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Quito North
Overview
The Quito North project comprises 127 unpatented claims located in the Quito Mine district, 10 km south of Austin, Nevada. The land package covers the northeastern corner of the Quito Lower-plate window covering 3,000 m of the northern projection of the Quito Mine mineralized structure, up to its intersection with the eastern terminus of the Johnson Canyon laccolith.
The Quito Mine mineralized structure is emplaced into the 18° azimuth axial plane of a broad open, south-plunging anticline along the western edge of the Birch Creek graben. The mineralized area immediately south of the Johnson Canyon intrusive is known as Bleached Cliffs. Highly elevated arsenic, antimony and gold at this location have been the impetus of limited exploration. Shallow drilling has intersected up to 0.04 oz/ton gold in Lower-plate limestones on the edge of the target area. This drilling provides proof of concept constituting potential leakage from a more substantial gold deposit nearby. Specifically, the target area is outboard of a 200 m wide calc-silicate hornfels skarn thermal aureole that surrounds the Johnson Canyon intrusive within a 600 m x 600 m dilational block, which hosts an auriferous (to 0.94 g/t gold) rhyolite dyke swarm of the same age as the Carlin-type gold mineralization.
Spires Zone – A second gold bearing structure trends into the Bleached Cliffs area. This northerly trending fault segment (350 Az) occupies the core of a second breached anticline along the eastern structural boundary of the Quito Window. Two km south of Bleached Cliffs, a mineralized zone of calcite stockwork cemented and silicificed spires (hoo-doos) with anomalous Au and As covering an area 500 m wide x 1 km long, are developed within the hinge zone. The northern end of this alteration shows increased silicification and is very rusty with a preponderance of old workings. This zone is immediately overlain by Upper-plate silicastics with auriferous jasperoids and silicified breccia (to 350 ppb Au). The Spires alteration zone is developed within the Silurian Roberts Mountains Formation, the base of which is not exposed. Of note, numerous altered felsic dykes, some of which are auriferous (to 640 ppb Au), also trend 350° Az within the Spires alteration zone and strike extensions to the north, linking to the Bleached Cliffs area.
The southern portion of the Quito North claims covers part of the Section 25 target area where trenching and shallow drilling encountered low-grade gold mineralization. In addition, the Bleached Cliffs and Section 25 areas are the locus of rhyolite dyke swarms that are altered and mineralized with elevated values in arsenic, antimony and gold. The southern boundary of the claim group is located 1 km north of the former Quito operating open pit mine. The geology of the Quito window is strikingly similar to the Cortez District, in particular the north end of the Goldrush deposit (Dorothy) where Barrick Gold is outlining a new high-grade gold zone, and the Bleached Cliffs target.
Quito hosted significant high-grade mineralization (+1 oz/ton gold). The bottom of the high-grade has not been found. Numerous occurrences of ore-grade mineralization are present throughout the district, in both Lower- and Upper-plate lithologies. As such, Quito has pedigree and represents a strong Carlin system of district scale. To date, drilling within the district has been mostly shallow and limited to the mine area.