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Mining Explorers 2011: Corvus reunites Tower Hill team Pontius, Myers take helm of new junior seeking gold in Alaska, Nevada Shane Lasley Mining News
With a 20-million-ounce gold discovery embellishing their résumés, International Tower Hill Mines Ltd. co-founders Jeff Pontius and Russell Myers have taken the helm of Corvus Gold Inc., a junior formed in 2010 to explore Tower Hill’s non-Livengood assets.
During the initial year after the spin-out, Pontius continued to guide Tower Hill and its Livengood project into the transition from advanced exploration to early development and Myers turned his attention to getting Corvus off the ground. In July, Pontius relinquished his role as CEO of Tower Hill to do what he most enjoys – finding world-class deposits.
“My real day-to-day focus will be on taking Corvus forward and hopefully building the next ITH (International Tower Hill) out of Corvus,” Pontius told Mining News.
Corvus’ portfolio – the Terra, Chisna, LMS and West Pogo projects in Alaska and the North Bullfrog property in Nevada – provides the junior with an array of gold and copper-gold properties from early stage to near development. This assortment will help the company meet its mandate to become a leading exploration and development company and ultimately develop into a non-operating gold producer with significant carried interest and royalty exposure.
As the Tower Hill protégé advances its current exploration assets, it is on the lookout for quality projects to add to the collection.
“The way forward for Corvus is finding good prospects, joint venturing them or discovering them ourselves. And we are very actively evaluating projects in Alaska, Nevada and other places to see if we can find the right upscale potential,” Corvus President Myers said.
Near term royalty The Terra gold project located in the Kahiltna Terrane of Southwest Alaska has the potential to provide a near-term royalty stream for Corvus. WestMountain Index Advisor, Inc., which has an option to earn up to an 80 percent interest in the high-grade gold property, is targeting the startup of a small-scale operation by 2012.
Greg Schifrin, a geologist with 28 years of mineral exploration experience, is WestMountain’s president and CEO and James Baughman, with a quarter century of experience in mineral exploration and mine development experience, is the company’s COO.
The ore will be mined from the Ben Vein, a one-meter thick high-grade vein-system that averages about 19.8 grams of gold per metric ton over a strike of at least 600 meters.
Past drilling by Tower Hill defined an inferred resource of 428,000 metric tons averaging 12.20 g/t gold (168,000 contained ounces) and 23.11 g/t silver (318,000 contained ounces) at a cutoff of 5 g/t gold.
Metallurgical studies reveal that a simple gravity circuit will recover more than 80 percent of this gold.
In 2011, WestMountain began bulk sampling the Ben Vein which includes the construction of a pilot mill for small-scale gold production.
Corvus will collect a sliding-scale net smelter return royalty of between 0.5 percent and 5 percent, dependant upon the gold price, on all precious metal production from the property and a 1 percent NSR royalty on all base metal production.
In addition to its mining efforts, WestMountain completed a 594-meter drill program that extended the strike of Ben Vein.
Past drilling by Tower Hill had traced the high-grade gold for some 400 meters laterally and to a depth of about 350 meters. WestMountain’s 2011 drill program has intersected the Ben Vein a further 200 meters to the north. Additionally, two holes cut a similar parallel structure in the hangingwall over a strike of 100 meters.
Historical holes which cut 0.6 meters of 43.20 grams per metric ton gold at 323 meters depth and 1.99 meters of 13.9 g/t gold at 324.61 meters depth indicate the potential of expanding the Ben Vein to depth.
“We are excited that the drilling has identified the extension of the Ben Vein zone. This was the goal for this season’s drilling and makes the case for the Ben Vein having the potential to hold one million ounces of gold,” said Schifrin.
Golden Range of targets Corvus’ Chisna Project blankets some 914 square kilometers (353 square miles) of porphyry copper-gold-prospective land along the southern slopes of the Alaska Range.
To gain a better understanding of this extensive land package project partner Ocean Park Ventures Corp. funded a C$6.2 million exploration program in 2010.
Although the 5,000-meter drill program carried out in 2010 failed to tap the economically viable mineralization targeted, a reconnaissance team led by Nadia Caira, an Ocean Park geologist with more than 28 years of porphyry copper-gold exploration experience, turned up a number of other promising targets across the 65-kilometer (40-mile) long belt of gold and copper mineralization at Chisna.
Golden Range, a 9-kilometer (5.6-mile) long iron-carbonate zone with highly anomalous gold in bedrock and soils, is a target Ocean Park found particularly interesting.
The 2010 reconnaissance program also turned up the Southwest Grubstake prospect, a gold-rich base metal vein system that stretches for at least 600 meters. The average grade of 19 rock samples taken from in-place boulder trains and outcrop here averaged 7.38 g/t gold, 8.82 g/t silver, 0.91 percent lead and 0.16 percent zinc.
Though Southwest Grubstake and numerous other prospects across the vast Chisna land-package are promising targets for future investigations, Ocean Park focused its 2011 exploration on Golden Range.
To further refine targets for a 5,000-meter drill program that started in August, Ocean Park deployed a technical team to conduct a detailed geological and geochemical survey of Golden Range.
“What we have had the geologists on the project do is identify some of the most prospective intersections and other features that warrant the first phase of the drilling,” Ocean Park Vice President of Exploration Chris Taylor told Mining News.
By September the company had assay results from 897 grab and chip samples taken from an eight-square-kilometer (three-square-mile) area at Golden Range. These assays have ranged from below detection limits to 79.8 g/t gold, with an average of 1.37 g/t gold.
With this initial work, Ocean Park identified seven zones to test with this year’s 17-hole program.
First Star drills LMS West Pogo and LMS, two additional Alaska projects in the Corvus prospectus, are joint ventured to First Star Resources Inc. Both properties lie in the vicinity of Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. Ltd.’s Pogo Mine, a high-grade underground gold producer east of Fairbanks.
LMS, an early stage gold project located about 40 kilometers (25 miles) southwest of Pogo, is the primary focus of First Star’s 2011 exploration efforts.
Expanding the Camp Zone, an area of narrow high-grade gold veins enveloped by lower grade graphitic quartzite breccias, was the target of some 5,000 meters of drilling carried out by the junior in 2011.
First Star started its phase-1 drilling in March. Only one of the planned two holes of this early-season program was completed.
Hole LM-11-40 – the phase-1 hole that reached targeted depth – cut 21.2 meters grading 5.8 g/t gold and 12.6 g/t silver in the graphitic quartzite breccia, including 5.2 meters averaging 21.4 g/t gold and 33.5 g/t silver.
First Star said an additional seven holes drilled during the phase-2 of the program successfully encountered the graphitic quartzite breccias of the Camp zone, but assay results were pending at the time of this report. A follow-up drill program that started in September is extending into the winter.
Based upon the results of the drilling, First Star plans to complete a resource estimate in 2012.
PEA at Bullfrog While partners are funding exploration on its Alaska properties, Corvus is advancing the North Bullfrog gold project on its own.
Located about 14 kilometer (9 miles) north of Barrick Gold Corp.’s multimillion-ounce Bullfrog gold mine in Nevada, North Bullfrog hosts an indicated resource of 2.02Mt grading of 0.88 g/t gold and 0.45 g/t silver and an inferred resource of 0.95 Mt grading 0.78 g/t gold and 0.36 g/t silver, both at a cutoff grade of 0.5 g/t gold.
Corvus plans to complete an updated resource in the third quarter of 2011 followed by a preliminary economic assessment focused on a potential conventional open pit and run-of-mine heap leach mining operation.
Pontius said that while advancing Bullfrog and the other projects in its portfolio, Corvus will continue to seek out new gold projects in under-appreciated regions of North America, but did not divulge any details.
If Livengood is any indication, Pontius and Myers will not waste any time in their search for another globally significant gold deposit.
“I am excited to be able to go and put more time and effort into Corvus and hopefully be able to do this again,” Pontius said.
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