Carson Richardson: Hello everyone, I'm Carson Richardson with the Arizona Geological Survey and today I'm here with Greg Hahn of Arizona Silver. Hi Greg!
Greg Hahn: Hi Carson. How are you doing?
Carson Richardson: Well, thank you. Why don't you tell me about Arizona silver and what you've been up to.
Greg Hahn: We started Arizona Silver about three years ago with the intent of exploring Arizona for precious metals, which we felt hadn't been addressed for about thirty years and was neglected because it felt in the gap between the major gold district of Nevada and the major silver district of Mexico. It had similar geology to both those districts and we felt there was opportunity here to chase.
Carson Richardson: That's great. Then, which prospects that you hold are the most interesting to you right now?
Greg Hahn: We started out chasing low-grade, disseminated silver projects and we quickly morphed into chasing higher grade gold-silver veins, just because the market seemed to be a little more attracted to gold as opposed to silver exclusively. We are now chasing gold-silver veins. The primary district in the past historic district is the Oatman District, which produced about 2 million ounces of gold and still has gold resources for several companies up there. Then, there are extensions of the Mexico district that come through the south-eastern part of Arizona and continue on up into the western part of New Mexico. We're exploring that area as well.
Carson Richardson: Why don't we talk more about the Oatman area, first. What have you guys been up to there?
Greg Hahn: It started about 40 years ago when I was exploring the district when the price of gold actually rocketed after it was deregulated back in the '70s. At that time, there was a huge rush in Arizona for gold especially on the heels of the discovery of the Copperstone mine owned by Cyprus at the time. I was part of that rush and identified a couple of opportunities, but they were already taken. I just filed those in the memory banks. I went back to one of them this winter and was surprised to find out that things had changed. One of the constraints back in the '80s was that there was a state highway that went right through the property, however, that was no longer the case. The Arizona Department of Transportation had re-routed the highway around the property. That, in my mind opened up the exploration opportunity of that property. We identified one of the property owners, got a deal with that property owner, and proceeded to explore the property.
Carson Richardson: And that's the Philadelphia property.
Greg Hahn: Yes, that's the Philadelphia property. It was historically known in part as the Arabian Mine and it's on maps as the Arabian, but it was refered to as either the Philadelphia or the Arabian. We choose to call it the Philadelphia property. Historically, it was a producer from the beginning of the 1900s to just before World War II. Then, like other precious metal mines in the country, it was shut down during World War II. Unusually for a property in the desert southwest, it flooded during the war. It flooded to within 100 feet of the surface and that was a deterrent to anybody going in after the war to do anything with the property. It has effectively been unexplored for the last seventy years or so.
Carson Richardson: So you're re-exploring an area that no one's touched for a long while.
Greg Hahn: That's correct. The Arabian, which is just to the south of us, saw a few drill holes back in the 80s but as soon as they realized that their target was going underneath the state highway they abandoned that effort. That was the last anybody did on that property until we showed up in the spring.
Carson Richardson: I always find it fascinating how we can be in Arizona, one of the most explored states and still find areas that are not really touched.
Greg Hahn: There was a rush here in the '80s for gold and silver, but if you canvass the companies that are exploring in Arizona right now then you will find that probably 90% of them were looking for copper and maybe 10% are looking for something other than copper. Yes, it's been heavily explored for copper but it hasn't been that heavily explored for other commodities, including gold and silver.
Carson Richardson: That's leaving a lot of potential out there.
Greg Hahn: It sure has and that's what we're chasing.
Carson Richardson: You had an exciting press release yesterday. Do you want to tell us more about that?
Greg Hahn: We did. We brought a drill rig in back in April-May, and drilled six reconnaissance reverse circulation drill holes to test the concept that the vein continued to the north beneath alluvial cover. This, by the way, is a critical point beyond where the old workings stopped. At the time the workings were active, the cutoff grade was around four tenths of an ounce per ton. Well, four tenths of an ounce per ton would make a very attractive ore grade today. We figured if they just stopped because they ran out of high-grade, then we could drill that lower grade material. In fact, we were successful in all six holes in hitting the vein -- the extension of the vein. There was some cross faulting that I think might have confused the old-timers. Indeed, the vein is gold and silver bearing, so we were successful in documenting that there's an extension to the vein. Now, we're proceeding with trying to identify the characteristics of that vein. And that's what the press release of yesterday was about. After the reverse circulation holes, we brought in a rig to drill core, which gives us detailed textures on the vein. The detailed textures on the vein inform us where we are in the vein system, relative to where the majority of the gold traditionally precipitates out due to physical-chemical constraints. The reality is those textures show us what is referred to as bladed calcite and chalcedonic quartz, which is always above the boiling zone -- above the location where, due to boiling, the precious metals drop out of solution. We know we're above where the high grade would be, even though we got some very attractive grades in our sample already. That tells us that we're just sniffing the top of the zone that we want to test. Our next move is to go in and drill deeper.
Carson Richardson: Why don't we look at the sample that you brought along.
Greg Hahn: Sure. It is one of the few pieces of core we actually got out -- it's pretty busted up with replacement mineralization in a breccia. If I spray it a little bit, then you'll be able to see the difference between the bladed calcite and the chalcedonic quartz. There you can see the bladed calcite in the cream colored. You can see some blades there, if you look closely. If you had a hand lens, you could see the bladed character the of calcite. Then, the fine grain pink is a combination of chalcedonic quartz and something else that's starting to replace the calcite veining.
Carson Richardson: That is a fantastic sample.
Greg Hahn: Very juicy looking sample.
Carson Richardson: You have these two other prospects in Arizona.
Greg Hahn: We have two other properties. One we call Sycamore Canyon, it's located near the geographic location of Sycamore Canyon. It's on US Forest Service Land and it's currently in the permitting process to try to get a permit to drill the initial three holes on the property. That takes longer -- substantially longer -- to get a permit on Forest Service Land than it does on Bureau of Land Management land. That's moving forward at its pace, while we continue to follow the Philadelphia property at the pace that allows. Our third property is called the Ramsey property, it's located near Quartzite where there is mineralization along a detachment-related structure and faults related to that detachment structure. It's a silver project with a little bit of lead-zinc, but not any gold. It has fallen to our third priority because of the lack of gold credit to it. We drilled twenty holes there over the first two years and were very successful. I think we hit in all but four of the holes in low-grade, disseminated silver across 20 to 30 meters average thickness. It's still wide open. We think there's a large, potentially pit-able, low-grade resource there that is worth pursuing. As I said earlier, our focus is really on those projects with gold credits right now.
Carson Richardson: You've been exploring in Arizona for years now. What's your philosophy on exploration. How do you guide yourself in terms of where you go and how you approach this?
Greg Hahn: We look at a lot of data. Much of the data we look at comes from the Arizona Geological Survey's mining database. It's a great resource for for looking at historical data on a number of properties. We examine some properties that we think are attractive and if there's a suggestion of something that was explored in the past, but looks like it trends undercover -- that is really what we're interested in. A lot of work done in the past was easily discouraged by a fault offset or deep alluvial cover. By deep I mean tens of feet, not hundreds or thousands of feet. When the old-timers hit the fault in a drift, they would turn around and stop. To us, that's opportunity. If we like the mineral system that we think is present there, then we want to chase it undercover. Whether that cover be post-mineral volcanics or alluvium, that's an opportunity that we know we like. All three of our properties are projects that had been identified in the past, but that weren't chased beneath cover.
Carson Richardson: Thank you for coming in today.
Greg Hahn: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Learn more online, http://arizonasilverexploration.com/
