History
Initially discovered in the 1860s
The Tamarack Gold Property is a high grade former gold producer in the Tobacco Root Mountains of south western Montana. It is located near the town of Sheridan and sits in the advanced stage of underground exploration and development. The Tamarack property has been steadfastly identified as an area containing a definite volume of high-grade gold deposits. A pre-NI 43-101 compliant engineering report (Whitney & Whitney Inc.) suggests that the property could in fact hold between 125,000 ounces to 630,000 ounces of gold, with 4.2 million tonnes of material needing to be processed.
Over the past 150 years, The Tamarack Property has been worked on intermittently, both on the surface and underground. The most dedicated undertaking of the property was carried out from 1927 to 1937 by Mr. Alexander Leggat, B.S., E.M., a professional mining engineer. He surveyed past assays and the geology of the mine and in his final report in 1937 conveyed that gold occurred freely and in a pure form in the rock. More recent studies have reported similar findings; an earlier evaluation of the mine conducted by the management, engineering and geological services firm Whitney & Whitney Inc. (W&W), identified an exposed surface area extending over 1,000 feet in length, up to 500 feet in width with a thickness ranging from 30 to 100 feet that held a possible average grade of 0.10 to 0.15+ gold ounces per ton (opt). Hundreds of samples were analyzed; both on the surface and underground, and results determined gold assays of up to 0.6 opt.
At present, surveys have revealed the presence of rich, hi-grade gold assays (showing between 2 ounces 16 ounces of gold per tonne) located in veins of the crystalline limestone within the mine. Gold ore zones have been described as intact laterally and vertically below previous underground workings. Metallurgical work is being conducted to facilitate the gold winning from the concentrates produced from the gravity table and flotation circuit.
Furthermore, Firegold is planning on providing funding for the purpose of expanding current exploration; in the search for additional deposits of gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. There is equally potential for the recovery of base metals, such as copper, zinc and other metals. Relatively unrecorded and unexplored areas underground are being investigated and six (6) potential targets have been identified. The underground decline and branch drifts are working in and around the smallest identified magnetic target with encouraging results.
The gold findings and the expanded exploration strategy both highlight that despite an extended mining history. The Tamarack property is still showing significant potential for future metal and mineral detection. In such aims, an initial work program to up-grade the mine plant has been designed to reach, and effectively process, over 100 tons of material per day. Currently, the project has a capacity to produce material at 60 tons per day from which gold can be extracted. The program is designed to enhance the control of the mined material; this will greatly eliminate the dilution factor of the gold grade. Equally, the program will enable the primary crushing and the ball mills as well as gravity and flotation recovery systems to be more efficient, resulting in higher gold recovery. The program will allow operations to adopt a maximum work schedule where processing will occur three shifts per day, five days a week at 100 tons daily, the mine operating at full scale production in 2013. Based on this system, the Tamarack property could see daily production increases from a 100 tons up to 300 tonnes per day