Perseverance pays off for Northern Freegold

SITE VISIT

Carmacks, Yukon — Bill Harris has been prospecting around Freegold Mountain since the 1960s. For 20 years Bill, his father Glen, and their good friend, Fritz Gruder, worked with any company that showed interest in the area.

In doing so, the trio watched as the region was carved up, with claims eventually held by 88 different people. But as metal prices fell in the 1990s, people started to drop their claims. Harris kept on staking.

By summer 2006, he had consolidated 166 sq. km of land along a 35-km stretch in the Freegold Mountain area. In September, he founded Northern Freegold Resources (NFR-V, NFRGF-O).

“For five or ten years, people thought I was an idiot,” he says over coffee in the camp kitchen. Then he adds, laughing, “Now, I’m a forward-thinking fellow.”

It’s an immense piece of land for a small junior explorer, but size has benefits. The scale of the land package has allowed Harris to look at the geology on a regional basis for the first time, instead of working on postage stamp-sized claims. The overview has already aided exploration considerably: while the company hit mineralization in every one of their 26 drill holes in 2006 by playing it safe and drilling known deposits, in 2007, they put faith into their new model and stepped out. Now they’re hitting longer, higher grades.

“It took years of perseverance — out there, by myself in the rain, staking these claims — but now it’s becoming worth it,” he says.

Harris’s father had passed away by the time he pulled the Freegold Mountain project together, but family is still involved. Sue Craig is a geologist who spent 10 years with Alexco Resource (AXR-T, AXORF-O), moving the Brewery Creek heap-leach mine from exploration to production and then reclamation, and worked to get NovaGold Resources’ (NG-T, NG-X) Galore Creek project through environmental assessment. She is also Bill’s wife.

Craig joined the Northern Freegold project as vice-president of corporate affairs, bringing the wealth of mining experience from both sides of the marriage together for the first time. Harris stays focused on seeking out mineralization, while Craig works primarily on red tape and relations. It’s her area of expertise, and she clearly enjoys her job.

“I work with the mind frame: if this were happening in my backyard, how would I want it done?” she says.

Hitting the target

The Freegold Mountain project, about 70 km northwest of Carmacks, lies in the Dawson Range portion of the Tintina Gold Belt, a boomerang-shaped trend stretching from Donlin Creek in western Alaska through Fairbanks, then southeast towards Whitehorse. Within that, the Dawson Range is a 250-km-long copper-gold and gold porphyry belt with mineralization associated with the northwest-trending Big Creek fault.

Significant porphyry-style mineralization is found in mid- to late-Cretaceous intrusions and the older metamorphosed basement complex of the Yukon-Tanana Terrane. Gold veins and breccia bodies as well as gold-bearing skarns occur peripheral to the porphyry bodies.

“It’s a very active district now,” Harris says, pointing on a map to the seven other exploration projects in the Dawson Range. “It’s nice to not be the only group in the area.”

The Freegold Mountain property hosts at least 10 exploration targets, most of which are porphyry bodies. The Tinta Hill deposit at the southeast end is an exception — it is a polymetallic epithermal vein running parallel to the Big Creek fault.

First discovered in the 1930s, Tinta Hill saw considerable exploration before Northern Freegold, including more than 6,000 metres of drilling and two adits that have since been closed off. Work has always focused on a 1-km section of the vein, though the mineralized zone has been traced for more than 3.5 km at an average true thickness of 1.6 metres.

Drill-indicated reserve calculations (not compliant with National Instrument 43-101) estimate the zone hosts 1,875 tons per vertical ft. grading 2.1 grams gold per ton, 152 grams silver per short ton, 4.7% lead, 6.03% zinc, and 0.37% copper in a pinch-and-swell structure still open at both ends.

“It’s not wide, but it’s extremely strongly mineralized,” says exploration manager Rob Robertson. “And what’s really unique about Tinta Hill is that the gold came later — it was a base metal deposit first. We find tenerite rocks on surface that run one per cent copper everywhere.”

Drilling at Tinta Hill this year returned strong grades. Hole 8 intercepted 1.7 metres grading 14.9 grams gold per tonne, 446 grams silver, 3.3% copper, 5.2% lead, and 0.66% zinc at a depth of 225 metres. Hole 7, drilled at a steeper angle from the same setup, hit the vein at 318 metres depth, returning 0.74 metre of 7.2 grams gold, 98 grams silver, 0.92% copper, 0.54% lead, and 2.17% zinc. That intercept doubled the known vein depth to 300 metres.

Hole 11 confirmed the depth and breadth of the steep vein, stepping out 50 metres southeast and hitting the vein at 239 metres depth. The intercept assayed 1.32 metres of 8.92 grams gold, 356 grams silver, 1.17% copper, 3.41% lead, and 4.22% zinc. And hole 12 stepped out 50 metres the other way, to the northwest, and returned a very similar intercept.

Further up the property, the Nucleus and Revenue deposits, together called the Golden Revenue zone, sit facing each other across a valley. Recent work on the Nucleus deposit has focused on copper-gold mineralization associated with a large calc-alkaline porphyry system at reasonable depth.

The mineralizing intrusion appears to have been multi-episodic, with various stages of brecciation and mineralization.

“The mineralization is not just in the microgranite or the porphyry or the sediment — it is where it is,” says Deborah James, project geologist for Nucleus-Revenue. “We’re assaying everything because sections that look like nothing run like you wouldn’t believe. So you just never know.”

In 2006, the company only drilled at Nucleus, and hit mineralization in every hole. Most drills collared in the centre of the zone pulled long intersections of low grade, such as 112 metres grading 0.65 gram gold. Three step-out holes hit high-grade intersections, including hole 34, which returned 2 metres of 20.25 grams gold to the west.

This year’s drilling hit more high-grade intervals within long intercepts of bulk-tonnage grades. Hole 41 returned 72 metres of 2.5 grams gold, including 2 metres of 45 grams gold. The zone appears to be widening to the east, which has focused attention on the connection between Nucleus and Revenue, 2.5 km east.

At Revenue, a breccia pipe has produced a number of interesting historic results, including 2.2 metres of 18.6 grams gold and 38 metres of 1 gram gold and 0.28% copper. Further drilling is needed to delineate the structure.

Through the valley between Nucleus and Revenue runs Mechanic Creek, which Robertson describes as “one of the best placer mining creeks in the country. The Gow family has placer mined the creek for 25 years, and their collection of everything from wire gold to a 27-gram gold nugget attests to the potential of the area.

“Most of it looks like it didn’t travel far,” Robertson says. “Gold shaped like balls of steel wool doesn’t go far — it pops out of the quartz and settles.”

A small company like Northern Freegold can only accomplish so much in a year, and to date, the focus has been on completing over 10,600 metres of diamond drilling in three months at Tinta Hill and Nucleus. But there are half a dozen other targets on the large property, some of which already host historic resources.

The Goldstar zone encompasses the Margarete vein system, the Augusta gold-bearing skarn occurrence, and the Cabin vein-porphyry breccia target. Margarete hosts a non-NI 43-101-compliant resource of 123,800 tonnes of oxidized ore grading 4.5 grams gold and 50 grams silver, with a 250-metre-long section of the vein and to a depth of 60 metres. The vein remains open along strike and at depth.

The Augusta skarn hosts 77,000 tonnes of 3.4 grams gold and 94 grams silver, according to historic work. Unconfirmed historic work indicates strong potential at the Cabin zone, as well.

The Goldy, Glen, Happy, Seymour, and Nitro zones round out the current targets. In total, the property hosts 747,700 contained ounces gold according to historic and non-compliant estimates, but with the ability to work the property from a regional perspective, it seems likely that the levels will increase.

The level of interest in the region means access and power are not significant obstacles. There is a 2-wheel-drive road into and through the length of the property, roughly a 4-hour drive from Whitehorse. And the high-voltage line being built to Sherwood Copper’s (swc-v, swopf-o) Minto mine will bring hydro power within 12 km of Freegold Mountain.

Prospects for tomorrow

As if it wasn’t busy enough with Freegold Mountain, Northern Freegold also holds two other properties in the Yukon and one in Arizona.

“We figure a couple of extra projects for the future isn’t a bad thing, the way things are heading,” Harris says.

In March, the company worked out agreements to earn a 100% interest in the Tad/Toro project from private vendors and a 100% interest in the Severance property from Copper Canyon Resources (CPY-V, CAYRF-O).

The Tad/Toro property lies 25 km northwest of Freegold Mountain, also along the Big Creek fault. Historical work indicates the mineralization is similar to that at the Nucleus zone, a high level porphyry gold-copper system with epithermal veins running through. In the 1980s, Noranda re-analyzed a few historic drill cores and found 37 metres grading 0.5 gram gold and 7 metres of 1.68 grams gold.

Severance is an intrusive-hosted gold target with associated copper and molybdenum. The property, 50 km west of Freegold Mountain, has seen only limited exploration work.

And Burro Creek, in Mohave Cty., Ariz., is Northern Freegold’s winter retreat. The property covers a low-sulphidation epithermal vein system traced for over 1.7 km with widths up to 45 metres. A recent NI 43-101-compliant resource estimate based on historical work, focused on the central 300 metres of strike, outlined 2.6 million tons grading 0.03 oz. gold and 1.1 oz. silver. The project was permitted for an open-pit operation in the mid-1980s and there is a highway with high-voltage power lines only 1.6 km away.

The cold and dark of the Yukon winter puts a halt to exploration for a few months each year; the company picked up an Arizona project to work on during that time.

As Harris explains, “When I bump my nose getting a drink out of the creek up at Freegold Mountain, it’s time to head to Burro.”

— Deborah James, project geologist for the Golden Revenue zone