Freegold Mountain proves goliath project for junior

Vancouver — For such a small company, Northern Freegold Resources (NFR-V, NFRGF-O) is accomplishing big things.

The junior, still less than two years old, completed 57 diamond-drill holes totalling 11,428 metres at its large Freegold Mountain copper-gold project in the central Yukon last summer. And the stream of results from that effort is showing that Northern Freegold is onto something.

The project is in the Tintina Gold Belt, some 70 km northwest of the town of Carmacks. The property covers 166 sq. km and 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 northwest-trending Big Creek fault.

But a small junior working a project as large as Freegold Mountain has to narrow its focus. Northern Freegold has been doing just that.

The Nucleus and Revenue deposits, which, together, are called the Golden Revenue zone, sit facing each other across a valley, near the middle of the long project. In 2006, the company hit mineralization in every hole at Nucleus, most drills pulling long intersections of low-grade mineralization. The results started to define a copper-gold mineralized body associated with a large calc-alkaline porphyry system at reasonable depth.

The 2007 results from Nucleus are even more promising. Northern Freegold drilled 27 holes into the zone over a 3-month period, for a total of 6,313 metres of diamond drilling. The first hole of the program, number 41, intersected 72.4 metres grading 2.5 grams gold per tonne and 0.14% copper in a stepout from the zone’s southeast corner.

The strong result prompted the company to bring the drill back to the area and complete three stepout holes. Hole 58, a 50-metre stepout from hole 41, returned 75 metres of 4.26 grams gold from 52.5 metres depth. Results from the remaining two holes are still pending.

Before moving back toward hole 41, the company completed five stepout holes along the zone’s eastern border, which confirmed the extension of the Nucleus zone in that direction. Hole 45, for example, returned 89.9 metres grading 0.67 gram gold per tonne from 24 metres down-hole, including 7.9 metres of 1.78 grams gold and 0.29% copper. And hole 47 intersected 20.3 metres grading 1.4 grams gold from 3 metres depth, followed by 15 metres grading 1.42 grams gold and 0.24% copper from 56 metres.

In a western stepout, hole 50 cut 207.4 metres of 0.59 gram gold from 30 metres depth, the longest mineralized interval drilled in the Nucleus area to date. Two other western stepouts hit shorter, similar-grade intersections.

Three drill holes probing expansion further northwest intersected heavy sulphide breccias and massive sulphide. For example, hole 51 returned 11.1 metres of 1.79 grams gold from 9.5 metres depth, 42 metres grading 0.64 gram gold from 32 metres, and 11.1 metres averaging 1.79 grams gold and 0.18% copper from 214 metres depth.

The defined Nucleus zone is currently 300 metres wide, 400 metres long, and 120 metres deep. The host rocks are Paleozoic metasediments intruded by mid-Cretaceous granites and granodiorites. Mineralization appears to be concurrent with younger, smaller, felsic intrusions and quartz feldspar porphyry dykes that crosscut the older units.

At the southeastern end of Freegold Mountain sits Tinta Hill. The Tinta Hill zone saw considerable exploration before Northern Freegold came on scene in 2006, including more than 6,000 metres of drilling and two adits. Historical drilling concentrated on a 1-km section of the vein, though the vein has now been traced for more than 2.5 km at an average thickness of 1.6 metres.

Drilling at Tinta Hill last 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 from 225 metres depth. Hole 7, drilled at a steeper angle from the same set-up, 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.

And Northern Freegold’s 2007 program included five drill holes into the Goldy zone, an epithermal vein target that sits 4 km south of Tinta Hill. Four of the five holes came back blank or containing only short, high-grade intercepts, but hole 16 returned 53.8 metres grading 3.5 grams gold from 14 metres depth.

Northern Freegold has managed to secure four drill rigs for the 2008 field season and plans to complete another aggressive drill campaign, focused on the Nucleus, Tinta and Goldy zones. The company hopes to calculate a resource estimate by the end of 2008.

For a project in the Yukon, Freegold Mountain is well situated. 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 the project.

In addition to their considerable task at Freegold Mountain, the crew at Northern Freegold is also getting started exploring a gold-silver property in Arizona. Burro Creek, in Mohave Cty., hosts a shallow, epithermal, gold-silver zone with a known strike length of 1.7 km that is up to 45 metres wide, and still wide open.

The project was fully permitted for an open-pit mining operation in the mid-1980s; the failing price of gold brought the project to a halt. Making access easy, the Arizona state highway, lined with parallel high-tension power lines, runs past the project only 1.6 km distant. And Northern Freegold has secured water rights, important for a project that is essentially in a desert.

The company is enthusiastic about having a project that is workable year-round, since winter shuts down work at Freegold Mountain for several months.

On the financial side of things, Northern Freegold closed three financings in 2007, all of which were oversubscribed. The smallest closed at $4.33 million, while the largest brought in $7.14 million. The company has a 52-week trading range of 55-99 and has 40.9 million shares issued.