The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
First winter hole cuts veins reminiscent of Cleary Hill Mine North of 60 Mining News – May 8, 2020
Before being suspended in response to COVID-19, the winter drill program at Golden Summit tapped gold grades as high as 169.5 g/t gold nearly 600 meters southwest of the historic Cleary Hill Mine.
Core from a 2018 hole drilled at Shorty Creek that cut 442.4 meters averaging 0.22% copper, 0.13 g/t gold, 4.03 g/t silver and 0.02% tungsten. A US$2 million exploration program funded by South32 is slated for Shorty Creek this year.
Freegold Ventures Ltd. April 6 announced that winter drilling at Golden Summit has encountered what appears to be an extension of the vein system that fed ore to the historic Cleary Hill Mine, which produced 281,000 ounces of gold from ore averaging 1.3 oz per ton before the operation was shuttered during World War II.
The first hole of the winter program, GSDL2001, cut 188 meters averaging 3.69 grams per metric ton gold from a depth of 360 meters. The bottom 20 meters of this hole, which averaged 9.87 g/t gold, indicates some of the highest-grade gold encountered in this hole drilled nearly 600 meters southwest of the Cleary Hill Mine workings.
Reminiscent of the high-grade veins that fed the historic mine, GSDL2001 also cut two meters averaging 169.5 g/t (4.9 oz/t) gold from a depth of 365.2 meters.
GSDL2002, drilled 150 meters east of GSDL2001, cut nine meters of 2.4 g/t gold from a depth of 156 meters. This hole had just began encountering the targeted Cleary vein system when Freegold decided to suspend drilling at Golden Summit in response to COVID-19.
"Management is tremendously excited with these results," said Freegold Ventures President Kristina Walcott. "The drill program is testing our interpretation that the high-grade CVS extends to the west and these results are confirming our interpretation."
This is an area of limited drilling on the northwest edge of the Dolphin intrusive, which hosts a bulk tonnage resource at Golden Summit.
According to a 2016 calculation, Golden Summit hosts 61.5 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 0.69 g/t ton (1.36 million ounces) gold; and 71.5 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.69 g/t (1.58 million oz) gold.
The higher-grade gold being tapped in the Cleary Hill vein system has the potential to bolster the overall resource grade at Golden Summit, a highway accessible project about 25 miles north of Fairbanks and adjacent to Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox Mine property.
Freegold is evaluating opportunities to safely resume its field activities in Alaska. Resumption of drilling at Golden Summit is expected to include continuation of GSDL2002, as well as other holes targeting extensions of the Cleary Hill veins.
In addition to Golden Summit, Freegold is exploring Shorty Creek, a porphyry copper-gold project about 75 miles northwest of Fairbanks. Last year, South32 Ltd. entered into an option agreement to acquire 70% interest in Shorty Creek for US$30 million, less any money the Australia-based major invested 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. Last year South32 invested US$2.3 million in exploration at Shorty Creek and has budgeted a minimum of US$2 million to further explore the copper-gold-silver-tungsten project this year.
It is currently unclear whether COVID-19 concerns will affect the timing or scope of the 2020 program at Shorty Creek.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article stated that the 188-meter drill intercept in hole GSDL2001 was from a depth of 366 meters, the article has been corrected with the actual depth of 360 meters.
Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.
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