Fire delayed Shorty Creek drilling begins

Freegold Ventures Ltd. announced the start of a roughly 2,000-meter drill program at Shorty Creek, a porphyry gold-copper project about 75 miles northwest of Fairbanks.

This drilling is being funded by a wholly owned subsidiary of South32 Ltd., which entered into an option agreement with Freegold Ventures to acquire 70 percent interest in Shorty Creek for US$30 million, less any money the Australia-based major invests in exploring the promising copper-gold-silver-tungsten deposits that have been identified across the property.

To keep the option in good standing, South32 has agreed to fund up to US$10 million on exploration over a four-year span, including a roughly US$2.3 million program aimed at investigating the Shorty Creek potential in 2019.

The 2019 program began with induced polarization surveys, as well as geochemical surveys that got underway in May.

A severe wildfire in the Shorty Creek area, however, delayed the anticipated mid-July start to drilling. The 2019 drilling is targeting further expansion of Hill 1835, the most advanced Shorty Creek target, and further testing of Hill 1710, a very large porphyry target about 2,000 meters to the northwest.

Freegold first drilled the Hill 1835 target during an inaugural drill program at Shorty Creek in 2015.

One of the porphyry confirmation holes at Hill 1835, SC 15-03, cut 91 meters grading 0.55 percent copper, 0.14 grams per metric ton gold and 7.02 g/t silver.

Overall, Freegold has drilled 12 holes at Hill 1835, outlining a 750- by 300-meter area of porphyry copper-gold-silver-tungsten mineralization, which represents a small portion of the larger magnetic and geochemical anomaly found there.

This includes two holes drilled last year:

• SC 18-01 – drilled to a depth of 555.2 meters and terminated in a significant fault zone – cut 442.2 meters of 0.24 percent copper, 0.09 g/t gold, 4.74 g/t silver and 0.02 percent tungsten trioxide; and

• SC 18-02 – drilled 175 meters southeast of 18-01 and to a depth of 610.85 meters, cut 442.4 meters of 0.22 percent copper, 0.13 g/t gold, 4.03 g/t silver and 0.02 percent tungsten trioxide.

Strong magnetic and geochemical anomalies across Shorty Creek indicate Hill 1835 is not the only, and potentially not the largest, copper-gold-silver-tungsten porphyry identified across the roughly 39-square-mile (100 square kilometers) road accessible Shorty Creek property.

Hill 1710, a very large porphyry target about 2,000 meters northwest of Hill 1835, is centered on a 6,000-meter-long magnetic anomaly that coincides with a large copper and molybdenum geochemical anomaly.

Four widely spaced holes drilled at Hill 1710 in 2016 tested 1,600 meters of this magnetic high. Each hole intersected porphyry style mineralization, with copper grades increasing to the northeast. The Hill 1710 magnetic anomaly extends a further 2,500 meters northeast of the 2016 drilling.

Other exploration targets at Shorty Creek include Quarry, an interesting undrilled area about 3,000 meters north of Hill 1835 and at the northeast end of a separate 11,000-meter-long magnetic high feature. Samples of oxidized porphyritic rock with stockwork veining collected from Quarry contained as much as 500 parts per million copper.

–SHANE LASLEY