Location
The Toiyabe Project is located approximately 78 miles south-southwest of Elko, Nevada and is located only six miles south of Barrick's Cortez Hills gold discovery. Other recent nearby discoveries include the ET Blue project 6 miles east and Red Hill about 10 miles east. Each of these discoveries are currently under development by Barrick, and are similar in genesis and host rocks to Toiyabe. Golden Oasis Exploration, Corp. (now American Consolidated Minerals Incorporated or ACM) has conducted a drilling program over the past 3 years to test near-surface gold anomalies and determine the location of favorable stratigraphy for bulk minable mineralization.
American Consolidated holds 165 claims totalling 3,330 acres.
Resource
The indicated mineral resource at Toiyabe for a 0.01 opt (ounce per ton) gold cutoff is 173,562 contained ounces of gold. This equates to 4,975,000 tons at an average grade of 0.0349 ounces per ton (opt). This resource estimation utilized drill results from ACM drilling as well as historic drilling. Historic drill results were used where assays and logs appeared intact and reasonably verified. The majority of this resource is shallow.
Nevada ranks as one of the world's premier gold mining regions, with over 7 million ounces produced annually. Recently, the vast majority of gold reserves and production has come from Northern Nevada, along three major gold trends, (Carlin, Battle Mountain and Getchell). The Battle Mountain -- Eureka Trend has identified more than 32 million ounces of gold over the past thirty years, making it the second most productive gold belt in Nevada. Much of the recent production is from Barrick's 10 million oz Pipeline- Pediment deposits. New discoveries in the past five years have boosted interest in the trend.
Geology
Lower plate carbonate rich sediments are exposed below the Roberts Mountain Thrust within an area called the Cortez window. These lower plate sediments host over 90% of the gold found within the Carlin and Battle Mountain- Eureka trends. In the Toiyabe project area gold mineralization is hosted within a similar geologic setting. The stratigraphy, structure and alteration are analogous to that found at nearby Cortez, Cortez Hills, Pediment, Horse Canyon and Pipeline deposits.
Exploration
Restricted areas of close-spaced drilling of the near surface (less than 400 ft) have been conducted on the property starting in 1979 and extending to the present. Available records suggest that approximately 243 holes have been completed on the subject property, of which 159 have detailed records and assays available. This drilling indicates potential for additional gold mineralization at relatively shallow depths.
Toiyabe contains at least two strongly mineralized fault zones with strong gold values on surface and in drilling. This evidence demonstrates the potential for gold-mineralizing fluids to travel from a deeper source through reactive, lower plate, carbonate rocks to the shallow mineralization encountered to date at Toiyabe. Several deeper drill holes have encountered low to moderate gold mineralization erratically distributed through comparable stratigraphy in nearby producing mines. Although the necessary structural complexities and traps required to host a large economic gold occurrence have yet to be encountered, a recent re-interpretation of stratigraphy and structure by Paul D. Noland indicates that this environment likely exists within the Toiyabe project boundary and may be responsible for at least some of the mineralization encountered within less favorable, upper plate lithologies.
Since 2006, Golden Oasis (now ACM) has conducted an intensive program of geologic mapping, geophysical surveys, compilation and drilling. This work has increased the knowledge of the mineralized system, identified a drill defined resource, and helped define at least five viable targets for further exploration. It is recommended that ACM continue exploration of the Courtney target. Through ACM's diligence, the favorable stratigraphy and potential feeder faults have been defined sufficiently that deeper drilling of Pipeline style targets is warranted. A single 1,500 feet long angle core hole is recommended in order to test favorable host rocks adjacent to one of the more favorable north-nortwest feeder faults.
Technical Report
Click here to view Toiyabe NI 43-101 Technical Report (May 27, 2009 PDF 4.6MB)
