Freewest steps up gold search in New Brunswick

Photo credit Rob RobertsonThe Super Pit operation, above, excavates 230,000 tonnes of material per day, resulting in up to 850,000 oz. gold per year.Photo credit Rob RobertsonThe Super Pit operation, above, excavates 230,000 tonnes of material per day, resulting in up to 850,000 oz. gold per year.

The exploration efforts of Freewest Resources Canada (FWR-V) in the Clarence Stream area of southwestern New Brunswick continue to demonstrate the potential of an emerging camp of granite-related gold mineralization in an area best known for its tungsten and tin potential.

The focus this year has shifted away from the Central area of the Clarence Stream property to Anomaly A, a huge soil multi-element anomaly some 3 km to the northwest.

The gold-arsenic-antimony anomaly is 2.5 km long and up to 500 metres wide in places. Prospectors uncovered a trail of mineralized boulders and subcrop within the confines of the northwest-striking anomaly. Some samples yielded visible gold and bonanza-grade values of up 418 grams gold per tonne. Freewest opened up the Murphy, AD and MW areas of the anomaly with backhoe trenching late last year and exposed quartz vein stockwork and sheeted quartz veins hosted by sericitized and silicified meta-sedimentary rocks. The Murphy zone was intermittently exposed over a 400-metre strike length and returned better values of 4.81 grams across 5 metres and 3.78 grams over 8.5 metres from channel sampling. The AD and MW prospects returned bedrock grabs of up to 14.9 grams and 10.2 grams, respectively.

Freewest has completed several phases of drilling since February, popping off close to 60 holes so far this year. One drill remains on the property and is testing Anomaly B, with a half-dozen planned holes. Anomaly B is another soil target and coinciding induced-polarization (IP) anomaly, a couple of kilometres south of Anomaly A and more than 2 km due west of the Central zone. No trenching was done, owing to thick overburden.

Freewest will take a bit of a breather to compile all the drilling data. “We’re pausing right now to get all the assays in, get the sections plotted, do some three-dimensional modeling and plot-up grade thickness contours and structural contour maps before proceeding with the next phase of drilling,” says Donald Hoy, vice-president of exploration.

Of the three zone drilled, AD and MW are priorities, Hoy tells The Northern Miner. “There are quite a few ore-grade intersections on both zones. Next, we will try to nail things down. There are some sweet spots of high-grade intercepts, and we want to tighten up the controls of mineralization. We are trying to build tonnes on AD and MW.”

Mineralization in all of the zones is entirely sediment-hosted and structurally controlled. AD and MW are shallow-dipping structures and related to each other. The deepest hole on either of the zones is about 75 metres vertical. “AD has given us the best gold grades and widths of mineralization,” says Hoy.

The AD zone has been drill-tested over a strike length of 300 metres and a width of 125 metres, stepping to the north. It remains open along strike and to depth. The best intercepts include the following:

o 17.8 grams over 4 metres (including 1.5 metres of 43.9 grams) at 27.6 metres down-hole in hole 8;

o 13.26 grams over 4.5 metres at a down-hole depth of 26.6 metres in hole 6;

o 6.32 grams across 3 metres (including 0.5 metre of 29.3 grams) at 33.8 metres depth in hole 13; and

o 7.09 grams across 6.7 metres (including 1.7 metres of 17.1 grams) at 33.5 metres in hole 14.

Based on the 19 holes for which assays have been received to date, the weighted average grade of the AD zone is 5.52 grams over a core length of 4.7 metres.

The AD zone consists of a strongly altered sericitic zone in folded quartzwacke, mudstone and argillite that dip shallowly to the north. Gold occurs in zones of strong quartz veining and cataclasite, containing locally abundant stringer and semi-massive stibnite, arsenopyrite and pyrite, with local sphalerite, chalcopyrite and visible gold.

Flat-lying

Freewest’s geologists believe the MW zone, just north of AD, may be part of the same primary structure. “The same flat-lying structure may be controlling both those zones of mineralization, which would give us real potential for size,” says Hoy.

The MW zone dips shallowly to the south and consists of a panel of sericitic alteration containing quartz veining, stockwork and sulphides hosted in tightly folded wacke and argillite. Drilling has tested the zone over a strike length of 150 metres. The zone contains two higher-grade shoots. The easterly shoot has yielded the following:

o 5.21 grams across 11 metres starting at 18.2 metres of depth in hole 1;

o 11.8 grams over 15.5 metres at a down-hole depth of 47.8 metres in hole 8; and

o 6.69 grams across 6 metres at 30.4 metres depth in hole 13.

A westerly shoot contains intercepts including:

o 7 metres of 9 grams at a down-hole depth of 84 metres in hole 3; and

o 10.5 metres of 15.4 grams (including 3 metres of 50.9 grams) at a depth of 52.8 metres in hole 16.

“It looks like a syncline or basin feature, with the AD zone forming the south limb of that trough, which is dipping to the north, and the MW zone forming the northern limb of that trough,” explains Hoy. “Alternatively, they may be separate structures that converge at depth and along strike. From a size potential, it is attractive.”

He adds that the majors are keeping tabs on Clarence Stream. “We’re on most of the major’s radar screens, particularly with the activity in the Newfoundland Botwood Basin play.”

More targets

The company has another half-dozen high-quality targets to explore with excavator trenching. The targets were generated using a combination of geochemical soil sampling and prospecting methods.

A good deal of the Clarence Stream holdings have been covered with geochem. Using the claim posts for control, Freewest has taken a C-horizon till sample every 400 metres and assayed for multi-elements. Hoy estimates that half the property has been covered. Any joy from that spacing is followed up with a detailed grid of soils and prospecting, followed by mapping, geophysics and trenching.

“It has been a deliberate approach to exploration from day one, and the stripping has proved invaluable,” says Hoy.

The Clarence Stream property is 70 km southwest of Fredericton, the provincial capital, and some 25 km northwest of St. George. The 98-sq.-km holdings are readily accessible by a network of provincial roads from all points in southwestern New Brunswick. Highway 770 crosses the property, as does a major power line servicing the past-producing Mount Pleasant tungsten-molybdenum mine and the neighbouring village of Rollingdam.

Billiton spent more than $120 million bringing the Mount Pleasant mine into production in 1983. The operation was short-lived; hindered by metallurgical recovery problems and low tungsten prices, it closed in 1985. The Mount Pleasant facilities are still intact, and the Mount Pleasant deposit still contains a large resource of tungsten, bismuth and molybdenum, in addition to tin with associated indium.

History

Freewest, led by Mackenzie Watson, optioned the Clarence Stream property from local prospector Reginald Cox in May 1999 for $200,000 cash and 100,000 shares, to be spread over four years. Cox had discovered gold-bearing boulders in 1998 while prospecting along newly built forestry roads, with the aid of data from a regional stream-sediment geochemical survey by the Geological Survey of Canada. The property lies along the northern margin of the St. George batholith, a large multi-phase granitic intrusion. Malcolm McLeod, a regional geologist with the New Brunswick Department of Natural Resources and Energy, had earlier recognized the potential for gold mineralization in the early Devonian suites of the Magaguadavic granite, a particular phase of the St. George batholith.

After conducting an extensive program of soil sampling, prospecting and trenching, Freewest completed 64 drill holes in 2001, targeting the Central zone area. The company uncovered five zones of gold mineralization occurring over a 2-km strike length in a ductile, brittle shear zone in the Kendall Mountain Formation sediments, in close association with the northern contact of the Magaguadavic granite.

The five zones are an echelon vein-ty
pe deposit, with associated stockwork and disseminated zones. Individual veins range from less than a centimetre to greater than 3 metres wide locally. The Central zone was found to extend for more than 150 metres along strike and 180 metres downdip. The zone contains a drill-indicated geological resource of 544,260 tonnes grading 7.2 grams gold, equivalent to 126,000 oz.

The Central zone is on a high-strain structure, and there was a mylonitic event that post-dated the mineralization and had the affect of dismembering it. There is a lot of boudinage, or pinching and swelling, in the East and Central zones, both laterally and at depth. “You really have to work hard to build up tonnes on those,” says Hoy.

The AD and MW zones in Anomaly A are away from the high-strain structure, and Freewest believes there is much greater potential for size and better coherency on the mineralized zones.

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