Drilling Program Begins At The Cristina Project

Drilling Program Begins At The Cristina Project

VANCOUVER – Atacama Copper Corporation announced the start of a 10,000-metre diamond drilling program at its wholly-owned Cristina precious metals project in southwestern Chihuahua State, Mexico. The Cristina project consists of multiple outcropping quartz veins that are frequently greater than 10 metre in width and extend for a currently known strike length of up to five kilometres. At least four parallel mineralized vein zones have been mapped and sampled to date, however most of the resource estimate reported here is contained within the Guadalupe vein .

Tim Warman, CEO, said, “The drilling program that started this week is aimed at better defining and expanding the known higher-grade zones within the Guadalupe and Los Ingleses vein systems. While the current resource is largely contained within a single modeled open pit shell on the Guadalupe vein, we believe that there is excellent potential to define a higher-grade underground resource at Cristina. Previous drilling has encountered thick higher-grade zones in every vein system tested to date, and this current round of drilling is aimed at better defining and expanding those zones.”

An interesting aspect of the Cristina deposit is the apparent vertical extent of the mineralisation within the system. Mineralisation in outcrop occurs at surface at elevations up to 2,000 metres above sea level (masl), while the deepest zone of mineralisation intercepted by drilling is at an elevation of 900 masl, a vertical range of approximately 1,100 m.

The Cristina deposit is an epithermal to mesothermal vein system where the mineralisation is predominantly gold and silver, with lesser base metal values. At least four parallel vein zones trend east-west to northeast-southwest and are hosted in an andesitic volcanic sequence which forms part of the Lower Volcanic Sequence of the Sierra Madre Occidental range. The andesites are intercalated locally with dacitic intrusions and related lava flows and breccias, and the sequence is in turn cut by andesitic and hornblende-plagioclase porphyry following fault trends. In some areas the veins are covered by post-mineral rhyolite of the Upper Volcanic Sequence.