The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Mining Explorers 2023 - January 18, 2024
Freegold Ventures drilled 34 holes in the Dolphin-Cleary Hill deposit area of the Golden Summit property during 2023.
More than 83,000 meters of drilling carried out over three years at Freegold Ventures Ltd.'s Golden Summit project successfully connected the Dolphin intrusion and Cleary Hill prospect into a single deposit with more than 20 million ounces of gold in all categories.
This now truly world-class gold deposit happens to lie along a paved highway about 25 miles north of Fairbanks, and on the northern boundary of Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox Mine.
The new resources calculated for Golden Summit at the beginning of 2023 is divided into three parts – main open-pit mineable, surface oxide, and underground.
The main open-pit mineable portion includes 407.5 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 0.92 grams per metric ton (12 million oz) gold and 282.3 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.85 g/t (7.7 million oz) gold.
This is a massive increase over the 61.5 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 0.69 g/t (1.36 million oz) gold, plus 71.5 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.69 g/t (1.58 million oz) gold in the previous calculation.
In addition, Golden Summit now hosts 52 million metric tons of open-pit mineable oxide indicated resource averaging 0.39 g/t (657,000 oz) gold and 18.2 metric tons inferred resource averaging 0.47 g/t (272,000 oz) gold; plus 1.6 million metric tons of underground indicated resource averaging 1.42 g/t (73,000 oz) gold and 15.8 million metric tons of underground indicated resource averaging 1.21 g/t (614,000 oz) gold.
With a preliminary economic assessment based on this world-class resource in the works, Freegold's 2023 drill program focused largely on the northwest boundary of Dolphin zone, where mineralization trending toward the surface area could help reduce the strip ratio for a future open pit mine, and a resource expansion area that extends 1,500 meters west of the deposit.
Highlights from the 2023 resource upgrade and expansion drilling include:
• 56.7 meters averaging 1.02 g/t gold in hole GS2301 (Northwest).
• 256 meters averaging 1.01 g/t gold in GS2306 (Infill).
• 44.7 meters averaging 1.13 g/t gold in GS2309 (West).
• 21.4 meters averaging 1.67 g/t gold in GS2310 (North).
• 113.3 meters averaging 5.42 g/t gold in GS2314 (West).
• 164.3 meters averaging 1.05 g/t gold in GS2318(Northwest).
In October, Freegold reported that its drilling has encountered signs of significant gold mineralization in the Tolovana Vein Swarm area west of Dolphin and at the Saddle prospect around 2.5 miles to the east of the resource.
Multiple occurrences of visible gold were observed in core from GS2335, a hole drilled in the Tolovana Vein Swarm, and about 250 meters southwest of the 113 meters of 5.42 g/t gold cut in hole GS2314.
Freegold also reports visible gold in core from drilling at Saddle.
Prior to this discovery drilling, which involved a fence of seven widely spaced holes, Freegold had a 332-line-kilometer MobileMT geophysical survey flown to help refine drill targets to assess historically identified veins at Saddle.
Even before assays came back from the lab, Freegold was excited about what it sees at Saddle.
"Based on visual inspections it is apparent that additional drilling is warranted in the Saddle Zone," the company penned in its Oct. 23 update.
In addition to Golden Summit, Freegold's portfolio includes Shorty Creek, an earlier-stage exploration project that lies alongside the paved Elliot Highway about 75 miles northwest of Fairbanks with the potential to host large porphyry-style deposits enriched with copper, gold, silver, tungsten, and cobalt.
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.
Reader Comments(0)