Almadex Minerals Ltd. has declared that diamond drilling at the Davis/Paradise project in Nevada has begun. Almadex has the option to earn 100% of this property, which encompasses different targets and is situated 8 miles southeast of Gabbs, Nevada, and 5 miles northeast of the Paradise Peak gold mine, which operated from 1984 to 1994.
Location and Claim Map. Image Credit: Almadex Minerals Ltd.
We are very happy to get the drill turning on our exploration projects. It is especially nice to be exploring in a part of Nevada we know so well. There are multiple styles of mineralization and targets on the property and we plan to test them in sequence.
J. Duane Poliquin, Chairman, Almadex Minerals Ltd.
Drilling has started in the Davis Zone, which is located in the northern Davis portion of the property and has high levels of epithermal alteration and veining. A 1.5 km long area of alteration interpreted to portray a sinter and breccia system runs parallel to the Davis zone in the northern half of the project.
Historic mining and exploration drill programs have been conducted on these exposed vein-hosted gold-silver zones. USSRAM Exploration owned the property from 1979 to around 2004, and during that time it conducted numerous exploration and drilling programs including 11 drill holes to explore mineralization in the historic Davis mine area.
While the Company cannot verify this historic Davis Mine area drilling because it was not accomplished in accordance with NI 43-101, it does provide a clear exploration focus. One of the notable intercepts from this historic drilling program was 40 feet (12.2 m) of 0.18 oz/t gold (6.2 g/t gold) and 0.62 oz/t silver (21 g/t silver).
The current drilling program will first assess the area of this historic drilling. The historic operators inferred the strike and dip of the Davis vein, but the Company cannot verify it at this instance, so true widths cannot be approximated or confirmed.
The Southern Paradise portion of the property includes a zone of phyllic alteration recognized by past alteration mapping and the latest WorldView remote sensing study carried out by the company in 2020 with results attained in 2021.
This new information indicates that the Paradise area is a massive lithocap with the potential for both gold–silver high sulfidation and porphyry mineralization at depth, equivalent to the nearby Paradise Peak gold deposit, which has both styles of mineralization. On the Paradise property, there is proof of the previous drilling with unknown results.
In early 2022, a claim within the Almaden claim package was optioned under terms that required a series of payments to acquire 100% interest. Field work on the claim in April mapped an area of strong phyllic alteration linked with many styles of quartz veining, including pyrite and chalcopyrite, indicating a porphyry mineralization style.
To verify this interpretation, samples were obtained for assay and fluid inclusion petrography. In the current drill program, the Company intends to drill first pass on both the high sulfidation and porphyry target areas.