Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Millrock Resources (TSX-V: MRO) CEO Greg Beischer on the Compelling Drill Target Emerging at West Pogo in the Goodpaster Gold District 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, good morning to you.

Greg Beischer: Good morning, Gerardo. Always a pleasure.

Gerardo Del Real: Greg, you and I chatted at Beaver Creek last. When we talked there was a really good possibility of a high-grade discovery that Northern Star's Pogo Gold Mine was vectoring towards the massive, district-scale land package that you've managed to put together there.

That inspired a geophysical survey that I know is a very important part of what's next in Millrock's future here. I'm not a geologist, but just looking over the data here, in my amateur opinion, it looks like it delivered everything you were hoping for. It looks like you have a pretty damn compelling drill target at West Pogo.

Can you provide the details and make that sound a little bit smarter and more geologically appropriate?

Greg Beischer: Yeah. Sure thing, Gerardo. Bear in mind first of all, that at West Pogo this is but one small block out of a giant tract of claims that Millrock's staked recently, though we've held property, built the land position up slowly over the last 5 years. We've had the unique opportunity to capture just about all the land and known prospects within what I consider is going to be an entire mining camp one day.

We do have an absolutely compelling drill target at West Pogo. First of all, just on closeology, you can see the Pogo Gold Mine from the ridgetops on the project. Abuts directly against the mine's property. That's one good line of evidence. There's the saying that mines are often found in the shadow of a headframe and that's true, I think. But there's lots of other lines of evidence that have been pointing to a gold-bearing vein system coming right onto our property.

We know that the trend from the mine is to the northwest. Well, we own the land in the northwest and eventually it should come onto our property, but we always thought it was going to be rather deep. That's why we're quite pleased and surprised when Northern Star, the Pogo Mine operator, announced a new discovery northwest of the mine that was actually quite shallow. And so a fault just must've brought the mineralized quartz veins back closer to surface.

And we have at West Pogo other very good indications, strong gold soil, bismuth and arsenic in the soil, high-grade samples of gold bearing quartz at surface and a couple of historic drill holes that intersected narrow, high-angle veins. Lots of good signs of evidence pointing to a gold deposit on our property. In the magnetics, we could see the very similar signature as occurs at the Pogo Mine.

This was the final piece of evidence. We used a survey called CSAMT. It was a rather expensive survey but it's really quite diagnostic for the purpose that we were using. And sure enough we got strong positive responses just exactly at the locations where we thought we should have seen them were there to be a gold deposit below surface. It was an expensive survey, but in our view now, well worth that investment because it makes the prospect that much more attractive.

It's the final piece of evidence we needed. It's ready to drill and it's a really compelling target and that's going to make the entire property much more valuable if we do bring in a partner. In any event, it's a really compelling drill target.

Gerardo Del Real: I know it's a sensitive question, so let me try to be a little bit artsy in the way that I word this. Whether you decide to drill this on your own or bring in a partner that is willing to delineate an aggressive exploration program for this very compelling target, when is the earliest that we could finally get the truth machine out there to see if there is something underneath the ground? Drilling of course is what I'm referencing.

Greg Beischer: Right. That is a decision we have to make some time soon. We've been holding off saying, "Well, we're going to decide whether to drill it ourselves or bring in a partner when the time comes." Well the time is here now. Whatever we do, partner or not, we're going to go ahead and install the drill trail. It's about a five-kilometer drill trail coming off the Pogo Mine road up to Aurora Creek where we've got the first series of great responses, the really compelling drill targets that we've developed.

That'll give us the optionality then to be drilling just a few months from now in February and March. It's cold in Alaska at that time of year, but it can be a great time to drill as long as you've got a water source. We'll put in the road and we'll drill a water well and that'll give us that optionality to drill that quickly. Whether it's a partner-funded drill program or Millrock-funded, we want to get going quickly. We want to start making moves and see if there's gold in the ground there.

Gerardo Del Real: And this would be, again, just on a very small part, a compelling part obviously of the land package, but a small part of what is a massive, district-scale package.

You mentioned initially about the potential for this to become not just a big significant discovery, but a camp, a camp that yields multiple significant discoveries. Are you approaching it that way when you have these negotiations with potential partners?

Greg Beischer: I'm absolutely insistent on it, Gerardo. It's such a unique opportunity to have been able to acquire, by staking at very low cost, an entire mining district with numerous showings and occurrences of gold at various places all across the district. You know, there are prospects on open ground yet that we could have staked. We know about them from our big database of information. But you can't stake everything.

But if one were to take the approach that we're going to explore this entire camp systematically, continuously over a decade I think multiple ore bodies can be found. So any partner that we've been talking to, we've made it very, very clear that not all the money can go into just this highly compelling West Pogo prospect. There's going to be multiple prospects like that. We'll try to develop a couple each year and over that 8 or 10-year period, drill a couple every year. I think that's going to result in multiple discoveries.

Gerardo Del Real: Not a lot of juniors out there that have the flexibility to negotiate potentially decade-long deals. I got to congratulate you and the team. I know there was a good 6 to 12-month period where I as a shareholder was worried. I knew the company had enough projects and the network to continue on, but I just didn't see where that big, big catalyst was going to come from.

I don't want to say you pulled a rabbit out of a hat, Greg, because it was a lot of hard work, but you got it done. I am as excited for the Millrock story as I have been in quite some time. Anything else that you'd like to add to that?

Greg Beischer: Yeah. We didn't just pull this out. It's been something we've been building on over 5 years. But I'll agree with you, there were some very, very dicey times in our history over this 6-year horrendous downturn.

It was gut wrenching at times. But if you can get through those bad times and position for the good times, which appear to be coming, and I think we really did it right with this project. We're really happy and excited to get going in earnest on it and get that drill turning.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, you might be well on your way to becoming a 5-year overnight success, Greg. Congrats again.

Greg Beischer: Yeah. Thanks a lot, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Look forward to chatting next time. Hopefully we're talking about a decision being made about whether you're going to go at this alone or bring in a partner that recognizes the potential on this. Again, just a potential camp maker.

Greg Beischer: Right, exactly. That's the next step.

Gerardo Del Real: Sounds good. Chat soon. Thanks again, Greg.

Greg Beischer: Okay. Bye, Gerardo

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