Drill taps bonanza gold at Golden Summit, First winter hole cuts veins reminiscent of Cleary Hill Mine
Last updated 5/7/2020 at 1:09pm
Shane Lasley
Before being suspended in response to COVID-19, the winter drill program at Golden Summit tapped gold grades as high as 169.5 g/t gold nearly 600 meters southwest of the historic Cleary Hill Mine.
Freegold Ventures Ltd. April 6 announced that winter drilling at Golden Summit has encountered what appears to be an extension of the vein system that fed ore to the historic Cleary Hill Mine, which produced 281,000 ounces of gold from ore averaging 1.3 oz per ton before the operation was shuttered during World War II.
The first hole of the winter program, GSDL2001, cut 188 meters averaging 3.69 grams per metric ton gold from a depth of 366 meters. The bottom 20 meters of this hole, which averaged 9.87 g/t gold, indicates some of the highest-grade gold encountered in this hole drilled nearly 600 meters southwest of the Cleary Hill Mine workings.
Reminiscent of the high-grade veins that fed the historic mine, GSDL2001 also cut two meters averaging 169.5 g/t (4.9 oz/t) gold from a depth of 365.2 meters.
GSDL2002, drilled 150 meters east of GSDL2001, cut nine meters of 2.4 g/t gold from a depth of 156 meters. This hole had just began encountering the targeted Cleary vein system when Freegold decided to suspend drilling at Golden Summit in response to COVID-19.
"Management is tremendously excited with these results," said Freegold Ventures President Kristina Walcott. "The drill program is testing our interpretation that the high-grade CVS extends to the west and these results are confirming our interpretation."
This is an area of limited drilling on the northwest edge of the Dolphin intrusive, which hosts a bulk tonnage resource at Golden Summit.
According to a 2016 calculation, Golden Summit hosts 61.5 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 0.69 g/t ton (1.36 million ounces) gold; and 71.5 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.69 g/t (1.58 million oz) gold.
The higher-grade gold being tapped in the Cleary Hill vein system has the potential to bolster the overall resource grade at Golden Summit, a highway accessible project about 25 miles north of Fairbanks and adjacent to Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox Mine property.
Freegold is evaluating opportunities to safely resume its field activities in Alaska. Resumption of drilling at Golden Summit is expected to include continuation of GSDL2002, as well as other holes targeting extensions of the Cleary Hill veins.
Freegold Ventures Ltd.
Core from a 2018 hole drilled at Shorty Creek that cut 442.4 meters averaging 0.22% copper, 0.13 g/t gold, 4.03 g/t silver and 0.02% tungsten. A US$2 million exploration program funded by South32 is slated for Shorty Creek this year.