Maurice Jackson: Joining us for a conversation is the CEO of Millrock Resources Inc. (MRO:TSX.V; MLRKF:OTCQB), Gregory Beischer, along with Gabriel Graf, who works as a consultant for Millrock Resources.
Glad to be speaking with you both today to get shareholders up to date on the latest developments on the 64North Project, which to date, has not produced the results we've been hoping for, but before shareholders get too discouraged, there's a coordinating conjunction that needs to be considered in the narrative, and that is the word "however." Mr. Beischer, take us to Alaska and reintroduce us to the 64North Project.
Gregory Beischer: Sure thing, Maurice. I'm here today in Fairbanks in the central part of our state. I live in Anchorage, but am up here now looking at two of our projects right near Fairbanks, but also 64North is a pretty short trip just down the highway, probably a two-hour drive here from Fairbanks. Below readers will see Fairbanks again, the Goodpaster District in which 64North is situated, also the Goodpaster Mining District, you can see annotated on this slide, and it's part of an overall very large belt of rocks that has a prolific amount of gold stretching from the Yukon Territory across the Canada-U.S. border, and Alaska has a big portion of this Tintina District.
Maurice, you've been following Millrock for a while, so you know that about 18 months ago, we staked a very large tract of State of Alaska mining claims, which are shown below in blue, surrounding the Northern Star Pogo Mine property. The yellow stars indicate places where we know gold occurs at surface. In particular, we've been working mostly this past year on the West Pogo focus area, which is, as the name implies, just to the west of the Pogo Mine. Looking a bit closer, Millrock's claims are shown in the pale blue color. This line here represents the claim boundary between Northern Star Resources, and its Pogo Mine, and Millrock's claim block, and these orange shapes are the ore bodies at Pogo, the gold ore bodies projected through to surface. So contained within those shapes is approximately 10 million ounces of gold, of which roughly four million has so far been mined.
Now, the reason I've invited Gabe to sit in today is because he was previously the exploration superintendent for the Pogo Mine. And so he's very familiar with the geology and metallogeny of Pogo, and additionally, it was Gabriel's work that resulted in the discovery of the Goodpaster deposit. He's the geologist who drilled the discovery hole, which produced some very good grade, and which we now understand Northern Star will be delineating that deposit with a $21 million delineation drilling program. So that's just a short distance from our claim boundary, just over a kilometer away from the boundary.
Now you can see some of the nice thicknesses and grade that was intersected by Gabe and his crew when he was with Northern Star. And in particular, this discovery hole was the one that measures 4 meters in width and contained 67 grams of gold per ton. Maybe that wasn't the very first hole that you drilled, Gabe, but it was the one that sure caught everyone's attention when you made a presentation at the Alaska Miners Association meeting a few years back. And one thing Gabe will comment on in a little bit, Maurice, is that discovery. He'll explain how it was made, and show some of the grade variability that we get.
Readers should note, we started drilling in March on hole #1, but we had no sooner completed and started hole #2 when the pandemic broke out and everything went on pause, and it was June before we could get back. And since then we've drilled hole #4 here was drilled deep, and then hole #5 and hole #6, and then finally, hole #7. And I should say that this has been a joint effort between Millrock and Resolution Minerals, an ASX company, RML. RML is earning its way into our project by funding exploration, and so its technical team is working with Millrock's, including Gabe, whose experience right next door has been very helpful to Millrock.
In our last press release we noted hole #7. This is a view of the general area. You can see the terrain is not too bad, and we've built roads that allow year-round access. And moving on to the next slide, hole #7 hit just what we were looking for, 7-meter thick quartz vein, a zone of veining with pyrite, arsenopyrite and a little bit of pyrrhotite, and these are the earmarks of what Gabe sees in the deposits next door, Pogo Liese zone and the Goodpaster deposit. But as it turns out, there wasn't much gold in this quartz vein, or at least at this particular location.
So a disappointment, but I think it's a case of never stop trying here, and Gabe is going to show us an example of why that is, that we've drilled into a vein which appears much like the Goodpaster deposit or Pogo. And it's certainly possible that we've intersected the right vein, we just are on the edge of it where there's not high-gold grade yet, or we just happened to pierce a spot on the plane of the vein, but didn't have much gold, but certainly, there are good reasons to drill more holes to see if the grade changes. And I'm going to pass it over to Gabe to provide a couple of examples of how that occurs.
Gabriel Graf: Looking at the ASX announcement from September 16, 2019, that Northern Star put out with the discovery of the Goodpaster deposit, there is substantial grade variability within these veins. You can drill a hole and hit very little gold, and then change directions, a couple of hundred feet, and drill another hole and see grade within these deposits. Highlighted are two holes, in black 18-042 was a hole that Northern Star drilled, that hole is -85 was the dip at azimuth of 180 degrees. And if you look at the assay results from 309.7–312.6, they hit 3 meters of 0.4 grams per ton. So not very exciting, but a good thickness vein.
Again, 3 meters, that's a good thickness vein. Northern Star drilled another hole from that same pad, 18-041. And they drilled at the same azimuth, but that just shallowed a hole up slightly. So instead of a -85, they were drilling in -55. And on this hole probably at 259.7, which corresponds with the structure at 309 in the first hole, they hit 1 meter of 17.5 grams per ton. So just within a couple of 100 feet of changing your dip on your hole, you're able to go from 0.4 grams to over half a gram per ton.
To highlight another instance of that, 18-052, highlighted in black above, and 18-047, highlighted in red, drilled from the same pad, similar dips, 18-052 was a -83 and at 547 meters downhole, they hit 3.4 meters, 0.2 grams per ton. In 18-047, a slightly shallower hole -74 degrees drilled out at 41 azimuth instead of a 67 azimuth and down at 563, they hit 1.1 meters at 10 grams per ton and a half a meter at 52.5 grams per ton. So you can see just by slightly changing the direction of the drill and getting another pierce point on that vein, you could go from something that has almost zero gold in it into something that has a fairly substantial grade in it.
In this example, we are looking at Larimer, et al. This is a paper on the East Deeps discovery in 2013. And again, you see the same kind of grade, very variability. So highlighted circled in red here is an area right on the edge of the vein, at least as it was known in 2013. And you can see right in the middle there's 11-573 that has a circle with an accent that didn't have any vein in it at all. And if you move slightly north about 250 feet, 11-616 has 19 feet of 0.020 ounces per ton in it.
So again, not very stellar, but they drilled holes on either side of that at 250–300 feet apart. And the one to the east 11-601 hit 47 feet of 0.372 ounces per ton. And the one to the west hit 17 feet of 0.954 ounces per ton. So you can see within that vein as well, just a couple hundred feet either way you could be popping into a zone with a potentially decent grade in it.
Gregory Beischer: I think that's a great example, Gabe. So just for the readers to be sure, you're looking down in this view on a fairly flat line vein and every circle that appears a pierce point on the vein outside the dashed line, the vein wasn't intersected, but you can see as Gabriel point out, hole 11-616 hit 19 feet of quartz veining, but hardly any gold in it, but very close by the gold grade increased substantially.
We could be close here at West Pogo and it just takes more effort. So we've contracted to drill at least two more holes. The drill will arrive next week if all goes according to plan, and we'll execute that drilling over the coming month. And let's hope that we see that kind of a change in gold grade from very low to hopefully spectacularly high, but we won't know until we drill those holes; assay results are likely by December.
And we sure hope that we hit the big one with this round. You know, it's been a little frustrating so far, Maurice. We've done a lot of good science and the drilling hasn't panned out the way we'd hoped so far, but we know we've intersected a vein that's got all the right earmarks; now it's time to vector within that vein and see if there's a place where the gold grade improved significantly.
Maurice Jackson: For the record, I just want to share that I've received several emails regarding my views on the latest press release. And it goes back to the narrative of what I was referring to earlier on the word ‘"however." I'm not too discouraged. And Mr. Graf with his experience, I mean, he is the name and he's not discouraged. The experience shows that this is what he experienced at the Goodpaster. And we have the right team, we have the right strategic partners. I am not looking to sell any of my shares. I'm on record for that. So instead of me responding to every email, you have it right here on record and my 11 year old son, Carson, as you know, Mr. Beischer, he's a very proud shareholder and we're looking to add to our position just for the record.
Gregory Beischer: Great. Thanks very much. So am I, come to think of it. We've had trading blackouts on Millrock employees and executives until those results were released, but until we start drilling it again, we're able to trade. And I fully intend to add my position in our own company.
Maurice Jackson: Now leaving the project site and onto some numbers, Mr. Beischer, take us through the current capital structure for Millrock resources, please.
Gregory Beischer: Millrock has roughly 130 million shares outstanding around $1 million in our bank account. So we're not looking to have to dilute any shareholders soon and more partnerships are coming soon. So the cash flow should be good. As you know, Maurice in accordance with our business model, we're always making new partnerships and that allows us to spread the risk over numerous projects and keep minority interests, but one that's still very valuable if an ore deposit is discovered. If I may, I want point out other places where we've been busy working that E1 target and the boundary target on the east, and we've developed some great drill targets here. And so those will be lining up for drilling in 2021. And, Maurice, as you have heard me say before, I think this is a district scale project. It's one where multiple ore bodies could be found. And it's going to take years of exploration to do that. And so systematically Resolution and Millrock are working away, bringing new targets forward, ready to drill.
This is a fantastic project, but we're always looking forward to the next one too. And you can anticipate some news in the near future, Maurice, on a new initiative that we've are putting forward.
Maurice Jackson: Mr. Graf, Mr. Beischer, thank you for joining us today. Wishing you in Millrock Resources the absolute best. To find out more on Millrock Resources, please visit www.millrockresources.com.
As a reminder, I'm a licensed broker for Miles Franklin Precious Metals Investments where we provide unlimited options to expand your precious metals portfolio, from physical delivery, offshore depositories, and precious metals IRAs. Call me directly at (855) 505-1900 or you may email [email protected].
Maurice Jackson is the founder of Proven and Probable, a site that aims to enrich its subscribers through education in precious metals and junior mining companies that will enrich the world.
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