In case you hadn't noticed, one of the busiest but quietest Augusts in the last 10 years just slipped into the pages of history.

Mineral exploration, development and production maintained a low profile in just about every region of the state during August.

Drills continued to turn and samples continued to stream in from programs searching for gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, nickel, platinum and palladium.

The hot spots continued to be the Iliamna District, the Goodpaster District and the Delta River District although exploration programs stretched from Nome to Ketchikan and from Ambler to the Shotgun Hills.

This year also presented Alaska with one of the warmest, driest Augusts on record, further intensifying the fieldwork across the state.

September is expected to bring in lots of news, both good and not so good.

Western Alaska

St. Andrew Goldfields continued underground exploration at its Nixon Fork project as plans to bring this property back into production move closer to reality.

The company said drilling at the C-3300 Chute Zone has indicated a larger and higher grade-inferred zone of mineralization with the mineralization splitting into more than one mineralized zone.

Seventy-three holes have been drilled to date to test this zone.

Assays to date have returned high-grade mineralization in 36 holes showing good continuity over a vertical length of over 180 meters.

Results from high-grade intersections include hole DH 68 which returned 4.6 meters grading 35.1 grams of gold per tonne, hole DH 72 which returned 4.6 meters grading 162.5 grams of gold per tonne, hole DH 76 which returned 2.3 meters grading 50.9 grams of gold per tonne, hole DH 77 which returned 4.3 meters grading 44.5 grams of gold per tonne, and hole DH 78 which returned 3.7 meters grading 29.5 grams of gold per tonne.

The company also said a summer surface exploration program consisting of surface trenching and sampling has begun in the nearby Whalen/North Star area.

The Whalen/North Star area is thought to have good potential for additional mineralized zones similar to the C-3000 and C-3300 Chute Zones.

Although virtually nothing else new has been published by folks working in western Alaska, the silence is not caused by lack of work.

Teck-Cominco's Red Dog mine kept pumping out lead and zinc in August as the height of the summer shipping season came and went at the docks on the Bering Sea coast.

Novagold Resources continued efforts to complete a final feasibility study at its Rock Creek gold project near Nome.

Placer Dome and JV partner Novagold Resources continued engineering and environmental studies at the Donlin Creek deposit while Full Metal Minerals continued exploration efforts at its Ganes Creek gold project in the Ophir district.

Exploration efforts continued unabated in Alaska's hottest district, the Iliamna district.

Northern Dynasty's continued its torrid drilling pace at its Pebble copper-gold deposit while Liberty Star Gold prepared for drilling on its adjacent Big Chunk copper-gold project.

Full Metal Minerals also continued exploration on its Pebble South copper - gold project.

The Tundra Telegraph also reports that TNR Gold mobilized exploration crews to the Shotgun gold project north of Dillingham.

The project, under joint venture from NovaGold, was last drilled in 1998.

Other than that, not much happening…..

Eastern Interior

Freegold Ventures Ltd. and joint venture partner Meridian Gold announced initial trenching results from its Tolovana mine prospect on its Golden Summit project in the Fairbanks District.

Grab samples collected during trenching returned gold values ranging from 1 to 39.3 grams of gold per tonne in highly altered schist and intrusive rocks along strike to the east from the old Tolovana mine, last operated in the 1930s.

The trenching was completed just north of the Dolphin intrusive (plus-600,000 ounce resource) and suggests a possible link between the intrusive and the high-grade veins of the Tolovana prospect.

Results of trench channel sampling are pending.

The companies indicated that drilling was planned for later in the summer.

Teryl Resources Corp. and partner Linux Gold Corp. announced initial lode gold exploration drilling results from their Fish Creek property in the Fairbanks District. Twenty auger holes were drilled on Odden Creek near a suspected buried intrusive. Eleven holes reached the C-horizon and of these, eight penetrated the underlying bedrock including one in felsic intrusive, one in graphitic slate and the remainder in quartz muscovite schist. Three adjacent holes (04A001, -002 and -003) on the west side of Odden Creek, including the one penetrating the intrusive, are anomalous in silver, lead, arsenic, and bismuth.

The most enigmatic news release of the month goes to Ventures Resource Corp. which announced that its board of directors is reviewing financial options that include transfer of the company's assets to a third party. It further indicated that shareholder contributions, used in the past to fund exploration of Doyon Ltd. lands in Alaska, are no longer available. Stay tuned.

Alaska Range

Nevada Star Resources said joint venture partner Anglo American Exploration U.S.A. initiated its $600,000 exploration program on its MAN project in the Delta River district.

The exploration program will focus on the Fish Lake and Dunite Hill areas on the southern half of the MAN project.

Work being performed includes 2,500 line kilometers of airborne magnetics and electromagnetics utilizing Anglo's proprietary Spectrem geophysical technology along with geological mapping, prospecting, geochemical sampling and ground geophysics.

Data from the airborne survey will be combined with existing data from previous exploration programs and used to guide the ground program with the goal of identifying drill targets for a winter drilling program.

Nevada Star Resources also said a 2,000 meter reverse circulation drilling program was initiated on its Canwell mafic-ultramafic complex on the eastern end of its MAN project. The drilling program is targeting several conductors identified from exploration work completed on the Canwell intrusion earlier this summer which included three dimensional magnetic inversion processing, University of Toronto Electro Magnetic, UTEM, data interpretation, Max-min electromagnetic geophysical surveys, gravity work and rock and soil sampling. The results from this work and other data were used to identify four primary drill targets. Results are pending.

Southeast Alaska

Kennecott (70.3 percent) and Hecla (29.7 percent) announced second quarter 2004 production from the Greens Creek mine on Admiralty Island.

The total cash cost per ounce of silver at Greens Creek for the quarter was 67 cents, a 27 cent per ounce decrease compared to the 2nd quarter of 2003.

The average grade of ore mined during the quarter was 16.33 ounces per ton, down significantly from the 19.11 ounces of silver per ton averaged in the same period in 2003.

During the second quarter the mine produced 2,254,197 ounces of silver, 22,798 ounces of gold, 6,770 tons of lead and 18,162 tons of zinc.

Total production costs for the quarter were $3.55 per ounce of silver produced, a slight decrease over year previous figures.

Bravo Venture Group Inc. said a second round of exploration had begun on its Woewodski Island massive sulfide project in southwest Alaska.

The program will focus on off-setting the high-grade zinc and silver massive sulfide mineralization intersected earlier this year at the Mad Dog prospect as well as additional drilling targets at the East Lake and Bushy Creek areas.

Preliminary ground-based gravity and induced polarization surveys have successfully traced sulfide-rich horizons and assisted in mapping basin geometry.

Additional grids have been established for further gravity geophysics to be completed in August.

Drilling will focus on testing the down-plunge extension of the high-grade mineralization intercepted in earlier drilling.

Other: Voodoo economics

In the shape of things to come (let's hope not) category, the Kerry/Edwards campaign has called for an 8 percent tax on mining that is designed to raise $600 million for maintenance of our National Parks. When the math is all said and done, the National Mining Association indicated that the 8 percent tax would cost between 18,000 and 44,000 jobs lost with the monetary results being a net loss of $400-500 million. Now that's voodoo economics!

Author Bio

Curt is President of Avalon Development Corporation, a mineral exploration consulting firm based in Fairbanks, Alaska. He is a U.S. Certified Professional Geologist with the American Institute of Professional Geologists (CPG #6901) and is a licensed geologist in the State of Alaska (Lic. # AA 159).

• Email: [email protected]
• Phone: 907-457-5159
• Contact Curt Freeman