In February Cascadero sent geological staff to Argentina to be on sight for the drilling of its Taron property. Due to severe weather conditions, the drilling was delayed. It was thus decided that the geological staff would sample, prospect and map Cascadero’s, Santa Rosa property to follow up on work done in late 2016. Drilling on the Taron property has now finished and all samples from the 35 holes have been delivered to Bureau Veritas’ Mendoza laboratory for preparation of pulps for shipment to the Bureau Veritas Laboratory in Vancouver for assay. The Company will wait for the Taron results. As noted in prior release, the Company has decided to receive all assays and data on the Taron program to enable the preparation of an NI 43-101 Preliminary Economic Analysis (PEA) Report.
In 2016 Cascadero Copper initiated an exploration and geochemistry program on the Santa Rosa I property, located in Salta Province, Argentina. Cascadero acquired a 100% interest in Santa Rosa I in 2004 and it is the only company that has worked on the property since then. The 2016 geochem work was done to get fresh data on the property that is known, based on previous work by Cascadero, to host gold and silver mineralized veins. The Company recently sold a 30% interest in the property in order to raise sufficient funds to begin work on the property.
The Santa Rosa property under claim encompasses 2,987 hectares and the mapping and sampling program was conducted by Cascadero’s prospectors R. Bilquist and R. Lera in 2016. Assay work was completed in 2017. This new work was targeted at defining areas with large quartz veins as well as possible concentrations of ‘sheeted’ veins and vein stockworks in large areas of alteration. A total of 46 chip and grab samples were taken for analysis. The grab samples are selected samples and may not be representative of the mineralization on the property. Most of these samples were taken in the northern area of the project; an underexplored area with some single sample anomalies, while only five samples were taken from the south area with a focus put on reconnaissance mapping.
In general, the Santa Rosa I property can be divided into a Northern area and a Southern area, which itself is divisible into 9 smaller showings that were sampled. Forty Six (46) samples were taken from both areas returned a weighted average of 3.979 g/tn gold, 11.08 g/tn silver and 0.64% lead. Other base metals were very anomalous with zinc at 0.16%, and copper at 0.379%. The 46 assays range from .005 g/tn to 20 g/tn with the median value for gold 0.265 g/t, for lead 41.63 ppm, for silver 0.249 g/tn.
Following are excerpts from Bilquist’s report:
“Geologically, the veins and vein concentrations are hosted in a sedimentary package of rocks comprised of calcareous sandstone-siltstone and finely laminated siltstone to mudstone. The siltstone to mudstone is the dominate host of the veins while the more resistant sandstone-siltstone acts as a ‘trap’ and conduit for the mineralizing solutions resulting in the veins mostly being confined to bedding. The auriferous veins are often found within thin ‘envelopes’ of argillic altered material, all of which is generally within a ‘regional’, propylitic alteration (chlorite) halo”.
Highlights of sampling of the various areas include:
Northern Area - A new zone was discovered in the northern area of the project in the vicinity of some ancient Jesuit workings. A ‘single point’ anomaly of three samples gave values of 2.09, 52.6 and 25 Au g/tn. Follow up work with fifteen samples taken, gave results of greater than 0.5 g/tn Au; eight of which are greater than 3 g/tn Au, and 12 g/tn Au. Anomalous silver values were coincident with the higher gold values with six samples giving a range of results from 13.8 to 22.7 g/tn Ag. The program was reconnaissance in nature and the type of sample in the Northern and Southern area are rock outcrop samples with no clear orientation and no sample was a chip sample taken perpendicular to the strike of the vein and the outcrop samples were taken within veins. The average weight of all samples was 1.308 kgs ranging from a high of 1.9 kgs to a low of 0.7 kgs and a median value of 1.3 kgs.
Within approximately 200 metres all samples showed anomalous gold with values ranging between 0.57 g/tn Au to highs of 17 and 20 g/tn Au. High silver values of 15.1, 27.8 and 86.1 g/tn Ag were coincident with the highest gold values.
Southern Area – Previous work in the southern area had defined several relatively large areas that host highly anomalous quartz veins and veinlets with intense argillic alteration.
Park Zone: No samples were taken during 2016 but gold values from historic sampling gave many ‘multi gram’ samples with one sample returning 49.5 g/tn Au and 70 g/tn Ag .
Spectacle Zone: No sampling was carried out in this zone in 2016 but, in historic sampling sixty nine grab and chip samples returned thirty samples greater than 1 g/tn Au with coincidently anomalous silver. The highest gold numbers include seven samples greater than 30 g/tn Au with a high of 52.2 g/tn Au and 119.3 g/tn Ag at this site.
Ron Zone: No samples were taken here in 2016 and the only work done consisted of some mapping to determine the extent of the alteration area. In previous sampling 9 samples showed anomalous gold; 4 samples returned values of 3.10, 9.65, 8.25 and 8.99 g/tn Au.
JB Zone: The JB Zone covers a fairly large area where thirty eight samples with highly anomalous gold were taken on previous programs. Of these samples six were less than 1 g/tn Au, 14 samples were greater than 10 g/tn Au g/tn and 7 were greater than 30 g/tn Au with the high being 39.6 g/tn Au. Ag samples were generally anomalous with the highest being 139.5 g/tn Ag. In 2016, work consisted primarily of geological mapping with only one sample being taken which returned values of 16.2 g/tn Au.
Subzone 4a : This area is in the extreme north of the JB Zone. Six samples, all anomalous in gold, were taken from this location on previous programs. These samples returned values of 2.3, 4.3, 3.2, 3.5, 1.12 g/t Au and 5.7 g/tn Ag.
Subzone 4b: This area, approximately 240 by 250 metres is in the south west of the JB Zone and has very anomalous gold values from eighteen samples assaying greater than 1 g/tn Au., 14 of these assayed greater than 10 g/tn Au and 8 samples exceeded 31 g/tn Au. The highest sample assayed 39.6 g/tn Au and one sample assayed, returned 16.2 Au g/tn from the 2016 program.
AL 87 Zone: The ‘Discovery’ sample for the AL87 Zone, taken from a large quartz vein in argillic altered siltstone-mudstone assayed 88.597 g/tn Au with 86.6 g/tn Ag. Two areas for follow up in this region have been delineated so far and occur to the north and south along the same trend as the AL87 Vein.
Subzone 5a: The first area includes the AL87 Vein and extends approximately 200 metres to the south of the Discovery sample. This entire zone measures about 200 metres by 275 and includes a number of samples from the AL 87 vein system. In this area historic sampling included 1 sample with a value of 1.325 g/tn Au and 4 samples which returned values of 44.2, 0.7, 0.65 and 15.6 g/tn Au. Samples taken in 2016 program included values of <0.005, 5.67, 15.6, and 15.586 g/tn Au.
Subzone 5b: The second prospective area within the AL 87 Vein zone covers an area approximately 140 by 260 metres. No samples were taken during 2016 but during previous programs 15 samples were taken. 8 of these samples returned values of 1.89, 2.23, 11.08, 5.76, 3.69, 10, 32.55 and 18.59 g/tn Au. The two highest silver values were 46.3 and 54.9 g/tn Ag.
All samples were prepared at the Bureau Veritas (BV) Laboratory in Mendoza, Argentina and then assayed by BV’s facility in Vancouver, Canada. Assay methods included BV’s Multi Acid (MA) 250 procedure, with gold by Fire Assay (FA) 450, with those samples exceeding 10 g/tn Au being processed by BV’s FA 550.
The Company has now completed a second and much larger sampling and mapping program on Santa Rosa, consisting 275 rock samples which include some areas that were chip sampled. Results of this work are being compiled and will be the subject of a news release, shortly.
The Chairman, Bill McWilliam says, “ The Company is very excited about the Santa Rosa results as gold and silver values occur in outcrop over the majority of the system’s seven (7) kilometre strike length. Santa Rosa presents an excellent exploration target that has a combination of good grades of gold and silver that are present in a coherent system that has size potential.”
This news release and its technical content has been read and approved by Dr. David Trueman, Ph.D., P.Geo who is a director of the Company and is a qualified person acting for the Company.
Bill McWilliam
Chairman
Email =
bill@cascadero.com
O = 604.924.5504
C = 604.999.0391
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