History:

Selective artisanal mining on the property was being carried out as recently as the late 1970’s. There are at least 5 different areas on the property where artisanal mining occurred. Previous historical mining occurrences have indications that high grade gold occurs on the property.

Mining was done from surface cuts, shallow stopes and most likely without mechanization.

Chesapeake Gold geologists explored the property beginning in 2006 with a strong focus in one area of mineralization referred to as the “The Main Zone”.

Mineralization:

Mineral systems identified so far at El Tecomate occur within a structural corridor approximately 1.5 km wide and at least 4 km long. This corridor is interpreted to be the margin of a caldera or superimposed collapsed calderas.  Numerous artisanal workings occur within the corridor and were focused on north-west trending shear veins, sheeted veinlet zones and breccias that occur within zones of phyllic altered volcanics up to 200m wide.

Currently three mineralized zones have been identified at El Tecomate – Main Zone, Southeast, and Cerro Colorado. (El Tecomate Map)  Highlights of sample results reported by Chesapeake are:

Main Zone

•   0.95 g/t gold over 47.9m (continuous 3m chip samples)
•   1.14 g/t gold over 36m (continuous chip samples), 130m to the east of above area
•   Individual grab samples along strike within Main Zone up to 21.96 g/t gold.
•   9.46 g/t gold, 36 g/t silver, 1.1% lead, 1.86% zinc, 500m north of Main Zone, from old workings (grab sample)

Southeast Zone

• Located one km south-east of the Main Zone, no old workings identified so far
• 0.86 g/t gold and 23.6 g/t silver over 30m (consecutive 3m chip samples)
• 500m to the south of the Southeast Zone, grab sample 0.74g/t gold and 34 g/t silver

Cerro Colorado Zone

• Located 500m south of the Main Zone, no old workings identified so far
• 23.3 g/t gold over 2m in an area of limited exposure.

 
Artisinal workings at El Tecomate are not limited to the Main Zone. At least four other areas 2-3 km away remain to be explored. Modern exploration has been limited to rock chip and soil sampling that focused almost exclusively on the Main Zone.  Current chip channel sampling has been limited by dense vegetation and talus cover in typically relative steep terrain of the Sierra Madre Occidental.

Property Geology:

The geology of the Tecomate project is not yet well understood, but it is known that precious metals of economic interest mainly occur in a northwest-trending corridor that is roughly 1.5km wide.  That corridor is interpreted to be the margin of a caldera or superimposed calderas.   Paleocene tuffs, subvolcanics, and agglomerates collectively known as “Lower Volcanics” comprise the geology of the corridor and they are predominantly andesitic.  Elsewhere in the Western Sierra Madre the Lower Volcanics host virtually all known gold deposits.  Unaltered Oligocene “Upper Volcanics” unconformably overly the Lower Volcanics and bound the main corridor of gold mineralization at Tecomate on the northeast and southwest.  The Upper Volcanics are thought to have been down‑dropped during caldera collapse, and are predominantly rhyolitic tuffs and agglomerates in the lower part of the package and ignimbrites in the upper part of the package.