Millrock Resources (TSX-V: MRO)(OTC: MLRKF) CEO Greg Beischer on Partnering with Coeur Explorations on the Apex Gold Project in Alaska & Much More

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president & CEO of Millrock Resources, Mr. Greg Beischer. Greg, long time no chat. How have you been? It's been a month or so, right?

Greg Beischer: Yep, I'm doing very well, Gerardo. At home in Alaska, and everything is marching ahead full force.

Gerardo Del Real: Awesome. Well, you've been busy, obviously. You've entered into an exploration agreement concerning the Apex Gold Project in southeast Alaska. I will let you provide the context.

Greg Beischer: Yeah, sure. Yet another example of generating a quality gold project that's attracted the interest of a mid-tier to major mining company. We sort of opportunistically locked up the Apex project by making an agreement five years ago now with an owner of two past-producing gold mines… a small amount of very high-grade gold production from the Apex and El Nido gold mines in southeast Alaska to the west of Juneau. 

And we've held the project for all these years; five years. We've not done a whole lot of work on it but rather just held the claims. And then, along came an interested party now that the market is picking up. 

So again, as contrarians, we were able to pick up projects in the downturn. But now that things have turned around, there's more capital available and more interested parties. And so we're very pleased to make this agreement with Coeur Explorations; as you know, a fair-sized gold mining company.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, let's talk about the quality of the project. Obviously, for it to attract the attention of a company like Coeur — it's been vetted pretty well. I can't imagine what that due diligence process was like.

Greg Beischer: Sure. It's a mesothermal-style gold-bearing quartz vein… so sort of mid-depth geologically. And this is a very common type of deposit throughout the North American Cordillera, particularly in British Columbia and in the Juneau area gold belt of Alaska. 

And these veins tend to be quite high-grade. They tend to be continuous though rather narrow and can be sort of potty. There are structural controls that will make thicker zones, higher grades zones, but it pinches and swells over the course of the vein. So the exploration key — we know the vein is there… we know it's probably quite continuous — but the key will be structure and predicting where those thicker, higher-grade zones exist.

So amazingly, this property has never-ever been drilled. It's been mined way back in the 1920s; small-scale underground mines. But since the Second World War, it was more or less dormant; a brief bit of exploration in the 1980s and then another four years of dormancy. And so finally, we're going to give this project a really good look with a major company partner backing us.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. How are things progressing elsewhere, Greg?

Greg Beischer: Yeah, everything is pretty good. We had drill results announced from 64North, which were disappointing on their gold grades but still an exceptionally interesting target at East Pogo; pathfinder elements telling us that there's something deeper down and geophysical surveys telling us there's something deeper down. 

Partner Resolution is the manager so they're in charge of the exploration and decisions on what to be done next. But they're inclined to drill some deeper core holes. Don't know… probably not going to be able to get to it this summer as the season is closing out and there's great competition for drills. There's really not too much available to get holes drilled.

At Fairbanks, everything is going ahead full force. We've had just a massive effort at soil sampling across our very large landholdings there that we'll merge. That data we'll merge with all of the other historic information that we've compiled. 

We're really, really working to evaluate the Fairbanks district as a whole since we now have claim holdings over much of it and really analyze the places to go for drilling. I'm not sure when drilling will start but we've sure got some great drill targets lining up.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. It sounds like a busy end to Q3 and commencement of Q4, which, of course, is typically after we get out of the summer doldrums when the market tends to turn and the quality companies start catching the bid, right?

Greg Beischer: Well, let's hope that that happens. But certainly, Millrock's got a lot to look forward to. And as we transition away from the Alaska field season over the next couple of months, it looks like things are going to start up in a fairly big way in Sonora. We've got some deals coming together there that should see drilling sooner than later.

Gerardo Del Real: Awesome. Greg, thank you so much for the update. It sounds like you and I will be getting together again soon.

Greg Beischer: You bet.

Gerardo Del Real: Anything else to add to that?

Greg Beischer: Nope, all is good. Thanks very much.

Gerardo Del Real: Sounds good. Thank you, Greg.