 | | |
Ogopogo Gold Project, Alaska
Target | Project Summary | Detailed Property Description | Figures | Related News Releases | Photo Gallery
Target
- Tintina Gold Belt intrusive related gold deposit.
- High grade Pogo look-alike (5.6 million ounce, 0.52 oz. Au/ton).
Back to Top
Project Summary
Copper Ridge's 100% owned Ogopogo gold project is located in east-central Alaska, in the Goodpaster Mining District, 150 km southeast of Fairbanks, in the heart of the Tintina Gold Belt. It is just four kilometers from the Sumitomo-Teck Pogo deposit. Production is underway, with the first gold pour in early 2006. The mine will be producing between 350,000 and 500,000 ounces of gold per year for its 10 year mine life. Meanwhile, new discoveries within the Pogo property suggest the potential to extend mine life.
Copper Ridge has completed geological and geochemical exploration programs on its Ogopogo property, with results as outlined below.
Back to Top
Detailed Property Description - Ogopogo Gold Project, Alaska
Copper Ridge holds a 100% interest in 7 mining claims and various prospecting sites in east central Alaska. Currently, the Ogopogo project consists of 114 State of Alaska mining claims covering 8,040 acres. The Company's interest is subject to a 0.5% NSR royalty owned by the original locators.
The Ogopogo project is described in a report titled "Geology and Mineralization of the Ogopogo Lode Gold Prospect, Goodpaster Mining District, Alaska" dated June 20, 2000, prepared by Curtis J. Freeman, CPG#6901, of Avalon Development Corporation (the "Avalon Report"). The report describes the results of two phases of work done in 1999. Results from the work done in 2000 have been added. The following description of the Ogopogo area is derived from this report.
Location, Access and Geography
The Ogopogo property is situated 90 air miles east of Fairbanks, Alaska in township 4 and 5 south, range 14 and 15 east in the Big Delta B2 and C2 quadrangles. It is contiguous with the northern boundary of the Pogo gold project held by joint venture partners Teck Corp. and Sumitomo Metal Mining and Sumitomo Corp.
Access to the area is via helicopter at the present time. The area is located approximately 3 miles from the road head that accesses to the 5.5 million ounce Pogo gold deposit.
The area consists of forested hills ranging in elevation from 1500 feet to 4000 feet.
Previous History
In 1979 through 1981 tin-tungsten exploration programs in the Salcha and Goodpaster Districts were undertaken by various companies. It was during this period that initial exploration work was conducted on what has become the Pogo deposit. In 1981 a grass roots exploration program succeeded in delineating a number of areas with anomalous metal values, including a 2,000-foot by 4,000-foot gold-arsenic soil anomaly above what is now the Pogo gold deposit. In 1994, diamond drilling was conducted and the first drill hole intercepted 25 feet grading 0.488 oz/t gold in a blind quartz vein hosted in gneissic country rock. In mid-1997 Teck entered into a joint venture with Sumitomo on the project. In early 2000 a resource of 5.6 million ounces of gold grading 0.525 oz/ton of gold, was announced. An underground bulk sampling program has been completed.
On the Ogopogo project, two phases of work were completed in 1999 and a third phase in 2000. In 1999, Phase I steam sediment and coarse fraction sampling revealed weak to strong gold mineralization across the southern part of the project with four sample sites above 100 parts per billion ("ppb") gold. Stream sediment geochemistry also shows the block to be anomalous in arsenic, copper, tellurium and bismuth. The strongest anomalies lie in the southern and western portions of the block. Anomalous metals detected in the 1999 Phase II soil samples included gold (up to 273 ppb), arsenic, bismuth, lead, antimony and tellurium. Gold and pathfinder element anomalies detected in Phase II work indicate that some of the anomalies are very likely sourced on the Ogopogo land block. Four target areas, the West, Central, East and North grids were identified based on the results of the 1999 work programs. A detailed soil sampling program and prospecting was completed in 2000 over the West and East grids. Several areas with anomalous gold and other pathfinder elements were defined. Specifically, the highest value on the West grid was 125 ppb gold in a sample that also had 336 parts per million arsenic. Other soil samples in the immediate area also had anomalous gold values. Another separate cluster of anomalies on the West grid also returned anomalous gold values, the highest being 51 ppb gold. On the East grid two clusters of anomalous gold values occurred.
Geology and Mineralization
The Ogopogo gold project is located in a highly deformed north-westerly trending belt of Precambrian to Paleozoic schists of the Yukon Tanana Terrain which have been intruded by Cretaceous to Tertiary felsic to intermediate plutons. This belt of rocks is bounded on the north by the Tintina fault and on the south by the Denali fault. Offset along these continental scale right-lateral structures is on the order of 450 km. Rocks between these two structures are cut by conjugate northeast and northwest trending structures at both the district and prospect scales.
The Ogopogo land block is hosted primarily by two rock types. One is a medium to coarse-grained equigranular to porphyritic granodiorite to quartz monzonite of the Goodpaster batholith. A potassium-argon age of 92 million years was collected from this pluton and is comparable to other Tombstone (Tintina Gold Province) suite intrusives associated with gold mineralization elsewhere in Alaska and the Yukon Territory.
The second group of rocks is variably deformed well-banded gneiss and amphibolite-grade schists and quartzites correlative with those which host the 5.5 million ounce Pogo gold deposit to the southwest. These rocks are believed to be part of a large gneiss dome complex centred 20 miles west of the Ogopogo property and offset from it by the regional scale Shaw Creek fault.
The structural fabric of the Ogopogo project area is dominated by the regional scale northeast trending Shaw Creek fault and conjugate northwest trending structures. Less well understood fault orientations include north-northeast and east-west high angle structures and poorly expressed low angle gravity structures.
No significant mineralization has been identified within the Ogopogo claim block. The target is gold within quartz veins as identified in the Pogo deposit or similar to the gold occurrences demonstrated by a number of deposits within the Tintina Gold Province, associated with auriferous Cretaceous intrusions, such as Fort Knox, True North or Ryan Lode.
Proposed Exploration and Development Program
A small soil geochemical program was completed in 2005. Additional sampling has been carried out in 2006. In light of the commencement of production at the Teck Cominco-Sumitomo Pogo gold mine, a mere 4 km away from the Ogopogo property boundary, and the fact that the geological setting of the Ogopogo property is similar to Pogo, the project remains an important Copper Ridge asset.
Back to Top
Figures
|
103 KB, approx. 20 seconds at 56.6Kbps |
Back to Top
Related News Releases
Back to Top
 Visit the Ogopogo Photo Gallery
| |
)
