The decision by Kaminak Gold Corp. to reroute its proposed road access to the Coffee gold property south of Dawson City could be good for the mining industry, for the Yukon.

So says the company’s vice-president of exploration.

Tim Smith told the audience at this week’s Opportunities North conference the decision was not driven by financial considerations.

It was made because it made sense, particularly with the full support of the Tr’ondek Hwech’in and the City of Dawson, he said.

Smith said while financial considerations were not the motivating force, at the end of day, Kaminak expects it will cost less to go south from Dawson rather than north from Carmacks.

The Carmacks route was estimated at $35 million in the company’s preliminary economic assessment completed last year, but the company believes the road south from Dawson will cost less, he told the audience.

Smith said the distance from Dawson is 190 kilometres, but 160 kilometres already snake their way through the gold fields.

The 30 kilometres of new road will have to cross the Yukon and Stewart rivers with ice roads in the winter and barges in the summer, he pointed out. He cited the Minto Mine as a successful example of using ice roads and barges.

Smith noted the mine would not require the same level of truck traffic as the Minto Mine because it would not be shipping out concentrate, as the company plans to pour its gold bars on site and fly them out by airplane.

The road traffic would be minimum, about four to six trucks a day to service the mine, he pointed out.

Smith explained the company was originally looking at the Carmacks option that involved using the existing Freegold Road and going further north along the same route being proposed for the Casino property – which would become the largest mine in Yukon history if the project goes forward.

The company looked at coming in from the Minto Mine, or even Beaver Creek, but coming in from the west meant dealing with the White River, he said.

Smith said at the end of the day, even with the additional time and expense of trucking the supplies all the way north to Dawson, then south to the Coffee property, the route through the gold fields made the most sense.

From a general perspective, he told the audience, the route selection is beneficial for the territory.

If and when the road to the Casino property is built, the two routes together will provide access to remote regions of the Tintina Trench, the hot bed of mineral resources through the Yukon and into Alaska – which includes the Minto Mine, he said.

“You can imagine the stimulation to exploration.”

Smith said the Dawson route means less environmental impact, because there are already 160 kilometres of existing road, and going south from Dawson instead of north from Carmacks avoids the range of the Klaza caribou herd.

Following last year’s completion of the positive economic assessment, Kaminak gold embarked on its feasibility study, he explained.

Smith said the feasibility study – paper you can take to the bank for financing – will be completed within the next five months.

If all is good, he told the audience, Kaminak will have its Coffee project filed with the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board next spring.

Smith said the company is estimating an 11-year mine life, with an existing resource of two million ounces of gold, a quarter of which will be mined in the first two years followed by an average production of 167,000 ounces per year.

Last year’s “robust” economic assessment was based on a gold price of $1,250 per ounce, he told the audience. (Gold was at $1,142 this morning.)

Smith did offer the audience somewhat of an apology for the originality of the names given to the ore deposits the company has identified next to the Coffee property – the Double Double, Expresso, Cappuccino, Arabica....

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