Announcement • Jul 10
Western Star Resources Inc Reports Phase 1 Soil Sampling Results and Expands Exploration Program at Rowland Tungsten Property Western Star Resources Inc. just delivered one at its past-producing Rowland Tungsten Property in Elko County, Nevada. A first-pass soil survey — by the company's account, the first ever completed by a public company at Rowland — returned a peak of 1,425 parts per million (ppm) tungsten trioxide (WO3) in soil and, crucially, lined those anomalies up with the geological contacts the company's drone-borne magnetics had already mapped. Phase 1 soil geochemistry at Rowland returned a peak of 1,425 ppm WO3, with a standout result of 0.14% WO3 (1,130 ppm W) directly over a recently re-discovered zone of historical workings. Soils over the main historical workings (Rowland Main) returned up to 517 ppm and 504 ppm WO3, independently confirming the known mineralised zone. The strongest soil anomalies sit on magnetic gradients — the lithological and structural contacts imaged by Western Star's UAV magnetic survey — tightening the targeting model. Tungsten travels with a coherent polymetallic skarn signature: copper up to 1,185 ppm, molybdenum up to 35 ppm, bismuth up to 5.2 ppm and beryllium up to 4.56 ppm. With the low-cost soil vector validated over both target areas, an expanded multi-stage soil campaign begins imminently to grow the zones toward drill-target definition. The headline figure is a peak of 1,425 ppm WO3 in soil, recorded at sample X-3 in the central zone. Western Star determined the background tungsten level across the grid to be roughly 2 ppm WO3, which means the peak sample runs hundreds of times above the local baseline. Tungsten is strongly and discretely anomalous rather than smeared across the survey — the signal is sharp, not noise. The company frames the same central-zone result a second way, as 0.14% WO3 (1,130 ppm W), because it sits directly over a recently re-discovered zone of historical workings. The Phase 1 grid comprised 93 soil samples at nominal 25-metre spacing over the central Rowland workings corridor, with multiple samples exceeding 10 ppm, five above 50 ppm and three above 100 ppm W — a distribution that points to a real system rather than a one-off spike. Alongside the central-zone peak, soils overlying the Rowland Main historical workings to the south returned up to 517 ppm and 504 ppm WO3 — a strong, separate cluster over a second area of known mineralisation. The Phase 1 program therefore did two useful things at once: it lit up new ground in the central zone and it independently re-confirmed the main historical workings using an entirely fresh dataset. Because the soils respond strongly over both areas of known mineralisation, Western Star can say with real confidence that soil geochemistry reliably highlights the prospective skarn-contact zones at Rowland. Rowland is interpreted as a reduced tungsten (W-Cu-Mo-Bi) skarn — a deposit type in which tungsten-bearing fluids exsolved from a Cretaceous granite reacted with Ordovician–Cambrian limestone (unit OCtd) to deposit scheelite-bearing skarn at and near the intrusive contact. The Phase 1 soils behaved exactly as the model predicts: they sit directly on the carbonate host, and the strongest anomalies fall on magnetic gradients — the geological and structural contacts imaged by the company's UAV magnetic survey. The company reads the anomalous samples as reflecting a skarn system developed along a carbonate–intrusive contact with potentially mineralised NE-SW structures, over an area roughly one kilometre across. Copper, molybdenum, bismuth and beryllium are elevated in the very same samples that carry the tungsten, confirming a coherent polymetallic signature rather than a scatter of unrelated hits. Phase 1 at Rowland was designed as an orientation program — a first look to make sure the main phase of exploration is correctly aimed — and on that measure it did its job and then some. Two large target areas have emerged, the skarn model and the geophysics agree, and the low-cost soil vector has proven itself over known mineralisation. Western Star is now mobilising an expanded, multi-stage soil campaign to trace the prospective skarn contacts outward from the known workings and the mineralisation-controlling faults, integrating the results with its magnetics and field mapping to generate and rank drill targets for a maiden program at Rowland. 
