Infield Minerals Corp., a Vancouver, Canada-based company that is focused on exploring high-grade gold and silver in Nevada, outlined an area of anomalous silver and gold in soil geochemistry at the Desperado project in Nye County, according to a press release.
The Desperado property is located within the Ellendale mining district east of Tonopah. It covers 3,480 acres surrounding the historical Ellendale mine property owned by a third party.
The company intends to further advance the property through follow-up surface work in the third and fourth quarters of 2021, the release said.
In 2021, the company plans to conduct follow-up field work to evaluate the silver-gold target area for potential trenching.
The company said exploration and mining in the district during the early 1900s are evidenced by several abandoned adits, shafts and trenches.
The district remains underexplored with no indication of modern exploration work having been conducted within the property area during at least the past 30 years.
At the Desperado property, historical workings and mineralization are associated with large areas of clay alteration. Much of the area is overlain by “desert gravel” with few outcroppings of rocks, providing opportunities for discovery under cover through exploration techniques such as soil sampling and geophysical surveying.
In 2020, the company identified large areas of hydrothermal clay alteration within the Desperado property through a specialized interpretation of satellite spectral data.
During a field inspection, 60 clay-altered rock samples were collected from the alteration areas and subsequently analyzed using a Terraspec Spectrometer to evaluate the nature of alteration. The minerals identified in the study were consistent with low-sulfidation and high-sulfidation clay alteration in epithermal systems.
A silver-gold target area has been outlined at the Desperado property utilizing soil geochemistry. The soil survey results indicate that anomalous silver in soil is distributed over an area of 3.5 kilometres in length by 500 to 800 metres in width.
Anomalous values for gold in soil over the same area are erratic, which can be expected due to the poor mobility of the element. Two additional elements, arsenic and manganese, that are generally associated with silver mineralization in the Tonopah region, were also found in relation to the anomalous silver area.
Infield plans to follow up with additional field work at Desperado during quarter three and four of 2021 with the intent to advance the property toward a drill-ready status. The program will include field evaluation of the silver-gold target area to determine the prospects of mechanical trenching, as well as to propose the layout of a grid for ground geophysical surveying.