Stockade Mountain

Project Stage

The property was explored by BHP, Phelps Dodge, and Placer Dome in the 1980s and 90s. The project is an exploration stage project. There are no known mineral resources or reserves on the project at this time. There has been insufficient exploration on the project to estimate a mineral resource.

Local Resources and Infrastructure

Stockade Mountain is located in a rural area used extensively for ranching and farming.  The nearby community of Burns, Oregon is a commercial center for these businesses and can supply the necessary accommodation, food, fuels, supplies, and some of the contractors and workforce for exploration and development.  Ontario, Oregon, located 70 miles (113 km) to the northeast is another significant commercial center in southeastern Oregon.  The cities of Boise, Nampa, Caldwell and others in the “Treasure Valley” in adjacent Idaho can provide all necessary goods and services, including the international airport in Boise.

Property Claims and Lease

The Stockade Mountain property consists of a total of 261 unpatented lode mining claims that cover an area of over 6,790 acres (2748 ha) on land administered by the BLM.

The Stockade Mountain Lease is for a term of 50 years, with pre-production payments, work commitments, net smelter return royalties, and claim maintenance fees.

Geology

Stockade Mountain exhibits a classic large gold- and silver-bearing low-sulfidation “hot springs” hydrothermal system associated with rhyolite intrusion and doming that formed along a major NW-trending structural corridor.

Gold/silver and high-level mercury mineralization at Stockade is associated with widespread silicification and argillization in a near-surface paleo-hot springs environment. This hydrothermal alteration and mineralization formed in and around rhyolite domes that have intruded gently dipping felsic tuffs.  Erosion into the hydrothermal system has been minimal, resulting in the local exposure of probable hydrothermal craters and vents that indicate the paleosurface at the time of hot springs activity. Gold and silver, along with associated elements arsenic, antimony, and mercury, are all strongly anomalous at the surface, however, historical drilling shows that gold and silver values, and their extent, increase significantly with depth below the paleosurface.  This is a common characteristic of high-grade gold/silver deposits in similar geological environments, including the previously mentioned nearby Grassy Mountain deposit in Oregon, the Midas, Sleeper, Hollister, National, and Fire Creek mines in Nevada, and numerous analogous deposits elsewhere in the world.  The hypothesized economic gold/silver veins at Stockade Mountain would have formed within the vertical zone of vigorous boiling of the hydrothermal fluids, and this is interpreted to have occurred approximately 600 to 1200 feet (183 to 366 m) below the surface.

Exploration programs conducted by BHP, Phelps Dodge and Placer Dome in the 1980s and 90s included shallow exploration holes that were drilled for bulk tonnage, open-pit potential, with no efforts to target deeper high-grade gold/silver vein deposits.  Many of these short drill holes returned significant lengths of strongly anomalous gold mineralization, with the best intercept being:

• 79.2 m (260 ft) averaging 0.937 g/t gold from 45.7 – 125 m (150 – 410 ft), which includes:
• 24 m averaging 1.560 g/t gold from 58 to 82.3 m (190 – 270 ft).

Numerous other drill holes returned long intercepts of >0.2 g/t Au, and four drilled higher-grade intercepts of:

• 3 m (10 ft) averaging 1.1 g/t gold
• 1.5 m (5 ft) @1.14 g/t gold
• 4.6 m (15 ft) averaging 1.1 g/t gold
• 4.6 m (15 ft) that averaged 1.385 g/t gold.