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Projects
MAIN PROJECTS
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Project
The West Tanana project is centered on an intrusion related high-grade vein target with a similar setting to that at Pogo.
Location
The West Tanana project is located about 250km WNW of Fairbanks and 40km east of the Village of Tanana on the Yukon River (Figure 1) and is accessible by winter road or barge and boat in the summer.
Ownership
West Tanana was acquired by International Tower Hill Mines ("ITH") from Doyon Ltd. an Alaskan Native corporation via a lease agreement in August of 2006. ITH provides Doyon a series of annual payments, work commitments and a retained royalty for 100% control of the property. At feasibility Doyon will have an option to acquire up to a 10% working interest in the project. The property package covers 220 km² of Native land.
Property Background
The West Tanana area was the site of historic placer production and was assess for its load potential in the 1980's. The project has had a limited amount of historic work that focused on soil sampling and a couple trenches. This historic work has defined a number of encouraging soil anomalies indicative of a stacked proximal (Pogo type) vein system. The presence of high grade quartz veins was confirmed with the earlier trenching program with values up to 16 g/t.
Mineralization
The West Tanana District is underlain by a thick sequence of undifferentiated metamorphic units intruded by a series of 110Ma granites. The West Tanana project and resulting target areas are defined by a number of stream sediment anomalies and a particularly interesting soil anomaly at Monday Creek (Fig. 2).
The Monday Creek soil anomaly covers an area of roughly 800x1600meters (Fig. 1). Within the anomalous zone there may be several parallel NE-trending zones. The soil anomaly consists not only of gold but also arsenic and bismuth.
A trench dug near the mouth of Monday Creek exposed a pair of 0.5m wide, shallow dipping shears with vein quartz and silicified schist which returned samples ranging in grade from 5-16g/t Au with >10000ppm As, 10-100ppm Bi, and 1-4ppm Te (Table 1). The West Tanana project has potential for a stacked, Pogo type vein system. Work in 2006 will focus on defineing the vein system target in the Monday Creek area as well as assessing a number of other outboard targets in preparation for an aggressive drill program in 2007.
Figure 1: Distribution of gold in soils
and rocks at the Monday Creek prospect
in the West Tanana District. |
Figure 2: Stream Sediment Anomalies
in the West Tanana Area |
Table 1: Rock samples with >1ppm gold from Monday Creek Area |
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