North of 60 Mining News - The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

A highly anticipated and long-awaited batch of assay results show that Freegold Ventures Ltd.'s 2020 drill program at Golden Summit continues to tap bonanza grade gold along with the very wide sections of bulk tonnage mineralization for which the property is known.

Located about 25 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska and on the north border of Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox gold mine property, 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 property also happens to be home 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.

Freegold's 2020 drill program has been testing for extensions of the high-grade vein system mined at Cleary Hill as well as expansions of the large bulk tonnage deposit outlined at the Dolphin intrusive to the west.

The first hole of this program, which got underway in March, cut 188 meters averaging 3.69 grams per metric ton gold from a depth of 360 meters. This includes a two-meter intercept from 365.2 meters that averaged 169.5 g/t (4.9 ounces per metric ton) gold – reminiscent of the bonanza grades historically mined at Cleary Hill.

This early start to 2020 drilling at Golden Summit, however, was cut short by COVID-19 about midway through the second hole.

Freegold drilled hole GSDL2002 deeper upon the June restart of the program, tapping 136 meters averaging 1.02 g/t gold from a depth of 370.6 meters.

Due to backups at assay labs due to COVID-19 restrictions, as well as a large volume of samples from an abbreviated drill season in Alaska and northern Canada, assays from finishing GSDL2002 were not available until September and the results from the next three holes were just released by Freegold on Nov. 10.

The results from these holes, however, were worth the wait.

Hole GSDL2003, drilled 50 meters east of GSDL2001, cut 146 meters averaging 0.80 g/t gold from a depth of 306 meters and three meters grading 107 g/t (3.4 oz/t) gold from 504 meters.

Hole GSDL2004, drilled 50 meters west of GSDL2001, was planned to a depth of 600 meters but completed to a depth of only 420 meters, due to difficult drilling conditions. While not reaching targeted depth, this hole still cut 93 meters of 0.93 g/t gold from 327 meters to the bottom of the hole.

The most exciting intercept from this latest batch of results came in GSDL2005, which was collared roughly 110 meters north of GSDL2001.

GSDL2005 cut 573 meters averaging 1.21 g/t gold from a depth of 18 meters, including 119 meters of 3.78 g/t gold from 472 meters. The bottom three meters of this hole averaged 131.5 g/t (4.2 oz/t) gold.

As a significant step-out to the north, GSDL2005 demonstrated the potential for significant tonnage of higher grade mineralization to the north.

Lying outside of the global and pit constrained resource at depth, the broad zones of mineralization in GSDL2001 and GSDL2005, have the potential to add significant tonnage to the existing resource at Golden Summit.

Freegold says determining the orientation of the higher-grade zones encountered so far this year will require considerable additional drilling. To accomplish this, along with upgrading and expanding the current resource, the company has added to the number of drills turning on the property.

This includes a third rig that was added to the program this week.

The expanded program is also expected to test other areas of historical high-grade mining from early in the 20th century.

Among the top targets for this high-grade gold exploration are American Eagle, which produced 60,000 oz of gold from ore grading 44.5 g/t (1.3 oz/t); and Hi Yu Mine, which produced 110,000 oz from ore grading 54.8 g/t (1.6 oz/t).

All told, Freegold has identified 80 documented but relatively unexplored high-grade lode gold occurrences within the Golden Summit project.

The 2020 drill program at Golden Summit is scheduled to continue until mid-December. Drilling is planned to resume at Golden Summit in early February and continue throughout 2021.

Author Bio

Shane Lasley, Publisher

Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.

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