Nov 17 2016
Viscount Mining Corp. ("Viscount" or "the Company"), is pleased to announce it has commenced drilling of its Silver Cliff property in the Hardscrabble Silver District in Custer County, Colorado (the "Property"). The drill program has the objective of confirming the historical documentation on one of the Silver Cliff deposits known as "Kate" and will also include angle holes which will test steeply dipping mineralized structures that have the potential for enhancing historical estimates based on vertical holes that tested flat-lying mineralized bodies.
In late July 2016, the Company completed over thirty line-miles of magnetic geophysical surveying. The resulting extensive data package has subsequently been compiled and clearly shows a good correlation between high magnetic responses and silver mineralization encountered by historical drilling. Not only do the high magnetic responses correlate with known silver mineralization, but there also are other high response zones that remain untested by the drilling.
In this first phase of core drilling, the Company intends to complete 10 holes totaling 2,000 feet (610 m). This program will begin to define the deposits. As stated in previous news releases, the Company on the basis of historical estimates has a target of 40 to 50 million ounces of silver on the Property. However, potential quantity and grade is conceptual in nature, as there has been insufficient exploration to define a mineral resource, and it is uncertain if further exploration will result in the target being delineated as a mineral resource.
Recent preliminary results of representative, continuous rock chip sampling and geological mapping at a scale of 1:240 around the perimeter of the 7960 bench in the existing aggregate pit shows that silver, manganese, lead, zinc, gallium, and indium are present. Only recently have indium and gallium become of great importance, with indium used in LCD televisions and computer monitors, and, gallium in medical devices, microwave circuits, high-speed switching circuits and infrared circuits. Semi-conductive gallium nitride and indium gallium nitride produce blue and violet light-emitting diodes (LED lights) and diode lasers.
Detailed geologic mapping at a scale of 1:1000 by Viscount geologists done in the vicinity of the Kate Deposit suggests that the polymetallic resource may be a combination of epithermal vein and a carbonate replacement deposit. Previous work considered the Kate Deposit to be of supergene origin. Supergene processes of enrichment produce ore deposits that occur relatively near the surface as opposed to hypogene processes which occur deeper below the earth's surface and result in deposits that are much later discovered after being exposed by erosion and by drilling.
The detailed mapping completed in October 2016 revealed a previously undocumented, silicified carbonate reef complex. The silicification indicates replacement by hydrothermal fluids. Further, both the Kate Deposit and the silicified carbonate reef occupy the same stratigraphic position, directly above an obsidian bed. If the carbonate reef was completely replaced by silica, it would be a very brittle rock, easily shattered by minor tectonic adjustments, creating a breccia whose matrix could become mineralized by hydrothermal fluids from an epi- or hypothermal feeder vein. The discovery of the carbonate reef complex has yielded a completely different genetic model for the Kate Deposit than that proposed by previous geologists.
Jim MacKenzie, Viscount President and CEO stated: "We are very pleased with the ongoing work program at Silver Cliff. With the detailed mapping just completed revealing a previously undocumented new reef complex, we made the decision to adjust the drilling schedule to further investigate this new reef. We are very excited as this newly identified complex represents a possible expansion of Silver Cliff."
About Silver Cliff Property
The Silver Cliff property lies within the historic Hardscrabble Silver District in Colorado. The Property consists of 96 lode claims where high grade silver, gold and base metal production came from numerous mines during the period 1878 to 1894. It is located 44 miles WSW of Pueblo Colorado and has year-around access by paved road. The property underwent substantial exploration between 1967 and 1984 for the purpose of defining mineral inventories. The major explorers were Freeport, Hecla, Homestake, Moly Corp, Coca Mines and Tenneco Minerals.
Silver Cliff is thought to overlie a large caldera and porphyry system which increases the prospect's potential to host a number of deposits from both precious metals to base metals. This has been demonstrated in the mineralogy and grade historically extracted from numerous underground mining operations dating back to the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Drilling in the 1980s by Tenneco resulted in a historical pre-feasibility study which formed the company's decision to put the property into production. Known historical silver grades range from below detection to a high of 2,125 g/t (68 o/t) Ag over 13.4 metres. Known historical gold grades range from below detection to a high of 9.06 g/t (0.29 o/t) Au over 1.2 metres. Plans were halted due to the restructuring of Tenneco after it was sold.
Qualified Persons
The scientific and technical information contained in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Dallas W. Davis, P.Eng, FEC, an independent consulting geologist who is a "Qualified Person" as such term is defined under National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101").