MINING NEWS: High-grade assays continue at Freegold’s Golden Summit project

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Vancouver, B.C.-based Freegold Ventures Ltd. April 24 posted results from drilling in Fence 6 North at its Golden Summit Project about 20 miles north of Fairbanks. The work is a continuation of a 40,000-foot phase 2 drill program with close-spaced shallow holes.

Freegold said Fence 6 North, the westernmost fence drilled on the property, intersected gold mineralization similar to that encountered in fences drilled to the east. The assay results showed three-foot intervals of gold grading 14.4 grams per metric ton, 21.8 g/t, and 24.2 g/t. The most impressive intersect was in hole 757, where drillers encountered a six-foot interval of 54.4 g/t gold, which includes a three-foot interval of 60.3 g/t gold.

Drill fences are a series of drill-holes across a mineralized zone, designed to intersect and define the trend of mineralization.

The 46 holes drilled in Fence 6 North are a 2,300-foot step-out to the west of Fence 5, which was the limit of the previously identified package of multiple, parallel-vein swarms and shear zones tested in the Cleary Hill area last fall. Fence 6 North runs about 850 feet in a north-south direction. The average spacing of the holes is 20 feet and has been reduced to 10 feet in areas of extreme alteration, which has been indicative of higher-grade gold mineralization, Freegold said.

Fence 6 North drilling has now extended this broad area of gold mineralization in the Cleary Hill area to more than 5,000 feet in length, and mineralization continues to remain open along strike in both directions and at depth.  Average assay results from all 1,154 three-foot intervals over the 850-foot width of holes in Fence 6 North is 0.52 g/t gold, which compares favorably with the current, reported reserve grade of the nearby Fort Knox mine of 0.53 g/t gold. 

Fences 17 North and 20 have been drilled in the 2,300-foot gap between Fence 5 and Fence 6 North and Freegold said assay results are pending. The company said it has completed 26 holes of a deeper core drilling program at Golden Summit. Three of the deeper holes drilled are in the Fence 6 North area. The remaining 23 holes were drilled in the Fence 1 and Beistline areas.

“Through our combination of trenching, shallow and deep drilling, and bulk sampling, we are starting to develop an excellent understanding of the gold mineralization in this broad area, and are very encouraged at the successful results and the continuity that our step-out work continues to demonstrate,” Freegold President and CEO Steve Manz, said in a statement.

— Shane Lasley