Livengood feeder zone found: gold deposit enlarged, spending increased.

• Author: Liles, Patricia
• Position: MINING

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

A little less than 100 years ago, gold was discovered by prospectors exploring tributaries of the Tolovana River, about 70 miles northwest of Fairbanks in Alaska's Interior. Named after one of the initial prospectors, the Livengood gold strike that started in 1914 has been called Alaska's last great gold rush. Today, while few manmade structures are left from the remote gold rush community that sprung up in the Interior, a large lode gold resource remains buried in the mining district.

The prospecting effort to find and delineate that hard rock gold resource has grown steadily in recent years. This year, Livengood exploration employed dozens of people in both summer and winter drilling programs.

"Livengood is an exciting project and will be a significant contributor to the economy of Alaska," said Rich Hughes, development specialist for the Alaska Commerce Department's Office of Economic Development--Minerals Development and co-author of the Alaska Mineral Industry report. "ITH advises that this project should go to production in about 2017, if successful, so this is significant."

LIVENGOOD EXPLORATION

The hard rock gold resource at Livengood is currently estimated to contain more than 10 million ounces of gold, based on drilling work completed through this spring by International Tower Hill Mines Ltd., a junior exploration company based in Vancouver and Denver.

ITH Mine's president and CEO, Jeff Pontius, has led hard rock exploration efforts at Livengood since 2003, when he put together a 17-square-mile block of leased mining claims in the historic mining district and started modern, lode-exploration work.

Back then, Pontius was working as the North American exploration manager for AngloGold Ashanti, a major mining company that was prospecting several areas in Interior Alaska.

In 2006, AngloGold opted to pull back from exploration in North America and vended its Alaska properties to International Tower Hill Mines. Pontius moved to ITH Mines, along with two other AngloGold exploration employees.

Since then, ITH Mines has concentrated exploration efforts on the Livengood property, located just off the Elliott Highway and next to the trans-Alaska oil pipeline corridor.

In 2007, geologists found a new style of sediment-hosted, high-grade-gold mineralization at Livengood, believed to be the first of its kind discovered in Alaska.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Drilling work in 2008 and in early 2009 continued to grow the...