Work History

Staked as Ida cl 1-120 (YA32962) in Aug/79 by Rio Tinto Canadian Exploration Ltd (Riocanex), following a program of regional silt sampling refered to as the Aurora Gold Project. Riocanex carried out reconnaissance prospecting and geochemical soil and rock sampling later that year and carried out property wide soil geochemical sampling and geological mapping, followed by rock chip geochemical sampling in 1980. In 1981 the company contracted McCrory Holdings of Whitehorse to carry out a program of blast and hand trenching, which included detailed geological mapping and chip sampling of the trenches. Additional property scale rock chip geochemical sampling was also carried out at that time.
Restaked as Oro cl 1-28 (YA88924) in Feb/87 by Noranda Exploration Company Ltd, which then staked Ida cl 1-23 (YA89419) in Jul/87 before carrying out a brief program of geochemical rock chip and soil sampling, minor prospecting and geological mapping later that year to confirm previous results. In 1988 Noranda carried out geological mapping, geochemical rock and soil sampling and magnetometer surveying and the following year the company carried out hand trenching, geochemical rock chip sampling, prospecting in Jul/89 and staked Ida cl 24 and 25 (YB23631) in Aug/89.
The claims were subsequently transferred to Hemlo Gold Inc, which optioned them to Orinoco Gold Inc in the spring of 1995. Orinoco carried out geochemical rock and soil sampling in August and Sep/95.
Mar-West Resources Ltd staked Mag cl 1-24 (YB67710) 7.5 km to the west in Nov/95.
In mid 1999 NovaGold Resources acquired a 100% interest in the Oro and Ida claims and carried out geological mapping and geochemical rock sampling later in 1999 and in 2000.

Capsule Geology

Discovered during regional followup by silt sampling of areas anomalous in mercury detected during an earlier Geological Survey of Canada silt sampling program. Disseminated gold occurs within a 2 by 1.8 km area of bleached and silicified rocks of the Ordovician to Lower Devonian aged Road River Group, which includes calcareous grey shale and siltstone, grey chert and siliceous shale and black graphitic shale. The sedimentary rocks which been intruded by a number of small stocks, dykes and plugs of Cretaceous aged hornblende monzonite, have been hydrothermally altered adjacent to the intrusive bodies as evidenced by argillic and silicic alteration of the sediments.
Early work by Riocanex identified a 5 by 1 km area, in the center of their claim block, anomalous in As, Sb and Hg. Grid soil and chip sampling showed that gold in the altered area averages 50 ppb compared with a background of about 5 ppb in unaltered areas. Chip samples over 800 by 300 m within the altered area averaged 0.5 g/t Au with up to 5.0 g/t Ag. The best Au values are related to most highly silicified areas and show the best correlation with areas that are also anomalous with mercury and antimony. Arsenic values are more widespread. Trenching within the altered area in 1981 revealed two separate zones, the Trail-Cairn Peak zone and the Notch zone (1 km north-northeast and 1.5 km east-northeast of the occurrence location) within which peak values exceeded 5.0 g/t Au over widths up to 8 m. Subsequently, these two zones collectively became known as the North Zone.
Sampling by Noranda from 1987 to 1989 lead to the discovery of a second mineralized zone (South Zone, later refered to as the Central Zone) which covers a 600 by 300 m area in the centre of the property, approximately 1 km east of the location occurrence marker. Good gold values were obtained from samples of both intrusive and hornfelsed sedimentary country rock, returning anomalous values over similar widths as those obtained from the North Zone. Continuous chip samples across the north mineralized zone returned an average of 276 ppb Au across 95 m, including 600 ppb Au over 5 m. Across the south (now central) zone, samples averaged 505 ppb Au across 65 m including 3 280 ppb Au across 5 m of tourmaline-bearing, quartz-veined hornfels. This sampling also indicated that mineralization has locally been remobilized into anastomising faults and late-stage fracture filling quartz-veining.
In contrast to earlier work on the claims which focused on the intrusive-sedimentary contact, the 1995 work by Orinoco targeted the intrusions in an attempt to locate zones of alteration or sheeted veins within the intrusions themselves. Sampling of the southern most intrusive stock on the property, underexplored until this time, yielded significant gold values up to 9 720 ppb Au from grab sampling of weakly veined quartz monzonite.
NovaGold¿s sampling confirmed the presence of widespread mineralization associated with the intrusions in the North and Central Zones and returned numerous anomalous Au values consistent with those obtained by previous operators. No additional areas of mineralization were identifed during sampling by the company in 1999 and 2000.

References

GORDEY, S.P. and MAKEPEACE, A.J., 2003. Yukon Digital Geology, version 2.0, S.P Gordey and A.J. Makepeace (comp); Geological Survey of Canada, Open File 1749 and Yukon Geological Survey, Open File 2003-9(D).

NORANDA EXPLORATION COMPANY LTD, Apr/88. Assessment Report #092149 by H. Copland.

NORANDA EXPLORATION COMPANY LTD, Jan/89. Assessment Report #092680 by G. MacKay.

NORANDA EXPLORATION COMPANY LTD, Jan/90. Assessment Report #092794 by J. Duke.

ORINOCO GOLD INC, Oct/95. YEIP Report 395-071 by R.A. Doherty and J. vanRanden.

NOVAGOLD RESOURCES INC, Aug/2000. Assessment Report #094287 by C. Schulze and G. Johnson.

NOVAGOLD RESOURCES INC, Aug/2001. Assessment Report #094288 by G. Johnson, D. Brownlee and C. Schulze.

RIO TINTO CANADIAN EXPLORATION LTD, Mar/80. Assessment Report #090548 by J. McClintock.

RIO TINTO CANADIAN EXPLORATION LTD, Mar/81. Assessment Report #090781 by A. Winkler and J. McClintock.

RIO TINTO CANADIAN EXPLORATION LTD, Dec/81. Assessment Report #090908 by J. McClintock.

YUKON EXPLORATION 1988, p. 233; 1989, p. 137

YUKON EXPLORATION AND GEOLOGY 1981, p. 234.

YUKON GEOLOGY AND EXPLORATION 1979-80, p. 282.