Ashburton Ventures Inc. June 2 said it has acquired an option, from Royal Pretoria Gold Ltd., to earn a 100 percent interest in the Bullion Hills gold property located about 240 kilometers, or 150 miles, by road northeast of Fairbanks, Alaska. The terms of the deal call for cumulative cash payments totaling US$245,000, 220,000 common shares of Ashburton and a 2.5 percent net smelter royalty, which can be bought down by 1 percent for US$1 million.
The 470-hectare, or 1,162-acre, property is located in the historic Circle Mining District, which has produced over 1 million ounces of placer gold since its discovery in 1893. The Bullion Hills property is drained by Ketchum, Portage and Bottom Dollar creeks, all of which have had recorded historical placer gold production.
Ashburton said Bullion Hills is a proximal, intrusion-related gold property. The mid-Cretaceous Tombstone Suite granite intrudes Paleozoic Yukon-Tanana Terrane metasediments. Gold mineralization is hosted in low-sulfide quartz veins and quartz veinlet stockworks in faults and shear zones both within the granite and the metasediments.
The junior compares the geology at Bullion Hills to the recent lode gold discovery made by Underworld Resources at its White Gold project in the Yukon Territory.
Ashburton Ventures plans to begin exploration at Bullion Hills with a 620-meter phase-1 core drill program. The drilling, which is expected to begin in mid-June, will be performed by Altar Drilling Inc.
Drill targets have been selected based on historic surface sampling geochemical results. The primary target is designed to test the two-bit granitic pluton that is exposed on the property. Chip sampling across 11 meters of exposed bedrock returned 1.05 grams per ton gold, including three meters of 2.54 g/t gold. Coarse visible gold can be panned from pulverized quartz veinlets within the granite intrusion and from coarse residual soil lying directly on top of the intrusion. The secondary targets are high-grade quartz veins and stockworks within the metasediments. Surface samples of float and rubble have returned gold values up to 0.934 ounces per ton.
Ashburton said it believes the potential exists at Bullion Hills for the discovery of either a large-tonnage, intrusion-hosted gold deposit similar to Kinross Gold Corp.’s Fort Knox gold deposit near Fairbanks, or a high-grade vein-type gold deposit similar to Sumitomo Corp.’s Pogo deposit 85 miles, or 137 kilometers, southeast of Fairbanks.
