Almaden Minerals Begins Prospect Drilling at Ixtaca

Almaden Minerals has announced it has commenced drilling at the Ixtaca property in the state of Puebla.

Drilling will take a phased approach and will initially focus on targets established at the Southeast Alteration Zone, located approximately 1km from the Ixtaca deposit area. Work over the past several months at the Southeast Alteration Zone has included geophysics and geological mapping. As reported in the Fall of 2020, this area measures about 1.5 kms east-west by 1 km north-south and is centered approximately 1 km southeast of the Ixtaca deposit, as reported by the company’s press release. The Southeast Alteration Zone comprises argillic (clay-altered) volcanics as well as clusters of anomalies identified from a hyperspectral survey that include the spectral signatures of important epithermal alteration minerals such as kaolinite, alunite and buddingtonite.

Back in November of 2020, the Company announced the discovery of several areas of veining cropping out within the Southeast Alteration Zone, and seventeen samples of the veining were collected and submitted for analysis to ALS Global in Zacatecas, Mexico. Even though the outcrops are leached and weathered, many of the samples also returned elevated values of epithermal pathfinder elements, which are commonly found in the higher parts of epithermal alteration zones. The presence of pathfinder elements in these samples is very encouraging as it corroborates the Company’s view that the Southeast Alteration Zone could represent the higher levels of a potential underlying epithermal system.

The Chairman of Almaden, J. Duane Poliquin stated, “The original Ixtaca discovery was made through clever geologic assembly of published information and on-the-ground observation of field data. This has resulted in the discovery of an economic gold-silver deposit as outlined in the Feasibility Study, with evidence (geologic, geochemical, geophysical) for the possibility of a similar deposit, as well as the possibility of deeper precious/base metal deposit(s). It is very exciting to return to prospect drilling of some of the blue-sky targets that have been identified on this property.”

The Ixtaca Gold Silver Deposit located in Puebla is one of Mexico’s premier precious metal discoveries. It is located 120 km southeast from the Pachuca Mine, considered one of the largest gold and silver deposits in the country. The deposit hosts a proven and probable reserve of 1.38Moz of gold and 85.1Moz of silver (73.1 million tonnes grading 0.59 g/t Au and 36.3 g/t Ag). According to the company, the Ixtaca project has an outstanding inventory of precious metals that can be increased through drilling programs and a further exploration of the deposit, as reported by MBN.