Turmalina Metals Corp. announced that it has commenced drilling at its San Francisco gold-silver-copper project, located in San Juan province.
- Drilling has started at the San Francisco de Los Andes (‘SFdLA’) breccia.
- The drilling campaign will be a concurrent blend of drilling at SFdLA breccia pipe and exploration drilling of newly discovered gold-copper-silver mineralised breccia pipes.
- Commencing drilling with a strong cash position and balance sheet.
Since the last two weeks of May, the Turmalina operations team has been busy onsite establishing the camp, constructing access roads to drill sites and building drill pads. This process has gone smoothly and Turmalina now is drilling at the SFdLA breccia pipe.
This phase two drill program will be a concurrent blend of drilling at the (SFdLA) breccia, to follow up on a very successful initial drill program while also commencing exploration on multiple newly identified and sampled breccias that present high priority exploration targets.
Two diamond drill rigs will be utilized to drill a total of 4,500 meters during this drill campaign. Approximately 2,500 m will be drilled at the SFDLA breccia pipe, testing for vertical and lateral extensions to high-grade gold-copper-silver mineralization encountered in the first phase of drilling. The remaining 2,000 m will test gold-copper mineralized breccia pipes identified during the summer mapping program.
With drilling now underway Turmalina has also re-started infill rock chip sampling in newly identified gold-copper mineralised breccia pipes, starting at the Humilde breccia, and then continuing at the Solita and Colorada breccias.
Dr. Rohan Wolfe, Chief Executive Officer, stated:
“It’s pleasing to be drilling again at our flagship San Francisco project. The next few months promise to be a very busy and exciting time for Turmalina as we test for extensions to high grade gold-copper mineralisation intersected in our initial drilling at the SFdLA breccia pipe, as well as drill testing some exciting newly-identified gold-copper mineralised breccia pipes on the property. Some of these new breccia pipes have returned surface gold and copper grades even higher than those found on the surface of the SFdLA breccia pipe. In conjunction with the drilling program we have restarted detailed sampling and mapping of several high-priority targets and we look forward to keeping the market updated as drilling and fieldwork progresses over the coming months.
Initial drilling at the SFdLA breccia (dated December 2, 2019) returned significant gold-rich intercepts including:
- 36.95m @ 6.31 g/t Au, 122 g/t Ag & 0.88% Cu (8.7 g/t AuEq) from 34.5m (SFDH-001)
- 85.30m @ 4.43 g/t Au, 109 g/t Ag & 0.79% Cu (6.6 g/t AuEq) from 27.7m (SFDH-002)
Including 22.70m @ 6.66 g/t Au, 86 g/t Ag & 1.46% Cu (9.46 g/t AuEq) from 28.3m
Including 25.00m @ 5.29 g/t Au, 117 g/t Ag & 0.62% Cu (7.4 g/t AuEq) from 61m
- 50.75m @ 3.62 g/t Au, 82 g/t Ag & 1.90% Cu (6.7 g/t AuEq) from 44.25m (SFDH-003)
Including 26.75m @ 5.47 g/t Au, 97 g/t Ag & 3.30% Cu (10.6 g/t AuEq) from 44.25m
- 85.00m @ 2.65 g/t Au, 88 g/t Ag & 0.57% Cu (4.32 g/t AuEq) from 33m (SFDH-005)
Including 21.00m @ 5.05 g/t Au, 173 g/t Ag & 0.80% Cu (8.0 g/t AuEq) from 35m
- 27.52m @ 3.00 g/t Au, 124 g/t Ag & 0.37% Cu (4.8 g/t AuEq) from 56.48m (SFDH-007)
Including 8.52m @ 4.91 g/t Au, 140 g/t Ag & 0.24% Cu (7.1 g/t AuEq) from 56.48m
- 16m @ 0.8 g/t Au, 281 g/t Ag & 1.59% Cu (6.1 g/t AuEq) from 150m.
Initial Phase Two drilling at the SFdLA targets the projected vertical extension of the breccia approximately 60 to 80 meters below the deepest holes drilled by Turmalina to date. Further holes will then extend this to greater depths as well as test shallower along-strike extensions.
Exploration Drilling on New Targets
Over summer Turmalina completed a project-wide 3,400 ha mapping and sampling program. This program included collection of over 4,494 soil samples, 1,240 rock chip samples and mapping of over 60 breccias.
The upcoming drilling program will drill test four of these newly discovered breccia pipes. These new breccia pipes are all located in close proximity to SFdLA. Rock chip samples from one of these new targets included 79 g/t gold, 385 g/t silver and 7.7 % copper: assay grades higher than those obtained from rock chips over the SFdLA breccia pipe drilled by the Company in 2019.
About the San Francisco Project
The 3,404 ha San Francisco project is located in San Juan province. The project area contains more than 60 tourmaline breccia occurrences, several of which have supported small-scale mining. The Company is focused on mapping and sampling the breccias, and drill testing prioritized targets.
Work Programs
The summer field program at San Francisco extended geological mapping, portable XRF analysis and geochemical sampling (rock chips and soils) over the entire Project area. High-priority breccia targets defined by this first-pass sampling were subject to detailed mapping and channel sampling leading to the selection of drill targets for the pending drill program. The company is also consolidating its regional holdings as San Francisco is located within an 80 km long gold-copper mineralised belt.
