| Tordillo | ||
![]() |
||
|
The Tordillo prospect lies 12 km south of the Pimenton camp and is 13 km east-northeast of the Noranda/Anglo American West Wall porphyry copper deposit as well as 3 km southeast of Anglo American’s Novicio porphyry copper prospect.The three projects and Pimenton all lie in the central porphyry copper belt of Chile. The upper part of Tordillo with an elevation of 4,600 meters can be seen from the camp at Pimenton. Salient features of Tordillo based on preliminary fieldwork include a strongly leached silicified and sericitized hornblende diorite porphyry intrusive within a marked depression or amphitheatre roughly 1.5 km across with very steep sides formed of volcanics on three sides. The fourth and northern side is a valley trending to the north. The western section of the depression includes sub-rounded explosive breccias extending over hundreds of meters. These are strongly leached with plentiful minute voids and carry disseminated limonites and specularite together with phyllic and silicic alteration, and locally some remnant copper oxides and finely disseminated chalcopyrite. Three east-west reconnaissance geochemical parallel profiles of talus fines 300 meters apart, comprising 42 samples taken every 50 meters, or 2,100 line meters, were assayed for copper, molybdenum, and gold. The northern most profile with a length of 650 meters within fractured and leached altered intrusive with relic finely disseminated chalcopyrite, gave over its length an average of 249-ppm copper, 66-ppb gold and 2.75-ppm molybdenum. The next profile to the south with a length of 650 meters gave at its western end 214-ppm copper over 250 meters coinciding with leached breccias showing voids and limonites, while the eastern end over 400 meters averaged 65-ppm copper. Gold and molybdenum over the 650 meters gave 65-ppb and 3.3-ppm respectively. The third line to the south, over its 700 meter length averaged 94-ppm copper, 20-ppb gold and 3.4-ppm molybdenum. Breccias occur over 250 meters at its eastern end. A fourth line to the south had only two samples taken as weather conditions brought exploration to a halt. These were near the edge of the depression and were strongly anomalous, averaging 500-ppm copper and 285-ppb gold. |
||