Radius Gold Inc. provided final results for drilling at its Tropico Project located in the Fresnillo mining district in Zacatecas, Mexico. The Company completed a 1300m program of diamond drilling in 8 drillholes, with all pending assays received. Drilling defined a large gold mineralized breccia body that starts at surface and to date defined 250m down dip.
Gold grades were starting to increase with depth from holes 1, 2, 3, 4, & 6 but unfortunately the latest gold assay results from the deepest hole 8 are weak. The drilling encountered wide zones of classic low sulphidation epithermal alteration, high level chalcedonic silica, banded stockwork and massive quartz veining, and breccias with gold mineralization, but not significant high grade mineralization. Given the unexpected flat dip of the target breccia to the east and the significantly lower gold assays in hole 8, pursuing the breccia body down dip is not justified at this time.
Radius geological team interprets the breccia body to be part of a larger diatreme and/or explosive volcanic breccia system. Targeting the source of the epithermal gold mineralization will require further evaluation and likely an agreement with Geological Survey of Mexico (GSM), which controls ground surrounding the Tropico property. Radius has had formal and positive discussions with the GSM, but any agreement would take considerable time.
Exploration Focus: Radius has multiple compelling exploration projects and in the coming months the focus of exploration activity will be on Plata Verde (Chihuahua Mexico) and Motagua Norte (Guatemala). Radius will continue to work with the company’s partners Pan American Silver Corp, to restart drilling at Amalia (Chihuahua, Mexico) and progressing the exploitation (mining) permit with Volcanic Gold at Holly (Guatemala). Further Radius is constantly evaluating new projects to add to the portfolio of exploration targets.
Quality Assurance and Quality Control: Drilling is carried out using PQ and NQ size tooling. Drill core is cut in half using a rock saw with one-half of the core then taken as a sample for analysis. Sample intervals are generally 1.5m, producing samples of between 2 to 9 kg.
Half-core samples are delivered to the ALS Geochemistry laboratory facilities in Mexico. The samples are fire assayed for Au and are analysed for Ag and multi-elements using method code ME-ICP61 following a four-acid digestion. Overlimits are analysed using an appropriate method.
Multi-element geochemical standards and blanks are routinely entered into the drill core sample stream to monitor laboratory performance. Quality control samples submitted to ALS were returned within acceptable limits.
