La Teko pours gold bar at Ryan Lode

With only a 6-month leaching season to work with, it seems almost too good to be true but La Teko Resources is planning to heap leach some 13,000 oz of gold this year from its Ryan Lode gold deposit in central Alaska. The first dore bar of the yellow metal was poured on site July 20, and flown to the company’s head offices in Vancouver for examination.

“We should have quite a few more gold bars between now and freeze-up,” said Executive Vice- President Jim Billingsley who expects production to begin almost immediately. Mr Billingsley is also vice-president of Glamis Gold which has two heap leach properties in California.

However, barring some unforeseen disaster, La Teko will be the first company to heap leach under arctic conditions.

Last summer, the company tested the low-cost heap-leach mining method in this hostile Arctic environment and proved it could profitably recover gold. Recovery rates from a small 3,500-ton ore sample were between 75% and 80%.

First developed in Nevada during the 1970s, heap leaching allows gold producers to mine gold at grades considered uneconomical under normal mining conditions.

By forgoing the expensive milling process used in conventional mining methods, gold producers can use heap leaching to extract very fine grained gold from ore grading as low as 0.03 oz per ton and still make a reasonable profit.

Since La Teko is using the low cost open-pit and heap-leach mining method, production costs will be approximately $60(US) per oz of gold. “We are picking the ore up with a loader and just dumping it onto the leach pads,” said La Teko spokesman John McCluskey. “There is no crushing involved.”

With an estimated grade of 0.2 oz gold per ton (which is five times the normal southwestern U.S. heap leach grade), La Teko will earn $4.1 million from production this year.

The company plans to mine only the richest ore this year and it will process at least 75,000 tons of ore in 1987.

As reported (N.M., Feb 16/87) the Ryan Lode is an intensely fractured, brecciated, shear zone ranging from 20-130 ft in width which has been traced by surface trenching and geophysics for more than 4,000 ft. There are indications it could extend to almost twice that distance.

According to La Teko estimates, reserves at the Ryan Lode stand at 1.9 million tons of ore grading 0.132 oz and potentially much larger but lower-grade reserves of 15 million tons at 0.06 oz.

Since the season is so short, La Teko will use agglomeration methods which speeds up the rate of recovery. The company expects to leach gold from May to the first week in October. But La Teko can also mine during the winter season, which will enable it to lead and prepare the pads for the summer leaching.

La Teko shares were trading recently on the Vancouver Stock Exchange at $3.05.