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MINING NEWS: Gold in the trenches Freegold releases results from initial trenching, samples on Tolovana property, some contain high-grade gold mineralization Patricia Liles Mining News Editor
Freegold Ventures has some recently acquired high-grade rock samples taken in July from a new portion of the Golden Summit project northeast of Fairbanks, Alaska, to show off during a planned tour and investor presentation in mid August.
The Vancouver, British Columbia, junior, which has prospected Golden Summit for more than a decade, has put together a $740,000 exploration program for the property with new partner, Meridian Gold. This year, the companies have flown airborne geophysics over the 18,000-acre property, drilled six core holes and acquired additional, adjacent ground to prospect.
That new property, called the Tolovana Zone, produced the latest high-grade gold samples for Freegold to tout. Assays from 15 rock samples taken from recent trenching and sampling were released Aug. 4.
Trenching and sampling was designed to prioritize drill targets, and the company anticipates drilling to begin in late August, possibly during its tour.
“The trenching program has uncovered visible gold mineralization in shears and veins and extended the surface exposure to the east of the old workings,” Freegold said in its press release. High-grade results All assays of the 15 samples were at least one gram of gold per ton of rock, and most were richer.
Freegold said the best sample was a quartz-sericite schist with an oxidized quartz vein that assayed 39.3 grams (1.2 ounces) of gold per ton of rock.
Another high-grade sample included a quartz vein breccia with multiple veins and a dark matrix that contained euhedral, comby veins, which assayed 25.8 grams (0.8 ounces) of gold per ton of rock. A third sample of quartz-vein float assayed 19.5 grams (0.626 ounces) of gold per ton of rock.
Crews began trenching and sampling the Tolovana Zone, less than a half-mile southwest of the shuttered Cleary Hill Mine, in July, battling smoke and access limitations due to wildlands fires burning northeast of Fairbanks.
The trenching work was described as recutting eight trenches, each up to 250 feet in length, 3.5 feet wide and up to four feet deep, according to the company’s exploration permit application. No drilling was requested in the initial exploration application for the Tolovana zone, site of an old underground mine. Boost in property’s activity Those latest rock samples gathered during the trenching work, along with some high-grade drill results taken this spring from the Cleary Hill Mine site, will likely be topics of discussion by Freegold on Aug. 20 and 21. The company is making a presentation in Fairbanks and organizing a site visit to describe activities and future plans for the Golden Summit project.
Spring drilling on the property also produced gold mineralization of interest, including a 10.5 foot interval that assayed 0.449 ounces of gold per ton, and a two-foot interval that measured 0.968 ounces. Most of the reported intercepts from the six holes were 0.1 ounces of gold per ton of rock or richer.
Gold mineralization was “in the form of fine-grained and visible free gold associated with quartz veins, stockworks and quartz-rich shear zones containing between 1 to 3 percent pyrite, arsenopyrite and jamesonite,” Freegold said in a July press release announcing the drill results. “Coarse gold was observed in Phase 1 drill core suggesting that a nugget effect may be present.”
Last year, prior to partnering with Meridian, Freegold spent about $300,000 on Golden Summit, conducting some limited core drilling work below the shuttered Cleary Hill Mine. Several high-grade intercepts identified additional mineralization below the old hardrock mine and stamp mill, which closed during World War II.
Throughout its history of prospecting Golden Summit, Freegold has spent about $6 million. Prior to this spring’s drilling work, only about $500,000 of that went to work on ground near or at the shuttered Cleary Hill Mine, an underground mine and stamp mill operated in the early 1900s. During its mine life, Cleary Hill’s gold grade averaged 1.3 ounces per ton of rock.
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