Livengood, located about 60 miles north of Fairbanks, is the company's “anchor project,” according to ITH president and chief executive officer Jeff Pontius. It's the most advanced and well-defined project of the company's 10 central Alaska exploration properties.

The Livengood property has also produced two new geological discoveries this year. Earlier this summer, International Tower announced discovery of a new style of sediment-hosted high grade gold mineralization, believed to be the first of its kind discovered in Alaska.

The new style of sediment-hosted mineralization overlies the well-known mineralized lower grade volcanic units. The best intersections to date include two, 29-foot intersections grading more than 0.289 ounces per ton of rock, according to an August tour briefing package by International Tower.

And in late September, International Tower announced that drilling work intersected a new zone of gold mineralization in the overlying upper plate rocks, previously believed to be devoid of gold. One drill sample provided a 20-foot intersection that graded 0.078 ounces of gold per ton of rock.

“We had figured the upper plate rocks to be dead, a seal or cap for the mineralization below,” Pontius said. “But we found cross cutting dikes that carried significant mineralization into these upper plate rocks, which is very encouraging for expanding the deposit into this package of rocks.”

Now, all three major rock types at Livengood have been found to contain gold mineralization, resulting in a mineralized system that is “totally unconstrained with potential to expand significantly beyond the central target area,” International Tower said in its Sept. 27 press release.

Livengood will remain the company's key focus in 2008, Pontius said, with a planned $8 million budget to include a 150,000-foot resource definition and expansion drilling program. The company plans to have two reverse circulation and one core drill rig working on site, with a goal of completing 150 drill holes, Pontius said.

Also noteworthy, the sediment-hosted mineralization is near the surface, it is highly oxidized and is generally twice as rich of gold grade as the deeper, volcanic-hosted mineralization, Pontius said.

“The shallow sediment-hosted mineralization may have potential for a near-term mining target. As we get more information, we are continuing to assess that.”

Accessible via the Elliott Highway, Livengood consists of leased mining claims covering a 17-square-mile block of land. Historical and recent placer gold production in the Livengood district is about 500,000 ounces.

Initial work targeted a gold anomaly identified by surface soil samples over a 1.2 mile by 1.8 mile swath. Previous drilling in the volcanic rock has yielded wide, contiguous intervals of mineralization, averaging 240 feet in thickness with an average gold grade ranging from 0.016 ounces to 0.048 ounces of gold per ton, according to International Tower's briefing. The best intervals include 311 feet grading 0.051 ounces of gold per ton and 257 feet averaging 0.035 ounces per ton. International Tower has targeted this zone as a potential bulk tonnage deposit.

International Tower also produced significant exploration success at its Terra high-grade gold deposit in the southwestern portion of the Alaska Range, near Rainy Pass. Access is by air - fixed wing aircraft that can handle the gravel, 2,100-foot airstrip built on glacial-deposited rock near the Hartman River, about 125 miles west-northwest of Anchorage.

In late September, the company released drill results from the first 11 of 15 drill holes completed at Terra during the summer.

“Results confirm the extensive nature of the gold mineralization, with every hole intersecting the main vein and many intersecting multiple subsidiary gold bearing veins in the hanging wall and footwall,” the company said.

In addition to “outlining a consistent and well-mineralized main vein structure,” work at Terra has identified a “large number of potentially very significant gold bearing subsidiary veins,” some of which are exceptionally high-grade, the company said in the press release.

Some of those high-grade results from this summer include a nearly 2-foot intersection grading 1.39 ounces of gold per ton of rock and a 1.6 foot section that graded 1.965 ounces of gold per ton of rock.

This summer's season also included drilling three holes on the Ice Vein target, a little less than two miles south of the main Ben Vein that has been the focus of exploration at Terra. Assay results from the Ice drilling work are still pending. International Tower did say in its Sept. 24 press release that the Ice vein system “was intersected in all three holes and a number of the veins contained visible gold in the core.”

Including leased and staked land, International Tower currently holds 45.5-square-miles of land in the Terra block, centered on a series of gold-bearing bonanza quartz veins initially discovered by outcrops on the side of steeply sloping mountains. Surface mineralization is so rich that the original claim staker continues to hack out ore by hand for his summer prospecting work.

International Tower's budget for this year's summer exploration work at Terra was $2.2 million, part of the company's $7.5 million spending in Alaska. The company will be working on a resource estimate for Terra this winter, Pontius said. “Terra is a very encouraging project that we will be looking to expand and advance toward production.”

Already, the company has completed the initial phase of environmental characterization study at Terra, which includes collecting baseline water data and flora and fauna assessments, according to the press release.