Freewest tests Clarence showing

A minimum-2,000-metre diamond drilling program is under way on a gold showing uncovered by Freewest Resources Canada (FWR-V) at its Clarence Stream property in southwestern New Brunswick.

The drilling will test targets within a prominent multi-element till anomaly, dubbed Anomaly A, where initial prospecting work uncovered visible gold and bonanza-grade values as high as 418 grams gold per tonne. Measuring 4 by 1 km, Anomaly A is one of several anomalies defined by a property-wide sampling program in 2000. The large northwest-striking till anomaly is characterized by highly anomalous levels of gold, bismuth, antimony, arsenic, tungsten and molybdenum. The new target area occurs some 3 km northwest of the Central zone, the site of an aggressive drilling program carried out last year.

In late 2001, Freewest brought in an excavator and began trenching in an effort to locate the source of the gold-bearing boulders and sub-crop. The backhoe trenching exposed quartz vein stockwork and sheeted quartz veins hosted within sericitized and silicified meta-sedimentary rocks. Known as the Murphy zone, it has been intermittently exposed over a 400-metre strike length and over widths ranging from 10 to 50 metres.

Channel sampling has returned better values of 4.81 grams across 5 metres and 3.78 grams over 8.5 metres. Where poor exposure and wet ground hampered the channel sampling, Freewest resorted to taking grabs, which yielded values as high as 11.87 grams.

Two other showings in Anomaly A are slated to be drill-tested. The AD and MW prospects returned bedrock grabs of up to 14.9 grams and 10.2 grams, respectively.

The Clarence Stream property lies 70 km southwest of Fredericton and some 25 km northwest of St. George.

In related news, Pathfinder Resources (PHR-V) has optioned a high-grade gold showing in the Sussex area of southern New Brunswick. The showing is exposed in a pit wall of a large quarry that provided construction material for a new stretch of the Trans Canada Highway that opened in June 2001. Eight selected grab samples taken by Pathfinder’s President Victor Tanaka from a 6-by-10-metre area of outcrop ranged from negligible to 7.5 grams. Seven additional samples of blasted rock spread over 100 metres returned values ranging from 0.03 to 22.5 grams.

Chip sampling by the vendor of the property along the most highly altered outcropping zone averaged 2.22 grams across 3.7 metres, including 1.2 metres of 5.3 grams.

The gold mineralization is hosted in quartz-carbonate-altered gabbroic rocks, which intrude basaltic volcanic rocks. The gold is associated with up to 30% disseminated sulphides consisting of mainly arsenopyrite, with minor pyrite. The projected width and length of the gold-bearing zone are masked by extensive overburden in the area and by a large amount blast rock covering the lower slope of the pit.

Pathfinder can earn a 100% interest by spending $1 million on exploration and issuing 325,000 shares over three years.