Hot Chili Managing Director, Christian Easterday has his ears pinned back, his cap on backwards and the drill rigs growling at his rapidly growing Cortadera copper-gold porphyry discovery in Chile that could turn out to be anything.
Easterday looks to be well blooded now after drilling a 900m drill hole at Cortadera this week that has been showing mineralised porphyry for 550m from the 350m mark and it is still going.
Easterday said he is looking to drill on in that particular hole to around 1,100m and even at that depth, it is still not certain that the mineralisation will die.
Whilst Easterday is no stranger to uber-long mineralised drill holes at Cortadera, it looks likely that the latest hole may well take its place in the Hot Chili hall of fame of long intersections – depending on how it assays up.
The current hole that looks to be mineralised is a 100m step-out to the south of the largest porphyry at Cortadera known as Cuerpo 3.
One of the best historic intersections in the Cuerpo 3 porphyry returned 750m grading a solid 0.6% copper and 0.2g/t gold from 204m with an exceptional 188m going 0.9% copper and 0.4g/t gold.
Easterday is now planning to poke a swag of holes into Cortadera with deep RC drilling also underway at a site 500m north of the Cuerpo 3 porphyry to test its northern extension known as the ‘Cuerpo 3 North’ target. That hole that is currently at about 320m, is testing a strong geophysical anomaly located at depth along the north-south strike of the geological dykes that control the location of the Cuerpo 3 porphyry.
A further five deep RC drill holes are also about to be ploughed into the Cuerpo 3 North target ahead of some planned diamond drilling extensions at certain holes.
Hot Chili’s story has been advancing almost in military fashion lately with the original “huge” Productora project that is about 20km’s from Cortadera now looking like a pale cousin compared to Cortadera. If nothing else, Productora will certainly add mine life and boost the ultimate project NPV but the story is now sharply focussed on Cortadera that has been throwing up fantastically long mineralised drill intersections almost at will.
These types of massive porphyrys don’t tend to last long in small cap hands and Easterday’s challenge now is to add enough value with the drill rig to get the project to a stage that will allow him to tuck his thumbs into his belt and play hard ball when a suiter comes knocking – and that is looking increasingly likely.
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By Matt Birney
