Ashburton claims are immediately adjacent to the claims controlled by Underworld and approximately 10 kilometres north and slightly east of Golden Saddle. Analysis of the published regional geologic mapping suggests that both areas are hosted by similarly aged metamorphic rocks to those at the Golden Saddle discovery. Work on the Ashburton ground is being directed by David Hedderly-Smith, PhD, PG, who is accompanying the crew in the field. He has done work in similarly aged rocks in east-central Alaska, 100 kilometres to the northwest, off and on since the 1970s. Dr. Hedderly-Smith, a qualified person as defined by N.I. 43-10.

Following a detailed review of last season’s results from the Yukon, Ashburton is now planning a trenching program to be followed by drilling this summer, dependant on results.

On January 7th (see News Release) Ashburton announced the second phase ground results of the past summer's soil sampling program. The first phase of the Ashburton work was completed by a crew from Aurora Geosciences out of Whitehorse in July and August of 2009. Reconnaissance soil lines were surveyed across the company’s block of 21 Au claims adjacent to ground held by Underworld and ten kilometers north-northeast of Underworld’s Golden Saddle discovery. Samples were collected every 50 meters on lines spaced 300 meters apart. Multiple gold soil anomalies, apparently paralleling the mapped geology, were detected on three adjacent soil lines with analyses ranging up to 90 ppb Au.

A second phase of soil sampling at the River Au prospect by the Aurora crew tripled the sampling density to 50-meter centers on lines spaced 100 meters apart in the areas of the earlier anomalies. The in-fill sampling detected several new anomalies ranging up to 95 and 150 ppb Au and expanded the anomalous area to the north and south. A trend of gold anomalies ranging from 25 to 150 ppb Au has now been detected on most of ten parallel lines across some 1100 meters of northerly slope. Individual lines have gold anomalies across as much as 150 meters of sampling, suggesting that multiple structures may be responsible for the soil anomalies.