High-Grade Gold Identified On Southeast Alaskan Property

VANCOUVER - Constantine Metal Resources Ltd. has identified a potential source area for the historic Porcupine gold placer mining operation located on Porcupine Creek in southeast Alaska. Gold prospects with high-grade gold sampling results, as described in historical government reports, have been identified on Constantine’s 100% leased lands, located about 8 kilometers east of the Company’s advanced-stage Palmer Cu-Zn-Au-Garfield MacVeigh, President, said, “After the successful spinout of the Company’s gold assets into HighGold Mining Inc. last year, the Company has made a decision to evaluate new opportunities for gold in addition to its flagship massive sulphide base metal Palmer project. We have identified several key gold prospects on our 100% leased lands. The prospects, as described in historical government reports, have many occurrences of high-grade gold that have received very limited investigation for their economic potential, in a geological environment with similarities to the large, past producing Alaska Juneau (AJ) Mine in Juneau, Alaska, located 100 miles to the south-southeast of Palmer. We look forward to evaluating these previously untested areas of prospective high-grade gold mineralization”.  

Golden Eagle Prospect – A total of 112 samples from the Golden Eagle prospect area were collected by the United States Bureau of Mines (USBM) over approximately 2,000 feet along McKinley Creek in 1984-1985. Twelve samples were collected from the visible gold-bearing discovery vein, referred to as the Vug vein, with various sample types of the Vug vein ranging from nil to 531 g/t gold. The Vug vein is described as a quartz-pyrite-pyrrhotite-sphalerite vein that cuts a 11 to 15 foot-wide, tan, silica-carbonate altered mafic dyke. A 10-foot chip sample across the host mafic dyke containing local quartz stringers reported 5.15 g/t gold. The altered mafic dykes are hosted in the Porcupine slates, a dark gray, pyrite rich, micaceous, carbonaceous slate with minor siltstone, limestone, and pebble conglomerate interbeds.

Sixty-four samples were collected downstream of the Vug vein (towards the placer operations) over a 650 foot distance with values that ranged from nil to 182.13 g/t gold.  Thirty-six samples were collected upstream from the Vug vein over about 1,350 feet and reported overall lower gold grades ranging from nil to 5.54 g/t gold.

McKinley Creek Falls Prospect is located along McKinley Creek approximately 2,400 feet downstream of the Golden Eagle prospect. Three grab samples collected by the USBM  returned 1.37 g/t Au, 1.67 g/t Au, and 8.96 g/t Au and are described as discontinuous quartz-sphalerite veins or silicified bands in altered mafic dikes and, to a lesser extent, in the black slate and limestone. Two samples of quartz-sphalerite veins contained 9.5% zinc and 13.4% zinc. A 2.5-foot-long chip sample across a limy silicified band in slate contained 24.83 g/t gold and 280 ppm zinc (Still et al. 1991).

The Porcupine gold field was discovered in 1898 by prospectors working as supply packers on the Dalton trail, an alternative route to the Klondike gold rush from the more famous Chilkoot and White passes. The Porcupine Creek area was the site of considerable placer mining activity between 1898 and 1936 with small operations still active in the area today, including placer mining on McKinley Creek. The area is reported as one of the most important placer districts in southeastern Alaska.  Minimum estimated production from sparse records through to 1985 are reported as approximately 80,000 ounces of gold. It was not until 1983 that surface discoveries by a local Haines prospector immediately upstream from the Porcupine placer operations provided a probable source area for the Porcupine placer gold. The gold prospects are well documented by the USBM (Still, 1989 and Still et al.,1991).

Although the rocks cannot be correlated directly, the geological environment of the gold prospects have similarities with the AJ Mine in Juneau that yielded 3.5 million ounces of gold and 2.2 million ounces of silver from the late 1800’s until the mine closed in 1944. Surface and underground exploration at the AJ Mine by Echo Bay Mines Ltd. in the 1980’s established a geological inferred resource estimate of 100,000,000 tons with a grade of 0.04 ounces/ton gold (Redman et al, 1989). The AJ Mine was characterized by narrow discontinuous quartz veins and stringers from a few inches to a foot or two in width and several tens of feet in length (Spencer, 1906) mainly in the dark slate/phyllites associated with brownish, highly altered mafic intrusives. Where the narrow quartz veins and stringers were sufficiently concentrated, they could be bulk mined from underground.

Summer field work is planned to re-sample the gold prospects and evaluate the geological setting of the gold mineralization. Surface geological work will evaluate the structural and stratigraphic setting and distribution of altered mafic dykes which appear to be controls for the gold mineralization. The work will be supported with prospecting, soil sampling and trenching to define targets for drilling.