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El Padre vein: bonanza-grade drilling, open in every direction
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Setting
Sierra Madre Occidental, at vein scale
Charay lies at the western margin of the Sierra Madre Occidental, one of the world’s great epithermal precious-metal provinces and host to the majority of Mexico’s gold and silver deposits. Locally, the property sits at the center of a postulated ~12-km caldera ring of andesite porphyry centers, on one of the NE-trending dilatant structures that control essentially every deposit in the district.
The structure
A textbook bonanza vein
The El Padre vein is a near-vertical (–83° NW), 243°-trending, low-sulphidation epithermal quartz vein hosted in andesite of the Lower Volcanic Series. Textures are textbook bonanza-style — banded grey-white quartz, refractured and annealed by colloform, ribbon-textured chalcedonic quartz, with hematite–limonite after specularite.
Three hydrothermal phases are recognized; visible native gold has been observed in core, and metallics assays show no nugget effect. Vein widths run 1.0–2.0 m over a mapped length exceeding 400 m; four historic shafts and numerous pits trace the system across at least 550 m.
The 2005 core program
Independently recompiled in 2010
Twenty-seven NQ core holes (1,576 m) were drilled in 2005 by UK-listed Vane Minerals Group: nineteen targeted and intersected the El Padre vein along 240 m of strike. An independent Qualified Person (P.Geol.) recompiled the database in 2010, culling parallel-structure intervals and applying the true –83° vein dip. The full operator history →
| Hole | True width (m) | Au (g/t) | Ag (g/t) | Vertical depth (m) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MCDDH-01 | 0.4 | 5.6 | 185.1 | 15 |
| MCDDH-01A | 1.3 | 24.9 | 290.1 | 24 |
| MCDDH-02 | 0.9 | 10.1 | 30.9 | 21 |
| MCDDH-03 | 1.0 | 2.6 | 35.2 | 43 |
| MCDDH-04 | 2.2 | 6.6 | 64.4 | 25 |
| MCDDH-06 | — | nil | nil | — |
| MCDDH-07 | 3.0 | 6.9 | 99.3 | 22 |
| MCDDH-08 | 2.4 | 20.4 | 70.4 | 39 |
| MCDDH-14 | 0.2 | 11.9 | 24.0 | 18 |
| MCDDH-15 | 1.6 | 19.5 | 172.8 | 31 |
| MCDDH-16 | 1.6 | 11.4 | 232.9 | 33 |
| MCDDH-17 | 0.9 | 15.2 | 343.6 | 42 |
| MCDDH-18 | 1.2 | 42.3 | 39.8 | 48 |
| MCDDH-20 | 1.5 | 41.7 | 274.3 | 50 |
| MCDDH-20 (parallel vein) | 6.8 | 16.5 | 131.7 | ~50 |
| MCDDH-21 | 0.9 | 35.4 | 89.0 | 35 |
| MCDDH-22 | 1.0 | 45.3 | 54.8 | 26 |
| MCDDH-23 | 1.5 | 16.7 | 90.8 | 10 |
| MCDDH-24 | 0.9 | 5.1 | 51.4 | 18 |
| MCDDH-25 | 0.8 | 43.0 | 77.5 | 46 |
| Weighted average (19) | 1.29 | 20.3 | 123.7 | — |
• Intercepts grading 20 g/t Au or better
QA/QC
Verification a technical committee can sign off on
In 2007–2008 a second operator quartered and re-logged the core, photographed it, and re-assayed 155 pulps plus 159 new core samples at ALS (ISO 17025 accredited) with duplicates, standards and blanks inserted — no discrepancies noted.
The check compilation returned 18.8 g/t Au and 96.5 g/t Ag over 1.34 m (gold reproducing at 91% of the original laboratory), an unusually clean historical verification. Both databases, original assay sheets and certificates are available to qualified parties under confidentiality agreement.
Geometry
The geometry of the opportunity
- No hole below ~50 m; no workings below ~35 m. In a deposit class routinely mined for hundreds of metres of vertical extent, the tested window is the top slice.
- Grade increases downward. Near-surface oxidized material runs under 10 g/t Au; the deepest intercepts grade 25 g/t or better — MCDDH-20 and MCDDH-25 end the tested envelope at 41.7 and 43.0 g/t Au. Silver holds steady throughout. This is the signature of a bonanza horizon entered from above, not exited from below.
- Open both ways along strike. The westernmost and easternmost vein holes both ended in +40 g/t material.
Beyond the vein itself: the parallel structure (16.5 g/t Au over 6.8 m in its single intercept) has never been followed up, and the Charay Breccia — a 500 × 200 m silicified body with surface samples to 7.5 g/t Au — is an untested bulk-tonnage target of the kind that anchors the economics of several Sierra Madre camps.
How this translated into production.
15,430 tonnes milled, 3,668 oz of gold shipped — the 2015 record is available on request.