Alaska Gold Mines

NovaGold Reports Progress on Galore Creek Prefeasibility Study

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- NovaGold Resources Inc. (TSX:NG)(NYSE Amex:NG) announces significant advancement towards completion of the prefeasibility study on its Galore Creek copper-gold-silver project ("Project") located in northwestern British Columbia. The study is being prepared by Galore Creek Mining Corporation ("GCMC"), owned equally by subsidiaries of NovaGold Resources Inc. ("NovaGold") and Teck Resources Limited ("Teck").

Completion of the prefeasibility study is expected by the end of July 2011 and AMEC Americas Limited, an independent supplier of engineering and project management services, is concurrently preparing a National Instrument 43-101 compliant technical report. Upon receipt of the technical report, NovaGold will announce the results and file it on SEDAR and EDGAR within 45 days of the announcement.

The partners have approved a $30.5-million budget to carry out further work on the Project during the remainder of 2011. Planned work includes infill drilling to convert inferred mineral resources to measured and indicated categories, geotechnical drilling on the tunnel alignment and geotechnical drilling to confirm open pit slopes in areas targeted for conversion of inferred mineral resources. GCMC will also complete further environmental and engineering work in preparation for feasibility level studies.

"Completion of the prefeasibility study will be an important milestone as we work with Teck to optimize the Galore Creek project," said Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, President and CEO of NovaGold. "Galore Creek is one of the most significant copper-gold projects in the world. Its timely development is important for all stakeholders, including Federal and Provincial governments as well as First Nation communities of northwestern British Columbia."

During the second quarter of 2011, Teck completed its funding requirements of $373 million to earn its 50% interest in GCMC. The Project will move forward with Teck and NovaGold equally funding further Project development.

About the Galore Creek Project

Located in northwestern British Columbia, Galore Creek is one of the world's largest undeveloped copper-gold-silver deposits, owned equally by wholly-owned subsidiaries of NovaGold and Teck Resources and operated by GCMC. The Galore Creek property comprises 293,840 acres (118,900 hectares) of British Columbia mineral claims located within Tahltan Traditional Territory in northwest British Columbia. The project has received a high level of support from local communities, First Nation groups and the British Columbia and Alaska Governments.

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Two guys with a recirculating mini highbanker got 2 1/2 oz in 2 weeks and the guy that has been dredging 5 feet away for 3 weeks has got only 1 ounce. A couple guys with a $5000 triple sluice dredge have been working a hole up the creek for 3 weeks and have less than 1/8 oz and then there was the day I found a glory hole and panned out an 1/8oz in just a couple hours! Apparently the dredger folks who figure out that they have to get below the permafrost do the best and toil endlessly to get there. The hazard of working in close to the banks is that yards of overburden can cave in any time and usually does just as they have cleaned out the last dumping. The rains make any type of workings tough with rising waters and tons of muskeg dumping into the creek from the banks and tailings of others operations filling your workings. I had to pull my dams out of my dredge site to get rid of the tailings so I can get back in and prep it for another dredge assault on the "virgin" creek bed. I sampled my favorite non-producing feature a few days ago and got quite a lot of lead in some sticky red clay. Having not seen lead before, I got it down to a small amount of black sand and took it home for closer examination. The black sand was in two different colored streaks that stayed separated. I looked at the lighter colored streak under 25X magnification, and it was composed mainly of microscopic grains of gold. During the months that the (normally dry) creek has significant flow, the flour gold must be small enough that it remains suspended in the flow until it hangs up in the clay deposits. I probably lost most of the flour gold when I was trying to pan it, as the clay was very heavy and sticky, and nearly impossible to pan. I think that there might be a worthwhile amount of gold in that clay if I can just figure out a way to separate the two, and there's plenty more clay where I sampled. My theory is that the ultra-fine particles of gold are weathering out of an ore deposit somewhere upstream. There was an old lode claim about 3 miles upstream from where I'm currently sampling, but the claim owner apparently never worked it. He currently has an open placer claim just below that closed lode claim. (I'm still about 2 miles below that open claim.) Anyway, my goal is to find a worthwhile amount of workable gold here in the Verde Valley, no matter how small it is.

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