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

Alaska's largely untapped mineral potential continues to draw the interest of Down Under mining companies, including two Australian minerals explorers that picked up prospective land packages open to staking.

Earlier this month, Australia-based Ragusa Minerals Ltd. announced that it had acquired Monte Cristo, a block of 500 state mining claims covering a 35-mile-long (55 kilometers) under-explored stretch of Southcentral Alaska east and south of two projects with multi-million-ounce gold resources – GoldMining Inc.'s Whistler gold-silver-copper project and Nova Minerals Ltd. Estelle gold project.

"The Monte Cristo gold project will target areas near the multi-million-ounce gold deposits discovered by Nova Minerals Ltd. and Gold Mining Inc.," said Ragusa Minerals Chair Jerko Zuvela.

This will begin with investigations of four priority prospects – Monte Cristo, St. Eugene, Old Man Breccia, and Old Man Diorite – that were explored about a decade ago but fell by the wayside due to tough market conditions in 2011.

Rock samples collected from the Monte Cristo prospect in 2010 assayed up to 4.2 grams per metric ton gold and sampling of talus fines, rocks accumulated at the base of a very steep rock face, returned grades as high as 3 g/t gold.

Located about five miles (eight kilometers) southwest of Monte Cristo, the St. Eugene prospect covers three separate zones. Rock samples collected from the largest zone in 2010 returned grades as high as 2.1 g/t gold and 1% copper.

The Old Man Breccia and Old Man Diorite are located in the northern part of the Monte Cristo property. Channel sampling of three trenches cut across Old Man Breccia in 2009 cut 16 meters averaging 0.74 g/t gold, 24 meters of 1.94 g/t gold, 28 meters of 3.34 g/t gold, and 10 meters of 7.12 g/t gold.

The Monte Cristo property also covers gold staged gold targets south of Estelle, a gold property being explored by fellow Aussie explorer Nova Minerals.

Upon closing of the acquisition, Ragusa plans to develop an exploration strategy for Monte Cristo and intends to secure experienced consultants to assist with advancing this new Alaska gold project.

In addition to Monte Cristo, Ragusa owns the Lonely Mine gold project in Zimbabwe and is acquiring the Burracoppin halloysite, an aluminosilicate clay mineral, project in Western Australia.

"The proposed acquisitions will diversify Ragusa's global footprint and provide an opportunity to utilize our exploration and development experience to rapidly progress both projects, given their prime positions adjacent to major gold and halloysite projects in Tier 1 jurisdictions," Zuvela said regarding the Monte Cristo and other recent Ragusa acquisitions.

Zuvela also happens to be chairman of Discovery Africa, an Australian-based company that picked up the Chulitna project in Southcentral Alaska earlier this year.

Lying about four miles west of the Parks Highway and about 155 miles north of Anchorage, the Chulitna property covers the Partin Creek gold-copper and Coal Creek tin-silver prospects near Avidian Gold Corp.'s Golden Zone project.

Discovery Africa Ltd.

Highly mineralized outcrop sampled during Discovery Africa's initial exploration of the Partin Creek prospect at Chulitna.

During a two-week program carried out earlier this summer, an Alaska-based geological firm collected 166 rock and 86 talus fine samples, as well as carried out geological mapping across various prospects.

This reconnaissance exploration focused largely on Partin Creek, where historical mapping, trenching, and rock chip sampling carried out by the U.S. Bureau of Mines identified two gold-silver-copper prospect areas. Samples collected from one of these prospects in 1974 returned grades of up to around 7 grams per metric ton gold and 0.7% copper.

Discovery Africa said geological mapping identified mineralization across a 1,600-meter stretch of Partin Creek and talus fine sampling at the base of steep cliffs covering multiple prospect areas.

The samples have been shipped to a laboratory for multicommodity analysis – assays are pending.

The Australia-based exploration company is seeking other Alaska projects to add to its portfolio.

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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