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Location
Twenty Placer Claims (3,200 acres) have been located within Mud Lake Basin. The claim block is situated about 10 miles southeast of Tonopah, Nevada. The basin is accessible by non-maintained roads passable by two-wheel drive vehicles. Mud Lake occupies a depression in the southern end of Ralston Valley. The basin is approximately 5 miles wide and 5 miles long and has a surface area of about 25 square miles. The playa is bounded by the Cactus Range and Monitor Hills to the east, Goldfields, Nevada to the south, Alkali Valley to the west, and Ralston Valley to the north.
Geological History
Mud Lake occurs in a asymmetric, undrained basin that is filled with interbedded fine-grained sediments with halite, some volcanic ash layers, and some tuffs. The brine that saturates the sediments consists of concentrated sodium chloride solution containing potassium and minor amounts of magnesium and calcium. The main source of lithium is the volcanic ash that extends across the region. The source of the lithium in the Mud Lake Basin is believed to be a hydrothermal source that was directly evolved from magma or magmatic heat. Chemical weathering and leaching of the lithium rich volcanic rocks is believed to be a secondary source of lithium in the brines of the Mud Lake basin deposit. The transport of lithium would require a hydrothermal fluid, surface water, or meteoric groundwater. The Mud Lake Basin lithium deposit occurs in the brines at depths of a few hundred meters in the valley-filled sediments and volcanic units, which include clays, sands, beds of halite and gypsum and tuffs. The near surface sediments contain variable amounts of kaolinite, illite, halite, calcite, dolomite, gypsum, quartz, feldspar, zeolite, and smectite.
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