Enter your name and email address to receive Gunpoint newsletters
The El Escorpion property (“Escorpion”) is a 900 hectare concession located 85 kilometers by paved road southeast of Guatlemala City.
Escorpion is situated 7 kilometers southwest and along trend of Pan American Silver Corp.’s world class Escobal deposit which has NI 43-101 measured and indicated mineral resource of 367 million ounces of silver grading 422 g/t, plus 37 million ounces of silver grading 254 g/t in the inferred category. Mineralization at Escobal is associated with steeply dipping and northeast-southwest trending intermediate sulfidation epithermal silver rich quartz veins with significant values in gold, lead and zinc. The Escobal land package completely surrounds the Escorpion project.
The outcropping mineralization at Escorpion appears to have many similarities to that at Escobal and occurs in a fault controlled, intermediate sulfidation epithermal system characterized by several multistage, subparallel silver-lead-zinc quartz-carbonate veins and stockworks. The northeast-southwest trending system has been traced discontinuously for over 1500 meters along strike and remains open to the northeast and southwest. The system is characterized by carbonate-minor quartz vein swarms in the southwest (Mina Blanca zone) and quartz stockworks and quartz veins in the northeast part of the concession (Escorpion-Los Pozos zones). The exposed vertical extent of the system is greater than 300 meters. The epithermal system is hosted in volcaniclastic sediments, porphyritic andesites and rhyodacitic rocks, the same rock types which host mineralization at Escobal.
The Mina Blanca zone has been traced along strike for 350 meters, up to 50 meters wide with a topographic relief of 150 meters. This broad zone consists of numerous en echelon, oxidized multistage veins up to 7 meters wide. Selected channel samples taken across the veins from shallow workings and hand dug tranches returned:
5 meters of 78.0 g/t silver, 2.30% lead and 2.63% zinc
4 meters of 62.6 g/t silver, 0.71% lead and 0.42% zinc
3 meters of 53.7 g/t silver, 6.48% lead and 2.05% zinc
6 meters of 73.6 g/t silver, 3.81% lead and 0.70% zinc
A second subparallel vein swarm is located 200 meters south of the Mina Blanca zone. Channel sampling of individual veins returned up to 4 meters of 41 g/t silver, 0.18% lead and 0.24% zinc.
The Escorpion and Los Pozos zones are located in erosional windows 400 meters apart in an area of extensive volcanic cover. The Escorpion zone hosts a drusy to massive quartz stockwork that has been mapped over an area 70 meters by 100 meters with channel samples up to 33 g/t silver, 0.2% lead and 0.2% zinc. The Los Pozos zone is situated topographically higher with the vein and surrounding stockwork hosted in argillized rhyodacite rocks. Samples from a quartz stockwork zone, approximately 100 meters wide and 200 meters in length, returned anomalous values in silver, lead, zinc, bismuth, arsenic and antimony. Preliminary work suggests the Escorpion and Los Pozos zones represent the possible extension of the Mina Blanca zone along strike and higher up in the epithermal system.
At Escobal, high grade silver mineralization typically begins between fifty and several hundred meters below surface and underlies leached and oxidized veins which are anomalous in gold, silver and base metals.
