1. September 5, 2013 News Release Comments 
2. Overview and Photo Update  
3. What Does It All Mean?
4. Comparison of Lone Star to other world-class gold deposits 
5. Yukon Geological Survey, Field Trip Notes, "Dawson Rocks" Conference, August 8, 2013
   by Jim Mortensen, PhD  
6. Preliminary Technical Update - Advances in understanding of Lone Star mineralization in 2013.  T. Liverton, PhD
7. Third Party Publications
8. Timeline History of the Lone Star Property  

1.  September 5, 2013 News Release Comments

• The discovery that the higher grade orogenic vein system contains structures that are both steeply dipping (previously recognized in 2006) as well as shallow dipping. Their significance was recognized during the 2012 excavation of the Boulder Lode open cut..  2012 results from the Boulder Lode excavation confirmed significant gold of up to 43.1 g/t Au in grab samples from shallow-dipping veins.
• Lithogeochemical analysis demonstrated that stratigraphic units within the pyritic schist package can be recognized and mapped and that one of these units (GBS1) contains up to several grams per tonne disseminated gold. This advancement was made possible by research and fieldwork by academics, scientific consultants and technical staff from 2011 to 2013.

 

Excavation of the Boulder Lode

The 2012 excavation of the Boulder Lode on Lone Star Ridge shows that a shallow northeast dipping, stacked D₄ vein system is dominant (not the steeply-dipping D₄ veins as previously thought)..

• Boulder Lode open cut results of 1.86 g/t over 6 by 25 m (horizontal projection), including 9.43 g/t over 2.5 by 4.2 m of the excavation. Individual samples show a high of 43.1 g/t Au in the quartz veins and 4.1 g/t in the interstitial schist host rock (GBS1).
• Nugget Zone mapping, extension, grab samples of up to 179 g/t Au with 78 g/t Ag and recognition of a possible trend 1.1 km to the Buckland Zone.
• Violet Ridge trend advancement with high sample of 47.4 g/t Au and 894 g/t Ag and evidence for a 4 km strike length in soil samples.
• Boy Zone 400 m by 900 m soil anomaly and recognition of further under-explored areas of the property.    

Colluvial and Placer gold workings being mined on the Buckland Zone 

WORK PERFORMED

During the late-season exploration work of 2011 two main efforts were started: the excavation of a 4m vertical face in the region of the bottom of trench 87-16 at the northern known extension of the Boulder Lode and rock sampling from pits dug every 60-100m along the Lone Star ridge. The first work investigated sampling techniques based on structure rather than un-oriented chip samples and the latter work followed the ridge road for a total of 11.7 km (from the first hairpin bend above Grand Forks to midway between Eldorado dome and the Calder Summit roadhouse), with collection of C-horizon soils and rock for geochemistry and mapping. Four gold anomalies and a base-metal anomalous schist unit were found by this geochemistry (Fig. 1).

The 2012 work programme involved drilling of four Diamond drill holes between Lone Star and Pioneer, the cleaning-out of the Boulder Lode opencut and detailed channel sampling of the faces, some new trenching and surface sampling at the Nugget zone, re-mapping and sampling around the Violet mine and prospecting combined with soil sampling between the mine and the 310 zone prospect. The unsampled area between the two 2006-7 trenches at the JF zone south of Gay Gulch was trenched and samples cut, defining some interesting gold mineralization. Re-examination of historical trenching south of Oro Grande revealed visible gold in quartz veins.  Collection over a more detailed grid of soils at the head of Little Blanche Creek defined a significant gold anomaly (the 'Boy' Zone) (Fig. 2).

INTRODUCTION: SUMMARY OF STRUCTURAL GEOLOGY

In order to understand the mineralization at the Lone Star ridge, the structural geology of the Klondike was deduced through careful mapping. The work carried out by Klondike Gold Corp and Klondike Star Mineral Corp. from 2004-2008 and particularly the research by Doug MacKenzie, Dave Craw and Jim Mortensen had elucidated the structural geology of the region. The volcanic flows, volcanic-derived sediments and subvolcanic intrusions that formed the Permian volcanic arc that became the Klondike Schist have been subjected to four episodes of folding. The first two events D1-2 folded the rocks isoclinally (i.e., through 180�) and except for one notable rock exposure at 27 Pup had almost completely obliterated any original bedding in the sediments. The prominent layering ('foliation') now seen is a metamorphic layering (S2). The first two fold generations were produced under a completely ductile regime deep in the earth's crust during ocean basin closure and transport of the island arc towards the ancient North American continent. Subsequent deformation consisted of a further ductile D3 folding that was coincident with stacking of the Klondike Schist with Nasina Series sediments by thrust faulting during the emplacement of the oceanic terranes onto the continental margin. The stack of thrust sheets was further folded (D4) with uplift of the Klondike schist into shallower crustal levels into a brittle deformation regime during mountain-building in Jurassic times.  

At least during the D2-D4 deformation events there were quartz veins emplaced along brittle fractures in the folded rocks. It has been demonstrated that only the last event (D4) of veining introduced significant gold grades. Two types of veins that carry gold have been recognised: those which are parallel to D4 fold axial planes (i.e., they divide the folds symmetrically), which were recognised during the 2004-2007 mapping and which are seen over much of the Klondike schist; and a set of extension-related, shallow-dipping veins exposed at Lone Star, only one which had been documented in earlier work (MacKenzie et al., 2008). The axial-planar veins were seen to contain significant gold and other base metals in their immediate selvedges (over, say 10cm maximum distance from the quartz). Prior to the 2011 work the importance of the shallow-dipping veins was not recognised, but the 2012 work has shown that this set of structures was the main grade control on the Boulder Lode mineralization.

WORK BY LONESTAR AND KLONDIKE GOLD CORP. 2011-12

Apart from regional exploration (Nugget, Violet, 310 zone and 'Boy' prospects), the most significant results were obtained from work around the Lone Star-Pioneer area. Diamond drilling to greater depths than previously attempted in the area demonstrated that gold occurs in the lower sheet of the Lone Star thrust, which passes through the 7 Pup placer claims. An epiphany in understanding the mineralization resulted from excavation performed in late 2011 that exposed a set of flat-dipping extensional quartz veins at the NW extent of the explored Lone Star trend that carried significant gold grades (Fig. 3). That work also demonstrated that 2005-6 chip sampling of the adjacent trench 97-16 had grossly underestimated gold grade at that locality. The cleaning-out of the historic Boulder Lode opencut at Lone Star in 2012 revealed the hitherto unrecognised extent of the low-angle extensional quartz vein development and allowed careful channel sampling of the faces of the workings (Figs. 4 & 5). These D4 veins, plus the intervening schist carry the gold that was mined historically. A 6 x 25m horizontally-projected area (down the � 50� opencut face i.e., at a high angle to the dip of the vein system) was shown to average 1.86 g/t gold. Assays of up to 36 g/t were obtained from samples that crossed quartz veins. Gold occurs in the quartz, in pyritic selvedges to the veins and, at a lower grade, also disseminated in the schist. A tentative interpretation of the extensional quartz vein systems indicates that these may occur in stacks that are repeated vertically every 15m or so. The major local gold-bearing structures are therefore shown to be in flat-lying packages (Fig. 6), not as steeply-dipping structures following the obvious folding of the S2 fabric of the Klondike Schist. D3 and D4 fold interference patterns ('egg-carton' geometry) also have a broad control on gold grades in schist at Lone Star: the dome structures contain higher grade (Fig. 7). The attitude of the shallow-dipping D4 vein packages is only slightly steeper than the dip of the topography towards Victoria Gulch and down-dip erosion of the veins would have provided much of the placer gold in that drainage.

LITHOGEOCHEMISTRY

A further control on mineralization is that the gold-bearing veins are contained within a particular meta-volcanic unit within the Klondike Schist and this 'favourable horizon' may be mapped SE past the Pioneer prospect.   Trace element lithogeochemistry by Prof. Mortensen and Dr. Tim Liverton has shown that the protoliths of the schist in the immediate Lone Star area were dacite / rhyodacite ("quartz muscovite schist"and rhyolite "micaceous quartzite", with more chloritic schist plotting as basaltic andesite on the trace element discriminant diagrams. An ongoing project is to identify lithologic units that may be mapped by their geochemical signature.

SYNGENETIC MINERALIZATION

Base metal sulphides have been intersected as discrete S2-parallel layers, particularly in drill hole 12LS03 (Figs. 8 & 9). Combined soil C-horizon and rock sampling along the ridge road past Eldorado Dome has delineated a base metal (Pb, Ag, Cu, Zn, Bi, Se) anomalous horizon that is a mappable muscovite-rich "silver schist" which is interpreted as being derived from a hydrothermally altered rhyolitic tuff protolith. Some 200m to the northeast, on the side of Eldorado Dome, a quartz-magnetite rock intersected in historic trenching is interpreted by Prof. Jim Mortensen to be a distal oxide-facies exhalative unit.

WORK IN PROGRESS: 2013

The mapping of the Lone Star ridge by Prof. Mortensen and Katie Dodd has been completed.  A map and sections are to be produced during September.  As identified by the lithogeochemistry from 2005 and earlier vintage drill holes, three rock sequences are recognised: a (structurally) lower meta-rhyolite "micaceous quartzite", the quartz-mica schist (meta-dacite to basaltic andesite) of the Boulder Lode and the upper unit that consists of meta rhyolite and felsic, finely laminated schists. This latter unit is correlated with the sequence down the SW side of the ridge and which is intersected in the Klondike Star Buckland drill holes, the core from which has been re-examined. It is interpreted that the micaceous schist unit would lie at a shallow depth (? 150m+) below the surface. The large-scale structure of the Lone Star ridge has been deduced. Further work is recommended to follow fold structure to the SE past Eldorado dome.

Re-mapping and sampling of the Gay Gulch to upper Eldorado area is in progress to evaluate the significance of quartz vein mineralization that yielded visible gold during 2012 fieldwork.