Cristel is located in the San Rafael district of southern Peru, which hosts one of the largest operating tin mines in the world. Cristel is part of Colt Silver’s acquire and hold strategy.
Cristel is a Cu-Sn-Ag project in Peru’s San Rafael mining district, located ~40 km north of Minsur’s San Rafael tin-copper mine. Initial stakiing was conducted to cover a 2 × 2 km colour anomaly within a prolific metallogenic belt. Historic drilling by aother operatot tested four geophysical targets but was halted due to budget constraints.
The anomaly features extensive argillic and advanced argillic alteration, hydrothermal breccias and visible copper-silver oxide mineralization. Limited 2022 rock-chip sampling returned values of up to 4.43% Cu, 0.61 g/t Au and 24.7 g/t Ag, highlighting the potential of the system.
Colt Silver has not conducted any drilling on the Cristel claims. In 2025, two site visits were completed with plans to complete a systematic rock chip sampling and detailed mapping to better define the alteration areas and determine the extent of the geochemical anomaly.
Select results from sampling in 2022 and 2025 are summarized below:
Figure 1 – Location of chip & channel samples at the Cristel Project
Cristel is underlain by Ordovician Sandia Formation metasediments intruded by intermediate granitic rocks. Mineralization is interpreted as a magmatic-hydrothermal system, with quartz-sulfide veins, breccias and silicified rocks. Oxidized sulfides form prominent iron-manganese gossans and secondary copper minerals, creating the project’s distinctive colour anomaly. Two vein systems have been identified, with widths of up to 6 m in the north and 15 m in the south.
Historical workings target veins and gossans. In 2008, Horizonte drilled four of 18 planned holes totaling 2,227 m, intersecting narrow zones of 0.5–1% Cu. The holes were drilled away from Colt Silver’s most recently sampled areas.
