The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 64
In late August, I was forced to send an email to Curt Freeman, owner of the Fairbanks-based Avalon Development, with the subject line, "Smoke hinders travel." Throughout the prior week, I could not fly from my remote home 60 miles east to Fairbanks, to attend Freeman's Aug. 20 presentation as a consultant on the Golden Summit project, being explored by Freegold Ventures and its new joint venture partner, Meridian Gold. I made plans to fly to Fairbanks on Aug. 16, well in advance of the presentation and following day's tour...
Rich Hughes, a former project manager at the Nolan Creek mine in northern Alaska, has been selected by the state of Alaska to serve as the development specialist for mining in Fairbanks. Hughes started the job July 1, working in the Office of Economic Development, Mining, a part of the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development. "I've been playing catch-up, because no one has been in the position since early April," he said. Rich Harris held the minerals development specialist position, beginning last...
Late summer rains and cooler temperatures, usually the norm for Interior Alaska, did not materialize this year, allowing wildlands fires to continue burning and spreading throughout the region in August. According to state and federal fire reports posted Sept. 3, a total of 6,378,692 acres of land in Alaska has burned during this summer's wildlands fires, reportedly the most ever in a single season. Statewide, 648 fires were reported and more than 80 fires remain active, even in early September when fire crews typically...
Vancouver, British Columbia-based War Eagle Mining Co. Inc. has partnered with Strategic Metals Ltd. to drill for the first time the Antimony Mountain copper-silver-gold porphyry prospect, 65 kilometers (40 miles) northeast of Dawson City, Yukon Territory. Reconnaissance field work started in late June, with core drilling beginning in August. A total of 1,000 meters (3,275 feet) is planned for this year's five-hole program, according to an Aug. 26 press release. "This summer's work program budget is $400,000, of which roughly...
Seattle-based Nevada Star Resource Corp. in mid-August began a 2,000 meter (6,561-foot) reverse circulation drilling program on the northern portion of the MAN nickel, copper and PGE property in central Alaska. It's the latest development in an active, million-dollar plus summer field season for the 271-square mile MAN property on the southern flank of the Alaska Range near the Richardson Highway community of Paxson. Nevada Star is completing about $550,000 worth of exploration work on the northern part of the property this s...
This summer's exploration, engineering and environmental baseline data work at the Pebble prospect in southwest Alaska is progressing "exceptionally well," according to a spokesman for the deposit's developer, Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. Northern Dynasty, a Hunter Dickinson-managed mine-development company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, is on track to spend $25 million (C$33.5 million) this year on the Pebble project, a gold-copper-molybdenum deposit several miles north of Lake Iliamna, a little more than 200 miles...
An experienced geologist in Alaska himself, Charles Caldwell "Chuck" Hawley has compiled a well-documented and compelling story about one of Alaska's pioneer prospectors and mining engineers, Wesley Earl Dunkle. An economic geologist who prospected many mineral occurrences and developed several mines in Alaska in the early to mid-1900s, Dunkle's career and life story weave together many interesting aspects about the history of the Last Frontier. Alaska historians, explorers, aviators, prospectors and miners will find this boo...
One of six new 190-ton Caterpillar haul trucks hit the dirt at the open pit Fort Knox gold mine near Fairbanks, Alaska, on Sept. 1, part of a $15 million-plus capital investment in the mine's dirt-moving fleet this year. Fairbanks Gold Mining Inc., a subsidiary of Toronto-based Kinross Gold, has gone on a $24 million-plus equipment shopping spree this year and last, increasing capacity of the Fort Knox dirt-moving fleet by 30 percent each year. The new equipment additions will help mine crews remove 55 million tons of waste r...
NovaGold Resources appears to have hit another prospecting grand slam one year after optioning the Galore Creek project in a remote section of northwestern British Columbia. The Vancouver, British Columbia-based junior in August released "exceptional" drill results, the first from this summer's planned 20,000-meter (60,000-foot) program, and an economically positive scoping study for developing the large gold-silver-copper deposit as an open-pit mine. Four drill rigs were working on the property in late July, and a fifth was...
Vancouver, British Columbia-based Silverado Gold Mines Ltd. has been auctioning gold nuggets mined from its northern Alaska gold mine on eBay, an on-line auction site. So far, the company has auctioned five nuggets and it began the sixth on-line auction for an 8.65 troy ounce nugget Aug. 23. The nuggets have been mined from the Nolan Creek mine, just west of the historic mining community of Wiseman, roughly 280 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska. Some of the gold nuggets sold have been hosted in white quartz. Gold nuggets from...
The Red Dog zinc and lead mine in remote northwest Alaska appears to be the victim of another misleading environmental report - this time, one causing some residents in neighboring villages alarm about the quality of berries and greens gathered as food sources. The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services, Division of Public Health, Section of Epidemiology, recently issued a report reassuring local residents in northwest Alaska about the safety of naturally growing subsistence food sources in the region. State...
After years of contentious debate, lawsuits and sporadic negotiations, the two major players involved in the Healy Clean Coal Project, an experimental coal-fired power plant built with $300 million in state and federal funds and shuttered since 2000, have terminated their relationship. During a July 23 meeting in Anchorage involving the project's players as well as state politicians and Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski, power plant owner Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority formally announced that the state agency...
MAX Resource Corp. recently completed its first phase of core drilling on its new Interior Alaska property, the Gold Hill project about 10 miles off the Denali Highway. In early July, drilling crews and geological consultants from Alaska Earth Sciences completed 1,400 feet of core drilling, drilling seven holes each to a depth of about 200 feet, according to Clancy Wendt, vice president of exploration for MAX Resource. Now, MAX Resource hopes to initiate a second phase of core drilling this year, although that work depends...
Heavy rains in late July and early August have dampened the number of wildlands fires that burned through Interior and the eastern part of Alaska, adversely affecting placer miners and metals prospectors attempting to complete field work this summer. Large fires in the eastern Interior, covering the Fortymile mining district, continue to smolder and creep, according to the Aug. 2 report from the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center, which is monitoring about 100 active fires in the state. So far, 520 fires in Alaska have...
Teryl Resources Corp. continues to prospect on ground nearby the Fort Knox mine northeast of Fairbanks, Alaska, this time drilling on some placer claims with historical gold occurrences just downstream from the mine's fresh water dam. Reverse circulation drilling has started on 25 placer drill holes, vertical eight-inch diameter holes on two lines, according to the company's Aug. 4 press release. Each line will contain 10 to 15 drill holes, spaced 50 to 200 feet apart and from 45 to 75 feet deep, penetrating bedrock by up to...
Freegold Ventures has some recently acquired high-grade rock samples taken in July from a new portion of the Golden Summit project northeast of Fairbanks, Alaska, to show off during a planned tour and investor presentation in mid August. The Vancouver, British Columbia, junior, which has prospected Golden Summit for more than a decade, has put together a $740,000 exploration program for the property with new partner, Meridian Gold. This year, the companies have flown airborne geophysics over the 18,000-acre property, drilled...
Long-time Alaska prospector Freegold Ventures has ventured across the border into the Yukon Territory, optioning a gold property west of Ross River with a previously drilled, 221,000 ounce gold and 835,000 ounce silver resource. In a July 14 press release, Freegold Ventures said it signed an option agreement to earn a 100 percent interest in the Grew Creek Gold property, 35 kilometers (21.7 miles) west of the historical mining town of Ross River in the southeastern part of the Yukon Territory. The Vancouver, British...
Developers hoping to restart production at the underground, shuttered Nixon Fork gold-copper mine in central Alaska announced more high-grade drilling results from an underground drilling program this summer. The best intercept from new drilling results measured 4.6 meters at 162.5 grams of gold per ton of rock, or 15 feet at 5.22 ounces of gold per ton of rock. Other intercepts ranged from 0.94 ounces to 1.6 ounces of gold per ton of rock. Drilling work at the C-3300 Chute Zone, one of three being tested by underground drill...
Usibelli Coal Mine Inc., Alaska's only commercial coal producer, will send a shipment of its Healy coal south this fall to be test burned in a power plant operation in Chile, opening the door to a potential new international market. The test supply contract was signed with Glencore Ltd., a leader in the international coal trade business, the company said in a July 20 press release. Usibelli currently ships about 400,000 tons of coal to South Korea for consumption in an electric generation plant. This international customer...
Alaska's largest mine and the world's largest producer of zinc counters its national top ranking by the Environmental Protection Agency for toxic releases, saying that the agency's decision to count naturally occurring metals contained in unmilled rock is misleading. According to the latest Toxic Release Inventory report issued by EPA, Red Dog received the dubious honor of topping the nationwide list, due to the amount of metals considered toxic which naturally occur in rock at the remote mine site. For the 2002 report to...
Golden Summit gave up some of its glory in high-grade gold samples taken during a 4,900-foot drill program completed this spring at the gold property about 25 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska. Partners in the hard-rock property, Freegold Ventures and Meridian Gold, released assay results July 7 from six core holes. The best results included a 10.5-foot interval that assayed 0.449 ounces of gold per ton, and a two-foot interval that measured 0.968 ounces. Gold mineralization was "in the form of fine grained and visible free...
Two Fairbanks-based exploration geologists trapped in a remote camp threatened by a huge wild-lands fire burning out of control in Alaska's Interior were rescued by a helicopter pilot dispatched from the Pogo construction camp. Shortly after their air extraction, the fire burned through the ridge-top camp, destroying eight camp structures and some equipment, Sam Dashevsky, head of Northern Associates Inc., told Mining News on July 8. His Fairbanks-based geological consulting firm was working out of the camp, first set up and...
In the final hot and dry days of June, the Boundary wild lands fire was burning its way across rolling hills in Alaska's Interior three to five miles from the Fort Knox gold mine, although workers couldn't see its proximity due to smoke shrouding the area. Weather conditions changed on July 4, with shifting winds and cooling temperatures causing the fire to shift directions. That gave Fort Knox's general manager John Wild a view of how close the fire came to the mine and mill site, about 25 miles northeast of Fairbanks. "It...
Alaska state and federal regulators overseeing the proposed Kensington Gold Mine project 45 miles northwest of Juneau have released draft permits, public notices and state decisions for public review and comment. Released on June 21 were draft permits for water discharges and wetlands disturbances, released by the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Alaska regulators also released draft decisions for two tideland leases for marine terminal facilities, a temporary road closure, road...
The skies north of Lake Iliamna in southwest Alaska are buzzing with helicopters that are supporting numerous drill crews working on exploration projects at and surrounding the Pebble gold-copper-molybdenum-silver deposit. Leading this summer's activity is Northern Dynasty, a Hunter Dickinson managed mine-development company, which holds options to acquire a 100 percent interest in 36 mineral claims that host the Pebble deposit. Northern Dynasty bumped up this year's spending plan for Pebble to a total of $25 million in U.S....
