Freegold trenches extensive high-grade at Golden Summit

Vancouver – Trench results from Freegold Ventures‘ (ITF-T, FGOVF-O) Golden Summit project, near Fairbanks, Alaska, show extensive high-grade gold mineralization along significant lengths of newly discovered vein systems near the past producing Cleary Hill mine.

New veins were exposed immediately to the east and south of Cleary Hill in the program testing both extensions of the host vein in the old mine and examining recent shear zone-vein discoveries peripheral to the operation.

Trenching about 400 metres southeast of Cleary Hill uncovered a 4-to-8 metre wide shear zone hosting a 0.1-to-0.5 metre wide mineralized quartz vein that was sampled and returned 56.4 metres with an average longitudinal grade of 39.5 grams gold per tonne. A higher grade section within the trench returned an average assay of 82.3 grams gold along a 23-metre interval. Additional cross trenching traced the strike length of the shear zone a further 300 metres to the northwest to within 100 metres of the high-grade Banker’s Stope ore shoot at the historic Cleary Hill mine.

About 300 metres of trenching south of Cleary Hill tested high-grade veins discovered last Fall, with a number of grab samples from the Colorado vein returning significant gold grades.

Testing of the Wackwitz vein system, also south of the Cleary Hill mine, discovered a new 1.5-metre wide zone that averaged 16.5 grams gold over 72 metres of trench sampling, including higher grade sections of 34.6 grams gold over 26 metres and 51.4 grams gold along 15 metres. The 1.5-metre long channel samples were taken perpendicular across strike at 1.5-metre intervals. Mineralization is hosted in a 0.1-to-0.25 metre wide grey to white banded quartz vein.

Other shear zones were also discovered to the north and south of Wackwitz vein with samples yielding additional high-grade gold values.

Freegold Ventures plans further trenching to delineate the high-grade vein systems and shear zones, plus a bulk sampling program to collect about 9,000 tonnes of surface vein material for grade confirmation and revenue generation.

Golden Summit contains a number of high-grade past producing gold mines including the Cleary Hill mine with reported output of about 281,000 ozs. of gold at an average grade of 44.6 grams gold (1.3 oz. per ton) and the Hi Yu mine producing 110,000 ozs. at an average grade of 54.9 grams gold (1.6 oz. per ton). The project is located just north of Kinross Gold‘s (K-T, KGC-N) Fort Knox open pit mine that produced almost 330,000 ozs. of gold in 2005.

Shares of Freegold Ventures rallied 33% following the August 16th trench results, gaining 14 to close at 56 apiece on strong volume. With its 38.8 million shares outstanding, the company posts a $22 million market capitalization.