Iron Creek Capital Corp. (TSX-V: IRN) has announced that its joint venture partner, Hochschild Mining Holdings Limited, has reported further precious metals drill intercepts from the Vaquillas target, within the Victoria joint venture property in northern Chile.
The results are from a continuation of the diamond drilling programme reported on September 3rd, 2010 and December 20th, 2010. Hochschild will complete a preliminary resource estimate at Vaquillas during late Q1 or early Q2 of 2011 prior to a decision to carry out further drill testing of this target.
Highlights include:
- Hole VVQDD-10-047 cut 72.95m @ 0.70 g/t Au + 21.70 g/t Ag, including 0.85m @ 7.77 g/t Au + 530 g/t Ag;
- Hole VVQDD-10-046 cut 11.10m @ 1.31g/t Au + 23.76g/t Ag, including 0.75m @ 5.94g/t Au + 156g/t Ag;
The Victoria property is an outstanding 37km long land package along the Domeyko Fault Zone in northern Chile located approximately midway between the world-class porphyry copper districts at La Escondida and El Salvador. This truly world-class mineral belt is prospective for porphyry copper deposits and epithermal precious metals systems.
A total of 8,883m has been drilled by Hochschild in 32 RC holes (previously reported), together with approximately 4,619m in 20 diamond drill holes. Hochschild has focused attention to date on outlining an open-pittable, low-grade oxide Au+Ag resource in the Vaquillas Mine area of the Victoria Property. This in turn appears to be underlain by mixed oxide/sulphide and sulphide mineralization. Assay results for 19 diamond drill holes have been received and significant results for the first 8 were reported previously (see press releases dated September 3rd, 2010 and December 20th, 2010).
Hochschild's drilling has shown that the principal breccia bodies occur over a strike distance of approximately 1km. The 73m long intercept reported in drill hole VVQDD-10-047 occurs towards the centre of the mineralized zone, and supports the presence of a significant zone of mineralization previously indicated by drill hole VVQDD-10-035.
Drill hole VVQDD-10-046 indicates continuity to the north of the principal breccia body, supported by narrow intercepts on subsidiary structures in drill holes VVQDD-10-034, 036 and 037 (reported previously), and VVQDD-10-048.
Drill hole VVQDD-10-040 returned no significant results suggesting that the main mineralized bodies are either cut off or displaced to the north, with only narrow, low-grade intercepts reported. To the south, the main mineralized bodies are partially obliterated by a post-mineral mafic intrusion, although a large number of narrow, moderate- to high-grade structures were intersected in drill holes VVQDD-10-041, 043, 044, 045, 046, 047, 048, 049 and 050, suggesting possible horse-tailing of the main structures seen in the centre of the area.
Vaquillas Precious Metals Target
The targets at Vaquillas are north-south to north-northwest trending, steep westerly dipping, mineralized tectonic breccia bodies, and multiple fine veinlets of quartz ± sulphide between the main breccia bodies. Pyrite occurs as disseminated, breccia matrix-fill and in veinlets, together with a variety of black silver minerals thought to be the sulphosalts, argentite and acanthite.
Sphalerite is locally abundant in the mineralized tectonic breccias, together with minor galena and trace copper minerals including enargite. Calcite, quartz and barite also occur in the mineralized breccias. The presence of calcite and/or semi-massive sulphide breccia matrix-fillings is a good guide to significant gold values. Hydrothermal alteration is typified by illite/smectite and chlorite.
An important suite of later northwest to west-northwest trending quartz veins, with altered and bleached halos, cross-cut the main Vaquillas breccia structures, and in some cases may displace them slightly. These cross-cutting veins typically have higher gold and silver values than the Vaquillas breccias. The predominant veins are typically 0.5m to 2m wide, have strike lengths of the order of several hundred metres before disappearing under post-mineral cover, and have been the subject of historical shallow workings.
Hochschild, as operator of the Victoria joint venture, plans to complete a preliminary resource estimate for Vaquillas by late Q1 or early Q2 2011, prior to a decision to carry out further drill testing of this target. Further exploration targets for similar styles of mineralization have been indicated by geology and geophysics to the east and south of Vaquillas, and will be the subject of exploration drilling during 2011.
Hochschild is also planning an aggressive exploration program during 2011 to further drill test a series of priority porphyry copper and precious metals targets within the property.
QA/QC
Hochschild's samples are collected in accordance with accepted industry standards and best practices. Samples are submitted respectively to ACME Laboratories and ALS Chemex in Santiago and La Serena, Chile, for analysis. As standard procedure, Hochschild conducts routine quality-assurance and quality-control analysis on all assay results, including the systematic utilization of certified reference materials, blanks and field duplicates.
Qualified Person
Demetrius Pohl, P.Geo., is the Company's Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101, and is responsible for the accuracy of the technical information in this news release. Dr. Pohl has verified that it is an accurate summary of the reports provided to Iron Creek by Hochschild. However, Iron Creek has not independently verified Hochschild's exploration results.
Source: Iron Creek Capital Corp.