The final chapter of resource definition and expansion drilling at American West Metals’ West Desert project in Utah has ended with a bang after the latest two holes sunk at the venture delivered strong visual copper, zinc and molybdenum mineralisation.
The venture believes its latest phase of drilling caps an impressive campaign that has underlined the quality and scale of the operation.
The first hole plunged was aimed at stretching the mineralisation footprint of a porphyry skarn further east and was designed to build on historical work that previously coughed up a slew of encouraging results including a 13.4 metre section going 2.7 per cent copper.
To make use of its fully licenced drill pad that, importantly, sits on a private patch of dirt, the hole was bored to an angled depth of 754.8m striking multiple intervals of copper sulphide mineralisation across more than 400m.
Inclusive in the sequence was a 25m section of strong to semi-massive copper and zinc sulphides from 420m, 45m of strong zinc and copper sulphides from 572m and an uninterrupted 137m component of molybdenum rich mineralisation from 618m.
Management believes the molybdenite is housed in veins that cut across various rocks at the project and emphasises the deposit's remarkable growth potential of the system.
The second hole was aimed at evaluating the continuity of a pair of higher-grade zones at the operation and intersected a total of 230m of zinc and copper mineralisation that was visually logged across several sectors.
Results from the second hole include 45m of strong zinc sulphides from 180m with 54m of strong zinc, copper and potentially gold from 294m. Also included in the probe were 15m of very strong zinc and copper sulphides from 350m and bands of semi-massive zinc sulphides from 661m within a trio of carbonate replacement style mineral deposits.
After wrapping up its latest pair of holes, American West says it has already got the rods turning at its next exploration target, about 300m from the West Desert deposit.
The goal is to vector in on a strong magnetic anomaly that could point to additional magnetite skarn mineralisation – the most common host of zinc and copper at West Desert.
The company says the area has never seen any real exploration.
The company's West Desert Project is located in the Sevier Orogenic Belt, that also includes the Tintic Mining District, 160km southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah. West Desert has more than 300 acres of private land, 336 unpatented lode mining claims and a single state mineral lease totalling nearly 32 square kilometres.
The deposit has a historical resource base of more than 59 million tonnes, including a 16.5 million-tonne high-grade core grading 6.3 per cent zinc, 0.3 per cent copper and 33 grams per tonne indium.
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