fm. limerocks folded up toward the surface along the northerly-trending mineralized structures. The USGS also interpreted a thrust slab of Roberts Mountain Formation strata to be present just above the Webb-Devil’s Gate contact at Dike. This is an extremely favorable target configuration for hosting fault-controlled Saddle-Meikle type gold deposits and possibly for open-pittable configuration replacement gold mineralization in the folded top contact of the Lower Plate limestone (see section), which is interpreted by the U.S. Geological Survey to occur here at shallow depths of as little as 600 feet below the surface. Furthermore, the Dike targets are situated far enough west that the limerocks may be slope facies Popovich Formation, which contain limy debris flows at Meikle that host the high grade gold mineralization. This target area has never been tested by geophysics, soil gas geochemistry, or by any drilling. In 1990, the staff of Westmont Mining (J. Jaacks, pers. comm., 7/2004) wanted to explore the Dike area, but were not permitted to do so by management, who felt that the area was situated too far to the west.
TABLE 1.
RMIC GEOCHEM DATA COMPARISONS, DIKE - PONY SPUR PROPERTY
Sample No. Location Rock Types Gold Ag Hg Ba As Tl_
(ppm)
PS-03-1 Pony Spur Ddg Limestone, lim. alteration 0.027 nf 3.64 1060 857 23.
D-50-51 Dike felsic dike Felsic dike, argilliz, barite vns 0.002 0.18 0.07 5640 86 1.5
D-10869 Dike Si zone Dw upper plate sltst, Si vnlts 0.001 0.32 0.24 1440 18 .23
PF03-4 Poker Flats Ddg karst, hem, barite, Si vns 0.255 0.09 1.28 2580 118 .85
ES-03-6 Emigrant Spgs Webb Fm. silicified siltstone 0.511 3.2 2.38 2010 314 <10
ES-03-12 Emigrant Spgs Dev Gate Ls, Si-hem feeder(?) 0.807 1.6 1.19 930 745 <10
Summary: The Dike target area covers 62 claims and the Pony Spur 12 claims (both expandable), along these fault networks, which have not been tested by exploration drilling. Alteration and mineralization are developed along these structures within Mississippian Chainman Formation clastic sediments, as well as cutting through altered, mineralized thrust plates containing upper-plate Vinini and Woodruff strata, and Lower Plate Roberts Mountain and Devil’s Gate Limestone strata. Vertical displacements on the main fault system appear to have lifted the target gold horizons to very favorable depths for drilling on the properties. Alteration at the surface is best seen as barite, limonite-jarosite-hematite, pyritization, and local silicification. Drilling at the Rain, Pony Creek, Trout Creek, Dixie Creek, and Dark Star areas has outlined extensive gold mineralization (.0X opt Au per ton), in and near areas containing barite, which is a good pathfinder to gold ore.
Excellent potential exists at Dike and Pony Spur along the structures at the Webb Formation (carbonate-altered dark siltstones) / Popovich - Devils Gate Limestone contact, as well as in the Roberts Mountain Fm., which hosts gold ore at the Carlin Mine and Gold Quarry. These units host most of the economic gold deposits in the area and are host to the high-grade ores being found and developed along the WNW-trending Rain graben structure at Saddle-Tess. The present mineral reserves at the Rain Extension deposits, in this same setting, are 1-2 million ounces at bulk mineable grades of up to 0.6 opt Au, along 4500 feet of the structure, within 200 feet away from the feeder fault(s).
This ore-host setting at Dike has not been tested by drilling or geophysics, despite the excellent structural and stratigraphic host gold targets, alteration, presence of felsic dikes, and the presence of barite and anomalous trace element geochemistry. Consolidated Ramrod Mines controlled the property in the early 1990’s, but never conducted drilling on it. Soil gas geochemistry, Gravity, IP-Resistivity, and CSAMT geophysical lines should be run across the target fault structures at Dike to define possible silicified zones and conductive mineral horizons in advance of any drilling. A drill road was constructed to one site on the Pony Spur property by Barrick, but the property was dropped prior to drilling, and this project is now ready for drilling.
The target areas under claim are sufficiently large enough, with a 3 mile strike length at Dike, to be able to accommodate economically significant Carlin/Rain-type gold systems. The estimated depth to the top of the ore targets in Lower Plate rocks is approximately 300 feet at Pony Spur to perhaps 600 feet at Dike, less than most other targets in the Piñon Range area.
The property areas are uninhabited, easily accessible to drilling, and have no known environmental or social problems attached to them. Sufficient sources of groundwater for mining likely are present at depth. The presence of large mining plants nearby at Carlin, with excess capacity and already formed sub-corporations offering custom milling, means that the capital costs to construct a mine at Dike-Pony Spur will be much lower than in most other localities. There also is a large, well-trained mining workforce in the area. Dike and Pony Spur therefore offer good potential to host economic gold deposits amenable to mining, in an area receiving substantial attention recently from the exploration and mining community.
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