The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Drilling planned for up to six Alaskan gold properties this year North of 60 Mining News – February 25, 2022
Millrock Resources CEO Greg Beischer and Felix Gold Vice President of Exploration Dave Larimer investigate the Big Birch prospect on Felix Gold's Treasure Creek gold project in Alaska.
From an expected multimillion-dollar exploration program on the hardrock sources of the placer gold discovered by Felix Pedro in the Fairbanks Mining District 120 years ago to preliminary investigations of the Nikolai nickel-copper-cobalt-chromium-platinum group element project recently added to its portfolio, Millrock Resources Inc. is looking forward to a busy year of exploration on the properties it has generated in Alaska.
"Millrock is looking forward to a very active upcoming year with numerous catalysts that could serve to drive the company's share price upwards," said Millrock Resources President and CEO Gregory Beischer. "Our shareholdings in other junior exploration companies have the potential to significantly increase in value in 2022."
As a project generator, Millrock identifies and acquires prospective early-stage mineral exploration projects; completes the preliminary data compilation and fieldwork to demonstrate the project's potential; and then finds a partner that will invest the millions of dollars on the drilling and other exploration programs needed to delineate an economically viable mining project.
In exchange, Millrock typically receives some cash, holds a royalty on the vended property, and gains an equity position in the company that options it. Millrock also often retains a joint venture interest in the property and receives payment for managing or executing further exploration.
During 2022, there will be active exploration programs on at least six gold projects Millrock has generated under this business strategy.
Enter Felix Gold
Much of this exploration will be carried out by Felix Gold Ltd., an Australian mineral exploration company that recently completed a A$10 million (U$7.1 million) initial public offering and listing on the Australian Securities Exchange.
Early in 2021, Felix entered into a strategic alliance with Millrock on several Interior Alaska gold exploration projects – Treasure Creek and Ester Grant near the Interior Alaska city of Fairbanks, plus the Liberty Bell project about 70 miles to the southwest.
In exchange for becoming a roughly 10% shareholder of Felix after its ASX listing, Millrock has assigned the Australia-based company all its rights to the Fairbanks District and Liberty Bell properties.
Felix plans to kick off its 2022 exploration with a drill program slated to get underway in March at Treasure Creek.
Situated about 13 miles west of Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox Mine, Treasure Creek hosts numerous prospects with interesting drill intersections reported by prior workers. Roughly 2,000 soil samples collected by Felix and Millrock geologists last year have identified two key targets for 2022 drilling – Northwest Array and Eastgate.
Located about five miles south of Treasure Creek, the Ester Grant property is home to the past-producing Grant gold mine.
According to a calculation completed for Felix, Grant hosts 5.8 million metric tons of Australian Joint Ore Reserves Committee-compliant inferred resource averaging 1.95 grams per metric ton (364,000 ounces) gold. Roughly 136,000 oz of this gold is contained within an underground resource averaging 6.2 g/t gold.
The JORC-compliant report has also identified an exploration target at Grant Mine with the potential for approximately another 500,000 oz of gold in around 6 million metric tons of resource averaging approximately 2 g/t gold.
Millrock says Felix plans to carry out some drilling at Ester Grant this summer.
Over the past year, the Felix Gold team has also significantly enlarged its land holdings in the Fairbanks District to around 73,000 acres. Much of this expanded property is encompassed by NE Fairbanks, a roughly 36,000-acre land package adjacent to extensive historical placer gold producing streams and within six miles of Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox and Gil gold mines and Freegold Ventures Ltd.'s Golden Summit exploration project.
Felix plans to carry out reverse circulation drilling this summer to follow up on gold-in-soil anomalies identified during sampling last year.
"Our key projects, which are surrounded by extensive alluvial gold production, are located along the main gold trend and contain dozens of identified prospects, where historical drill intercepts remain open and emulate other major deposits in the district. Felix is excited to have multiple walk-up drill targets with indications of large-scale gold potential," Felix Gold Managing Director and CEO Kylie Prendergast penned in a Jan. 31 letter to shareholders. "Our value proposition is further underpinned by an existing 364,000 oz gold mineral resource at Grant-Ester where significant upside potential also exists."
The newly listed Australian exploration company also plans to carry out drilling at Liberty Bell, a 15,200-acre property near the Parks Highway south of Fairbanks.
Based on exploration that dates as far back as the 1930s, 1.24 million tons of historical resource averaging 0.1 oz/t, or about 6 g/t gold, was outlined at Liberty Bell in the 1980s.
Millrock says gold is widely distributed across the Liberty Bell property, including bulk tonnage intrusion-related high-grade skarn mineralization.
To gain a better understanding of Liberty Bell, Felix plans to carry out drilling in areas where 10- to perhaps 100-meter-thick layers of gravel obscure interesting geophysical anomalies.
Getting closer at 64North
As Felix launches its inaugural drill program on the Fairbanks District and Liberty Bell properties, Resolution Minerals Ltd. continues to explore 64North, a roughly 160,000-acre land package surrounding Northern Star Resources Ltd.'s Pogo gold mine in the Goodpaster Mining District.
Under a deal signed at the end of 2019, Resolution has the option to earn up to a 60% interest in this enormous land package by investing US$20 million in exploration spending and issuing shares to Millrock over four years.
Upon earning a 60% interest on the entire 64North project, Resolution will have the option to increase its interest on one of nine claim blocks that make up the larger project – West Pogo, Shaw, Eagle, LMS-X, South Pogo, East Pogo, North Pogo, Last Chance, and Divide – by funding a feasibility study and Millrock's portion of mine development on the selected block.
By mid-2021, Resolution had invested enough to earn a 42% interest in 64North.
Resolution has developed a compelling series of drill targets at the Tourmaline Ridge prospect on the West Pogo block of claims.
Located about 1,000 meters southwest of the Aurora prospect, Tourmaline Ridge lies on a trend of mineralization that extends northeast to the Pogo gold mine. Northern Star's Goodpaster discovery lies along this trend between the Aurora and current operations at Pogo.
"The Tourmaline Ridge prospect is in a great neighborhood for gold mineralization," said Resolution Minerals Managing Director Duncan Chessell. "The prospect is about two kilometers (1.2 miles) along the ridge line from Resolution's Sunrise Prospect, which has demonstrated a 280-meter-wide intrusion-hosted gold mineralization zone identified in drilling earlier this year."
Prospecting and sampling, including surface rock chip sampling that returned grades as high as 118 g/t gold, has outlined a 1,800- by 750-meter zone at Tourmaline Ridge.
Resolution cut two trenches for a total of 820 meters across this zone to test for a large-scale gold system that is a hybrid of vein-hosted mineralization similar to Pogo and bulk tonnage mineralization similar to the deposits at Fort Knox.
The Australian explorer says preliminary results from this trenching and the other 2021 exploration have identified the highest-ranking drill target so far at 64North, including a one-meter trench sample that averaged 4.8 g/t gold.
Resolution plans to carry out a four-hole drill program to test for high-grade Pogo-style gold mineralization on the Tourmaline Ridge Aurora-Goodpaster trend early this summer.
"We are very excited to put a potential road accessible large scale Pogo-style discovery in front of the drill bit for Resolution investors," said Chessell. "It has been a difficult road until this point, but we have high expectations for this drill program."
"We are confident that these trenching results in combination with all the other contributing factors support the potential for a large-scale Pogo-style gold mineralisation, below Tourmaline Ridge," he added.
Potential El Nido drilling
In addition to attracting Aussie explorers, Millrock cut a deal with Coeur Explorations, a subsidiary of Coeur Mining Inc., for exploration of the Apex gold project in Southeast Alaska.
Located about 70 miles southwest of Juneau, Apex is home to the historical Apex and El Nido mines, which produced at least 34,000 oz of gold from ore averaging around 1 oz/t gold during sporadic operations between 1922 and 1940.
Surface exploration was done by WGM Inc. in the 1980s, but no drilling was carried out, and the property has been dormant until Millrock secured an option on the core claim group in 2016.
"From historic documents, we know that high-grade gold ore was previously mined, but there has never been a single exploratory hole drilled," Beischer said previously. "It seems likely that the known high-grade gold-bearing quartz veins will continue along strike and in the down-dip direction."
Under the agreement, Coeur will be responsible for making cash payments and funding exploration expenditures to keep an option agreement with the underlying landowner, Apex El Nido Gold Mines, in good standing.
Millrock is carrying out the exploration on the Apex property under a services agreement with Coeur.
Strong gold results from soil sampling carried out last year traced the known gold-bearing vein system more than 1,000 meters from the old mine workings.
Coeur is contemplating a summer 2022 drill program at Apex El Nido.
Base and critical metals
In addition to the gold properties, Millrock has generated a couple of projects rich in copper, nickel, and other base and critical metals.
The newest addition to its portfolio is Nikolai, an extensive land package covering nickel-copper-cobalt-chromium-platinum group metals prospects in Alaska's underexplored Wrangellia Terrane.
Nikolai includes the Eureka and Canwell claim blocks about 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Delta Junction, Alaska.
Consisting of 104 state mining claims staked by Millrock, the Eureka claim block covers a roughly 10-mile-long trend of nickel-copper-cobalt-platinum group metal mineralization that was explored by Pure Nickel Inc. (now Galleon Gold Corp.) from 2007 through 2014.
Based on historical drilling, Millrock has identified a roughly 1,700- by 600- by 300-meter zone of mineralization at Eureka that hosts potentially economic concentrations, albeit low grades, of nickel, copper, cobalt, platinum, palladium, and gold. Additionally, the project generator postulates that higher grade mineralization may occur in embayment features at the base of the Eureka Zone, where heavy metals may accumulate during fractionation and crystallization of the ultramafic intrusion. Further drilling, however, is needed to confirm this hypothesis.
Canwell consists of a block of 43 (previously reported as 42) state mining claims about 11 miles to the northeast that Millrock is optioning from David Johnson. Very high grades of nickel, copper, and PGEs were identified with historical surface rock sampling and drilling. In addition to platinum and palladium, Canwell hosts the rarer and more expensive PGEs – iridium, osmium, rhodium, ruthenium.
"Millrock is very pleased to have generated this nickel-dominant project which also has a variety of accompanying critical and strategic metals," Beischer said earlier this month.
Millrock's Alaska portfolio also includes Chisna, a district-scale porphyry copper-gold project about 75 miles southeast of Nikolai.
Previous exploration and work carried out by Millrock geologists have identified several copper-gold prospects across the four blocks of state mining claims and Alaska Native lands at Chisna – Grubstake, Ravine, POW, and Dragonslayer.
Grubstake includes both state mining claims and lands owned by Ahtna Inc., the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) regional corporation for this part of the state.
Work carried out by previous explorers has identified copper porphyry mineralization enriched in gold at Grubstake. Previous drilling here has cut moderate to low copper grades but high gold values. Millrock has completed soil sampling work that has extended the surface anomaly considerably. Reprocessing of magnetic data has identified a large target southeast and northeast of the previously drilled area.
The Ravine claims have seen very little exploration, and their potential is poorly understood. Millrock, however, says some encouraging massive sulfide boulders related to mafic dikes indicate the potential for volcanogenic massive sulfide deposits is present on this underexplored block of claims.
The project generator says POW is another underexplored property that hosts intriguing color anomalies, and anomalous copper-in-soils are scattered across the claims. This early-stage prospect requires more systematic mapping and sampling to refine areas for geophysics and potential drilling.
Dragonslayer is an electromagnetic geophysical anomaly that Millrock says is comparable to Pebble in both size and intensity. A ring of high conductivity surrounds a magnetic core. Soil sampling indicates a broad array of metallic anomalies typical of a porphyry copper-gold system. The next steps for this prospect included induced polarization geophysical surveying and drilling.
Millrock has been talking to several companies interested in partnering with the project generator at Chisna.
Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.
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