Well, looking back, and that NR was last August (2006), it should be, as the (fairly good) results out of that area have been coming steadily since that time.
The trouble with ITF, is it has always been a bit of a shaggy dog story. Promoted by Barr from the get go as a potential Fort Knox he had several US geos working on it since about 1996, through lacklustre markets and distinct lack of interest in the North-North and a really a bland-to-no-interest in the BC/West Coast in general. It was hard to believe the Fort Knox story itself a scant 5 miles away, as Fort Knox itself was never a play, being US based and 'impossibly' low grade (though it makes fair money by the oz). As well, no firm lines had been drawn to show that the geology, grade, and extensions of ITF were at all in the large-large low grade category. For that reason, and for the Bre-X, gold price dive thingie, the play languished gradually, like an olde horse leading his cart clip-clop clip-clop to the golden glue factory for the last time.
But now I rate the horse as 'back'. Every time the reader licks a stamp, the glue from the ghost of the ITF Dobbin starts to taste more and more like a gold play. Every time they release an explo intersection, trench or what have you, the results compare very favourably with stuff anywhere. On the other hand, really advanced 3-drill results with diagrams of expanding lenses and tonnage figures do not seem to my mind to be on the tablature. They are percussion drilling and bulk sampling but it does not yet have that blow-by-blow flavour of your fave prizefight. No one, it seems is putting on the popcorn or ordering pizza. Is it a play to live off the avails of the shareholders or is it another 'stealth mine' in the making, a company builder worth of Francisco gold status?
Perhaps its worth another look-see. I remember having steak dinners with his whole geo crew (Freeman et al) back in the 90's when that play was their horse and Dobbin was still plying the dusky back streets, on golden hooves. They seemed very believable. The FN/ITF gold story resonated but it never got much "street". Even then, although I liked the story, it seemed it never got any bigger. It never went Super Nova Gold.
They claim, under Manz's direction now, that Almaden in Idaho is their core asset, but the Cleary Hill/Gold Summit property has impressive general vein structures over good widths in vein swarms that are higher grade, over distance of one mile in strike. The company is backed by the old Marleau Lemire money. Barr is still chairman. Price is a tad hefy bag at $1.42, but that is probably a good thing. They are bulk sampling Cleary-Golden Summit in AK and have built a 1200 tpd plant. Significantly that old golden sharebuyer old Robbie McEwen, is in there since June of 2007. I don't know what that means but growth is supposed to be the direction once he is on board. He does not seem to be greenmailing anyone.
"Freegold President and C.E.O. Steve Manz stated "With this latest discovery of a new vein swarm on the eastern end of the Cleary Hill system, and the identification to date of multiple 100 to 300 foot wide mineralized zones that have been traced over a minimum of 5,000 feet of strike length, Golden Summit continues to grow as a property capable of hosting large tonnages of bulk mineable gold mineralization. While the shallow drilling and bulk sampling programs are instrumental in building our knowledge base, and while the commencement of our first gold production and cash flow from the property is an ideal way to capitalize on the extensive high grade gold mineralization that we have been steadily discovering at surface, we believe that the true potential of the project will be brought out with the initiation of systematic deeper drilling for resource building purposes that we are intending to commence this fall."
Trenching Areas, Cleary.
"Each structure mined in the bulk-sampling program will be segregated into separate stockpiles at the processing area. The material will be crushed to minus ¼ inch size, and multiple sample cuts will be taken from the crusher discharge. Composite samples will be split to obtain representative samples of the material mined from each location. Following sampling, the mineralized material will be processed using gravity techniques, with the recovered gold sold to generate cash flow."
Really big camp status gold plays like Pogo and Opinaca have failed to resurrect much interest in the investive imagination lately. Pogo was at the wrong time. But I note that Burzynski's fab large low grade Val D'Or Osisko thingie has a hefty bag price but it is not in every 'nvestor's lips. Kent's respectable OP in the same area gets dissed, Troilus is never mentioned and you would think by this thread at least that Virginia gold was on another planet.
Gold is a metal. Not a bad one. It has its ups and downs, but any time you find more than a million ounces or more than a 1/4 ounce per ton, you should listen carefully. You should hear the sound of money rustling.
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