LITERATURE REVIEW SPECIAL — Freegold sets sights on Alaska’s placer territory

Since 1902, nearly 10 million oz. gold have been pulled from alluvial gravels in the Fairbanks district, where miners worked their way up-stream in search of the lodes that fed the placers. The old-timers, however, reported only a half million ounces of production.

In an attempt to find an economic deposit, International Freegold Mineral Development (ITF-V) has acquired 26,000 acres at the headwaters where many of these placer operations existed.

Freegold, however, seems to have much in its favor. For starters, the Golden Summit property contains 84 known lode gold occurrences. The company is also looking for a low-grade, bulk-tonnage target (like the Fort Knox deposit), rather than the high-grade veins sought by the old-timers.

President Harry Barr is confident in his company’s chances of success. Last fall, Freegold announced the discovery of low-grade gold mineralization at the Dolphin zone. In September, the company announced assay results from hole 4, which intercepted 335 ft. grading 0.049 oz. gold per ton, bottoming in mineralization. Later results confirmed the presence of low-grade mineralization.

During a visit, The Northern Miner witnessed the company’s efforts to expand the discovery. With one drill turning at the Dolphin zone and another scheduled to start up on the Too Much Gold zone, Freegold hopes to broaden its exploration activities in order to cover a greater portion of the land package.

More than 30 reverse-circulation holes have been drilled into intrusive rocks of the Dolphin. A preliminary resource estimate puts the zone at 14.5 million tons at an average grade of 0.02 oz. gold per ton. Mineralization remains open to the west, east and at depth.

The Dolphin zone was known as the Tolovana, but was renamed in honor of Kelly Dolphin, a founder of Freegold, who died in a snowmobile accident in February of last year. Dolphin also helped the company acquire the Golden Summit property, 20 miles north of Fairbanks.

The intrusives of the Fairbanks district were interpreted as unfavorable for gold mineralization, but the discovery of the Fort Knox deposit, a few miles south of Golden Summit, challenged that evaluation. At Fort Knox, fine-grained gold mineralization is hosted along fracture surfaces within intrusive rocks. The gold is also associated with high concentrations of tungsten and bismuth. The intrusive rocks of the Dolphin show a similar gold-tungsten-bismuth association.

Much of the region’s geology, which has been poorly understood, has undergone a re-evaluation. Thick vegetation and a lack of outcrop combined to obscure its geologic story.

To be sure, the geology is complex enough without these impediments. In general, schistose rocks of the Cleary sequence have been thrusted and intruded by Cretaceous batholiths, and broken up by northeast-trending structures. Tension fractures running perpendicular to the structure grain host much of the mineralization.

At the Too Much Gold zone, the company has outlined, by trenching and soil sampling, a 4,300-ft. zone of mineralization. The northeasterly trend is roughly parallel to the Christina zone, which contains a drill-indicated resource of 150,400 tons of 0.46 oz. That calculation was made by Placid Oil, through drilling, in 1985.

At presstime, a second drill had been moved to Too Much Gold and is expected to be operational shortly.

Too Much Gold

With all known lode occurrences on the property yet to undergo exploration, the company has its work cut out for it. To that end, Freegold has two soil survey crews working on the property. One is extending the sampling grid around the Too Much Gold zone, while the other conducts reconnaissance sampling on the eastern part of the property. That sampling led to the location of another geochemical anomaly at the Wolf Creek zone.

Freegold also expects to complete 40,000 ft. of drilling on the property before year-end. Ten holes, for a total of 5,000 ft., have been drilled to date. Targets in permafrost will be drilled once the colder weather sets in.

Freegold sees potential for higher-grade mineralization at the Cleary Hill zone, where it hopes to sink 5-10 holes in late September. The Newsboy, Hi Yu and McCarty zones are, like the Christina, high-grade targets. The company is also looking for low-grade halos surrounding these zones.

The future of Freegold, and of the Fairbanks district, appears to be unwritten. Freegold has one of the larger land positions in the region, much of which has not undergone rigorous exploration.

Curtis Freeman, a consulting geologist at Freegold, believes that much of the area around the historic district remains prospective. “Just because no one sampled the area doesn’t mean there is no gold,” he said.

Freegold is not the only miner on the block, however. The district has experienced a rejuvenation, and many of the company’s neighbors have found exploration success there.

Amax Gold (AU-N) made the most notable discovery to date, with its Fort Knox deposit. After several delays, construction of the Fort Knox gold mine, 4 miles to the south, is nearing completion. The 4-million-oz. deposit is expected to produce 350,000 oz., beginning in early 1997.

To the west of Golden Summit, exploration at the True North deposit of Newmont Gold (NGC-N) and La Teko Resources (LAO-V) has confirmed the existence of gold mineralization between the Shepard and Hindenburg zones. A mineralized structure has also been discovered to the east. The partners believe the property has the potential to host more than 2 million oz. gold.

Meanwhile, Placer Dome (PDG-T) is exploring three of its claim blocks in the area: the Frederich to the west, and the Checker and Rusty Gold blocks to the north and east, respectively.