- Chepica
Introduction
The Chepica Mine property, located 225 kilometers south of Santiago, near the city of Talca, covers the Cerro Chepica high grade copper-gold mining district. It is readily accessible by paved and good gravel road from the city of Talca 20 kilometers to the east.
Property Geology
The Chepica, Corinto and Batuco properties cover a NE-SW trending roof pendent of Cretaceous volcanics, subvolcanic porphyry bodies and sediments within Cretaceous granodiorite. Extensive gold and copper mineralization in the form of epithermal to high level mesothermal veins, pipes and disseminations occur throughout this roof pendent and are generally associated with the subvolcanic porphyries and healed fault zones. The Chepica Mine property covers at least four silicified and sericitised fault zones varing from 5-30 metres wide and traceable from 300 metres to over 1 kilometer in length.
Mineralization
Regional exploration by Noranda and others in the early to mid 1990’s including geological mapping, stream and soil geochemistry, defined several open ended zones associated with N-NW trending silicified structures on the Chepica Mine property. From early 2001 to late 2003 the current owners with the aid of Chile’s state-owned mining company Empresa Nacional de Minería (“ENAMI”) geologists and engineers conducted surface trenching, about 500 lineal metres of drifting, crosscutting and raising on the Chepica No.1 and No.2 “veins”. From this work 12 run of mine bulk samples bulk of about 300 tonnes each from the Chepica No.1 and 8 similar samples from the Chepica No.2 were shipped to local plants for processing. Head grades from the Chepica No.1 samples ranged from 1.4-2.4% copper, 0.3-12.2 g/t gold, 7.8-28 g/t silver with a weighted average of 1.6% copper, 3.0 g/t gold and 16g/t silver. Head grades from the Chepica No.2 samples ranged from 2.2-3.2% copper, 2.5-3.4 g/t gold, with weighted average of 2.5% copper and 3.0 g/t gold. (Note that none of the samples from Chepica No.2 were analysed for silver).
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