Cloudbreak Claim
Jackson County, Colorado
Gold, Silver, Copper, Lead, Zinc, Amazonite
LODE, 20.66 acres
$10,000
History
The Cloudbreak Claim is located in the Pearl Mining District, one of Colorado’s least known mining districts located in the extreme northern Park Range near the Wyoming border. The first discovery of mineralization in the Pearl region is unknown but prospectors made many significant discoveries of copper, lead, silver and gold ores in 1899-1900. In 1902 a smelter was built at the new townsite of Pearl to process ore from the nearby Swede, Wolverine and Zirkel Mines. This smelter was twice destroyed by fire before the enterprise was abandoned. The smelter fires, remote location, low copper and silver prices, and litigation amongst mine owners contributed to the near-complete abandonment of the district by 1907.
Geology
Mineralization was discovered at the Cloudbreak property in 1941 and was explored by means of several bulldozer cuts that exposed extremely rich silver-lead ores with some copper, gold and zinc. The mineralization belongs to a class of ore deposit known as Broken Hill-Type or “BHT” deposits. Diamond core drilling outlined an ore body containing 1,111,000 tons of rich zinc ore averaging 8.56 wt% Zn with significant lead, copper, silver and gold worth nearly $300 million at today’s metal prices!
The claim contains a very high-grade ore body exposed on the surface in two of the open cuts that is rich in several metals. Samples collected by previous exploration companies from around the property contained up to 9.49 oz/ton gold, 292.3 oz/ton silver and >25 wt% combined Pb+Cu+Zn.
The Cloudbreak Claim contains a large pile of broken stockpiled silver-lead-copper-gold ore estimated to contain at least 1,000 tons of material. Twenty samples collected at random from this pile by Outwest geologists average 66.33 oz/ton silver, 4.58 wt% lead, 1.11 wt% copper and 0.08 oz/ton gold, worth in excess of $2 million at today’s metal prices. A considerable volume of ore remains in place in the wall of the cuts.
Broken Hill-type ore deposits (BHT’s) constitute giant resources of base metals and silver and are extremely attractive exploration targets. The type example at Broken Hill, Australia is one of the world’s most important mines and contains over 50 million tons of combined lead and zinc metal in addition to 1.33 billion ounces of silver! Another large BHT at Cannington, Australia contains over 800 million ounces of silver and for a time in the mid-2000’s was producing over 40 million ounces of silver per year, making it the world’s largest silver mine. Based on the silver grades alone, Cloudbreak represents a further example of a significant silver-rich BHT deposit.
Gemstone Potential
BHT ores have a unique geochemical association that produces diverse associated rock types that include highly garnetiferous schists and amazonite schists. Spectacular outcrops of garnet-bearing schist comprised of >50% pink garnet in crystals up to 1 cm diameter are present across the claim and translucent neon green amazonite crystals make up as much as 30% of the schist in places. This amazonite is unlike the famous crystals found in the Pikes Peak region in central Colorado in association with smokey quartz, which is not gem quality. Some small amazonite crystals at Cloudbreak have near-transparent sections that could be faceted or cut into attractive cabochons. A few amazonite crystals collected by Outwest were tumbled, making attractive mineral specimens.
