Sackville, N.B. — Drilling by
While testing the Central zone, hole 39 intersected 21 metres averaging 15.06 grams gold per tonne at a vertical depth of about 60 metres below surface. The intercept included higher-grade sections of 18.67 grams over 1 metre, 25.95 grams over 5 metres, and 41.18 grams over 3.5 metres.
Hole 39 undercut hole 37, which had pulled 27.5 metres grading 3.5 grams, including 14.5 metres of 5.3 grams, at 30 metres of depth. The two intercepts are believed to represent true widths, and both holes encountered strong quartz veining and stockwork hosted in highly siliceous and sericitically altered quartzwacke and hornfel.
Associated sulphide minerals include disseminated pyrite, stibnite, arsenopyrite and sphalerite occurring in altered wallrocks and quartz veins.
Stepping out along strike 50 metres to the east, hole 38 cut 5.5 metres grading 3.84 grams, including half a metre of 16.58 grams. Fifty metres in the other direction, west of holes 37 and 39, previously reported hole 14 intersected a series of narrow intercepts, including 2.2 metres averaging 12.28 grams, of which 1.1 metres graded 22.14 grams.
The Clarence Stream property sits 70 km southwest of Fredericton in an area that has seen little exploration for gold. Freewest optioned the property from local prospector Reginald Cox in May 1999. Cox had discovered gold-bearing boulders while prospecting along newly built forestry roads. Freewest can earn a 100% interest by making a series of cash payments totalling $200,000 and issuing 100,000 shares over four years.
The property is readily accessible by a network of provincial roads from all points in southwestern New Brunswick. Bisecting the property is a major powerline servicing the past-producing Mount Pleasant tungsten mine, 8 km to the east, and the neighbouring village of Rollingdam.
Five zones
In ongoing work, Freewest has uncovered five zones of gold-bearing mineralization intermittently exposed by trenching over a collective strike length of 2 km. Gold mineralization occurs in sheeted quartz veins, replacements and stockworks, biotite-cordierite hornfels, and in skarn within the contact aureole of the St. George Batholith.
The contact halo emanates outward from the St. George batholith for at least 1 km into flanking metasediments and metagabbros of the Kendall Mountain Formation, forming rusty, resistant ridges of highly altered, recrystallized lithotypes. Rock types include variably silicified, hornfelsic metasediments, plus biotite, calc-silicate, amphibole-rich hornfels and metagabbros.
Mineralization is hosted in brittle-to-ductile shear zones, healed by quartz veins and flooding, within metasedimentary and gabbroic rocks. The quartz vein system strikes northeast and is aligned roughly parallel to the contact with the St. George Batholith. Since drilling began on the property, early this year, Freewest has tested the five zones — Cox, West, N, Central and East — with 39 shallow holes totalling 3,510 metres.
The company continues to be encouraged by the latest batch of results for the final 17 holes of the program, which tested all the occurrences except the East zone. The Central and N zones are developing into the most important targets, with respect to grade and size potential. These zones have been collectively drill-tested by nine holes over a strike length of 350 metres. The latest results from the N zone included 3.47 grams across 2.5 metres (including 0.5 metre of 9.88 grams) in hole 23, 1.58 grams over 2.5 metres in hole 24, and 3.9 grams across 1 metre in hole 34.
Western extension
The Cox zone has been drill-tested over a strike length of 200 metres by 10 holes and may represent the western extension of the N and Central zones. It is a structurally complex zone that has returned some encouraging intercepts within discontinuous bodies of gabbro and hornfels. The best results included 6.1 grams gold over 4.4 metres in hole 31 and 9.66 grams across 4.2 metres in hole 25. The latter hole was drilled beneath subcropping boulders that assayed up to 76.8 grams in grab samples.
The West zone represents a parallel structure, 100 metres south of the Cox zone. Five holes tested the West zone over a strike length of 100 metres. Although recently completed holes 32 and 33 (0.5 metre of 2.53 grams) returned low gold values, drill intercepts previously reported yielded 6.15 grams over 3.7 metres in hole 19, 8 grams across 3 metres in hole 20, and 6.56 grams over 1 metre in hole 21. The West zone has been tested to a maximum depth of just 30 metres.
The East zone, which lies 700 metres east of the Central showing, was tested at a shallow depth over a strike length of close to 600 metres by the first 12 holes of the program. It consists of discrete quartz-vein and replacement mineralization developed in a series of ductile shear zones hosted in biotite-cordierite hornfels.
Previously reported highlights include:
– 2 metres of 12.45 grams (including 1 metre of 23.4 grams) in hole 2;
– 2 metres of 3.66 grams (including half a metre of 11.58 grams) in hole 5;
– 6.5 metres of 4.45 grams in hole 6;
– 2 metres of 6.26 grams (including half a metre of 23.63 grams) in hole 7; and
– 1.65 metres of 12.66 grams in hole 10.
Although the best intercepts to date have come from the Central zone, the company notes that all the zones remain open along strike and at depth. When drilling resumes in late May or June, the first priority will be to carry out infill and deeper drilling on the Central and N zones. Follow-up drilling is also planned for the East zone. In addition, Freewest intends to test the 700-metre gap between the East and Central zones.
In conjunction with the second round of drilling, a program of prospecting, mapping, ground geophysics and trenching will be undertaken on targets identified elsewhere on the 45-sq.-km Clarence Stream property. Last fall, the company collected more than 2,000 soil samples on an expanded grid which defined numerous gold-arsenic-antimony anomalies that rival those overlying the East and West zones.
There has been little exploration for gold in the St. George Batholith. Previous work during the 1950s through to the 1980s focused on exploration for tin, tungsten, molybdenum and uranium. Billiton spent more than $120 million to construct the Mount Pleasant tungsten-molybdenum mine, which operated from 1983 to 1985, before falling tungsten prices and metallurgical recovery problems forced its closure.
What ever happened to the prospector Reginald Cox .