North of 60 Mining News - The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

Resolution Minerals Ltd. (formerly Northern Cobalt Ltd.) Dec. 16 announced that it has formally entered into an option to joint venture Millrock Resources Inc.'s 64North gold project in Alaska.

Previously known as the Goodpaster project, 64North includes nine claim blocks – West Pogo, Shaw, Eagle, LMS-X, South Pogo, East Pogo, North Pogo, Last Chance and Divide – covering roughly 160,000 acres in the Goodpaster Mining District, a gold-rich area of Interior Alaska anchored by Northern Star Resources Ltd.'s Pogo Mine.

Under an agreement announced in October, Australia-based Resolution Minerals has the option to earn a 60 percent JV interest in this large gold project by investing US$20 million in exploration spending, plus making US$200,000 in cash payments and issuing 38 million Resolution shares to Millrock over four years.

Upon earning a 60 percent joint venture interest on the entire 64North project, Resolution will have the option to earn up to an 80 percent JV interest in one of the blocks by funding a feasibility study for the selected block and funding Millrock's portion of mine development, in the form of a loan.

Since entering the initial agreement, Resolution has paid Millrock US$500,000 in advanced payments to lock in exclusive rights to option 64North for 100 days as the Australia-based exploration company completed its due diligence.

Today's announcement marks the completion of the due diligence and Resolution's official entry into the option to JV 64North.

Over the past two months, Millrock and Resolution have been busy preparing for a winter drill program at West Pogo, currently expected to be the claim block that Resolution selects to earn an 80 percent interest in.

As the name implies, West Pogo lies on the western border of the Pogo Mine property. Earlier this year, Northern Star announced that it has traced the Goodpaster discovery zone to the border of West Pogo.

Highlights from Northern Star's drilling in the Goodpaster zone include: 2.1 meters of 44.5 grams per metric ton gold; 2.2 meters of 28.1 g/t gold; 0.6 meters of 100.1 g/t gold; and 0.3 meters of 170.2 g/t gold.

The stacked zones of high-grade gold mineralization in the Goodpaster zone appear to continue into the Aurora Creek area of the West Pogo property. Two lines of controlled-source audio-frequency magnetotellurics (CSAMT) geophysics, the same technique used to identify gold-bearing structures on the Pogo property, has detected a high conductivity geophysical response beneath the south side of Aurora Creek and along strike of Northern Star's Goodpaster discovery.

Millrock says this CSAMT conductor is coincident with a magnetic low – indicating gold-mineralizing fluids may have altered the rock – and is also associated with strong gold, arsenic and bismuth soil geochemical anomalies at surface.

Using the advanced payments made by Resolution, Millrock has pushed a four-mile road into the Aurora Creek valley, which is the first target area of a drill program slated to begin at West Pogo by early March. A well to provide water to the drills, which is critical for winter drilling in this part of Alaska, has also been established in the Aurora Creek valley.

In addition to establishing the infrastructure needed for winter drilling at West Pogo, an extreme low frequency electromagnetic (ELF-EM) geophysical survey was completed in the Aurora Creek target area.

ELF-EM is designed to image resistivity to depths of up to 2,000 meters and is a cost-effective alternative to other deep electromagnetic imaging techniques such as CSAMT, which typically require lines to be cut through trees and brush for the survey. Tests in the Yukon have shown that ELF-EM is comparable to CSAMT in intrusion related gold systems in very similar geological setting as West Pogo.

Resolution said the completed ELF-EM survey has confirmed the compelling Aurora Creek targets identified with CSAMT geophysics.

"This incredible opportunity for Resolution shareholders to be drilling only a stone's throw from Northern Star's operating high grade Pogo gold mine lease, was created by a unique set of circumstances that a junior is rarely able to grab – timing of change of ownership of the Pogo Gold Mine in August 2018, Millrock's ground position built over years with their project generator business model (and) Canadian markets focused on other industries," said Resolution Minerals Managing Director Duncan Chessell.

Millrock Resources Inc.

The 64North project includes nine gold exploration properties.

Resolution, the manager of 64North, has appointed Millrock as the project operator for the first year of the agreement.

"The planned US$5 million exploration program for 2020 will provide adequate funds for a thorough drill test of the Aurora target and advancement of the numerous other prospects evident on the claim block," said Millrock Resources President and CEO Greg Beischer. "Millrock and Resolution share the view that the Goodpaster gold district has the potential to become one of the world's great gold mining camps. We aim to discover another ore body like Northern Star's Pogo gold mine, which has produced more than 4 million ounces of gold and is reported by Northern Star to have remaining resources and reserves of approximately 6 million ounces."

–SHANE LASLEY