Liberty Star Gold Corp., which has claims on roughly three times the territory controlled by Northern Dynasty Mines Inc. northwest of Iliamna, announced Friday it has begun field work on its "Big Chunk" project.
Officials with the Tucson, Ariz., company said initial work would consist of cutting lines through brush so that geophysical crews can string wire to conduct electrical induced polarization (IP) surveys over various targets. The work will include taking more geochemical samples around anomalies identified last year.
Phil St. George, Liberty vice president for exploration, arrived in Iliamna May 15, along with a helicopter crew, six bush cutters, three geochemical samplers and a supervising geologist and support staff. Additional fieldwork crews are expected to arrive in the next several weeks.
Crews will continue the fieldwork through September, according to a company press release.
Surveys will concentrate on an area named White Sox and then move to other geological anomalies where deposits are thought to exist, the company said.
Liberty Star holds 981 mineral claims covering 237 square miles of territory centered 25 miles northwest of the village of Iliamna.
Liberty's Big Chunk claim borders Northern Dynasty's Pebble project on its northern border, circling the ancient volcanic caldera to meet Pebble's western border. If holdings are viewed as the face of a clock, Northern Dynasty holds the 3 to 6 quadrant, while Liberty holds the rest.
Like Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., the Canadian parent company of the American corporation, Northern Dynasty Mines Inc., Liberty Star is a "junior mining company."
Juniors are generally groups of investors who hire geologists to find deposits that could be commercially lucrative, and then partner or sell out to "major" mining companies that actually run mine projects.
