Categories: General Market Commentary / Precious Metals
Topics: General Market Commentary / General Precious Metals

Millrock Resources (TSX-V: MRO) CEO Greg Beischer on Partial Drill Results from the 64North Gold Project in Alaska

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the President and CEO of Millrock Resources (TSX-V: MRO)(OTC: MLRKF), Mr. Greg Beischer. Greg, how are you today?

Greg Beischer: I'm not too bad, Gerardo. Thanks.

Gerardo Del Real: Let's get right to it. The last time you and I spoke, we were excited about the potential for a significant discovery at the 64North Gold project, as it is now called, in Alaska. Yesterday, we received assay results from the upper two-thirds of hole one, let's call it, which intersected, according to the release, multiple zones of gold mineralization associated with elevated arsenic. 

The bottom line is, we got a little bit of smoke. Everybody appears to have been looking for a wildfire right off the bat. Can you put the results in perspective? I know geologically it's a win. Let's be frank, speculators don't buy into Millrock or Resolution for a win on the geologic side. But can you please put some context around the results? Because, one, it's the upper two-thirds of one hole. Two, we have a $5 million exploration program that I understand looks to resume at the end of May. And three, there's a whole heck of a lot of drilling and targets left.

Greg Beischer: Yep that's right, Gerardo. The market expectation, I think, was pretty high for the series of assay results. It was, I would say first of all, very unusual for us to even be talking about what we had observed in the drill core, but this is an unusual situation, where because of the virus pandemic, we had to terminate or suspend the drilling program that had just barely got started. 

So we made the decision to talk about what we had intersected in the first drill hole, which frankly looked quite good. It had all the right ingredients. We could see quite strong dolomite-sericite alteration, which is a good sign. We saw some quartz veining. We saw arsenic sulfide and bismuth sulfide, iron sulfide. These are all great indicators. It's got all the ingredients that you would see at the adjacent Pogo mine, with the one exception that we've got rather weak gold numbers to go with it. But as a geologist, of course, we're quite excited about what we've seen.

Our interpretation is that we're on the periphery of a gold deposit. It's not atypical for this to happen, and we just have to vector towards where the higher grade gold is going to be. Well, it's very hard to draw a vector when one only has one hole. It's a point. So we have no direction to go yet. We have to drill the other four or five holes in the program before we're going to have that vector. Hopefully, we'll get into the deposit with the next hole or two. That's the situation now.

As you mentioned, looks like we can safely start up again by the end of May. In fact, I think we could already have been started, but now, of course, everything's melting off rapidly here in Alaska. The drill road that we built last November is a muddy mess and will be for another couple of weeks. So we're targeting the last week of May to get the drill crew back in there drilling again.

Gerardo Del Real: Let's be clear. A part of the reason why expectations were so high is because the core, the rocks, they looked great. What surprised you most outside of the lack of elevated gold values? What surprised you most, either positively or negatively, if we want to frame it that way, from the time you saw the core and your initial interpretation, which you cautioned was an initial visual interpretation, and getting back the assays for the upper part of the hole? Any surprises?

Greg Beischer: Well, yeah. Sure. The low gold grades were a negative surprise, for sure. Based on the look of the core, it looked very, very similar to what one would see at the adjacent Goodpaster deposit. There wasn't any big thick veins like in the Pogo mine exactly, and that was a bit of a red flag. But rocks like this will occur on the peripheries of deposits and ore bodies. So again, I think we just need to push forward to vector towards a heat source or something that provides more gold into the system.

But certainly on the positive side, we've discovered those same structures, those same gently dipping northwest structures that host the gold at Pogo and at Northern Star's Goodpaster deposit. They clearly come right over onto our ground, and we can see them geophysically. So we know where to drill next to test for the gold-rich zones.

We were all hoping for a home run out of this drill program, and it would have been fantastic if the first at bat had been a home run. But look, we've got a base hit here. I know you like baseball analogies, so I'm going to stick with that.

Gerardo Del Real: Absolutely. They wanted a home run, not only on the first at bat, they wanted it on the first pitch. We know exploration typically does not play out that way. Just to be clear, structures, rock package, chemical signature, and geophysics, all of those aspects so far lead you to believe that there is something here. Correct?

Greg Beischer: Absolutely. Nothing's changed with our plan based on what we've now seen in the drill core with the assay results in hand. We know we're in the system, and it's a matter of moving within the system to find gold-rich zones. So definitely a win.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Greg, I'm looking forward to having you back on as soon as drilling resumes. Please be safe. Is there anything else that you'd like to add, any updates or progress on other projects in the meantime? I know obviously this is the focus, but I have you on the line. I'd love to know if there's any work that you're doing behind the scenes potentially on other projects.

Greg Beischer: Sure. Well, on news flow coming up, we still have other assay results to come from the lower part of hole one and the upper part, the upper 194 meters, that were drilled in hole two before the contractor stopped the job. There's some hope that there could be gold in those assays. So we've got that, and then restart of the program at the end of May.

But in the meantime, Millrock's been very, very busy. We're all at home working productively, dreaming up new places to hunt for gold and copper, talking to prospectors and other geologists about their prospects, putting deals together, and marketing these prospects to other companies, majors and juniors alike.

The gold market is getting stronger and stronger every day. Investor interest is really coming back into the space, finally. Once this virus overhang clears away, I know that there's going to be a lot of junior companies in particular looking for quality projects, that we're going to have them in hand, and make good deals on them. At some point soon, the majors will re-engage also once they start to make money again.

Gerardo Del Real: Well said. Greg, thank you very much. We'll chat soon. Be safe out there.

Greg Beischer: Same to you, Gerardo. All the best. Bye.