January 13, 2021
Nelson Baker, CEO
Letter to our shareholders
Mineral Mountain Resources (“MMV”) has worked very hard this year, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, to position itself in the Rochford Gold District to move toward the next level of a gold mining exploration company – the definition of gold reserves in the Rochford Gold District. Currently the Company controls the largest contiguous land package in the district totaling over 7577 acres. Within the Company’s land holdings, the two most advanced gold zones are the Cochrane Extension and the 100%-owned, fully drill permitted Standby Mine property, both large-scale, Homestake-style gold targets each providing unique opportunities to host giant gold deposits.
In the mining industry there are less than 5% of the geotechnical people that are directly responsible for finding deposits, the rest just follow. Having a track record of discovery success over the past 7 years, our seasoned technical team identified and subsequently recognized that the Rochford Gold District shares so many similar geological characteristics to the Homestake Mine area only 20 km to the north. Most importantly, the Rochford District has remained, until recently, vastly underexplored especially as modern exploration techniques were unavailable during the early era of development at Homestake. A recent structural and magnetic interpretation completed by the MMV technical team in 2020 has confirmed that at least eight (8) areas of high interest have been identified in the Rochford District that provide the potential to host giant gold deposits.
The Homestake Mine, which is situated only 20 kilometers north of the Standby Mine workings, is statistically the largest and richest orogenic gold deposit in the world. This giant gold deposit never ran out of ore! When the mine closed in 2001 it produced over 40 million ounces of gold at a grade of 8.48 g/t Au. The total gold endowment proximal to the Homestake Mine area is estimated to be 68.4 million ounces of gold.
A major development for MMV this year was the addition of Jeff Hrncir, M.Sc., as Chief Geologist to the Company’s technical team. Jeff, a former graduate of the South Dakota School of Mines was born in the Black Hills. Jeff is presently working on a more robust comprehensive Black Hills geological model and views MMV as having a rare opportunity to make multiple world-class discoveries. Jeff has walked many of the rocks of the Black Hills and has both a scientist’s vision as well as a practical “hands on” exploration mentality unique to one individual.
Many geologists, historically, have surface mapped small parts of the Black Hills but no contiguous regional mapping has taken place, especially using modern exploration tools (Geochemistry, aeromagnetics, 3D modelling, electromagnetics, radiometrics, etc.). The two, Jack Redden and Richard Bayley, former leaders in the surface mapping of the Black Hills, did their best over their long, professional and constructive careers to create such maps and did so without the benefit of the modern exploration tools indicated above.
The Standby Mine has quite a varied and interesting history which is presented on the MMV’s website. Regardless of the interpreted origin of the primary gold mineralization at Standby, significant faults and shear zones intersecting the Rochford Iron Formation are important fluid conduits that lead to secondary gold enrichment. The Standby Mine gold zone has bee traced for at least 1800 meters down plunge from surface and has sufficient volume to host a large deposit.
In the fall of October 2020, MMV, at the Standby Project, acquired a very tight grid of aeromagnetics and radiometrics (50-meter line spacing) to locate offsetting intrusives and to define metamorphic alteration patterns. MMV has planned a 18,000-meter combined infill core hole program directly under the existing Standby Mine workings and traditional exploration drilling to test the Standby gold system between Target 2 and Target 1. All proposed drill holes have been approved by the South Dakota Department of Natural Resources (DENR). Upon completion, the assays will be submitted for a NI 43-101 compliant reserves report.
Critical new insights discovered by our technical team in 2020
- Several Standby/Homestake Comparisons
- Premier ore host in iron formations with significant along-strike continuity
- Ore bodies localized within thickened synclinal fold hinges intersected by regional NW-trending shear zones
- Greenschist to amphibolite metamorphic grade
- Regional Connection between Homestake and Rochford
- For most of their histories the Rochford and Homestake districts were adjacent
- Restoration of a 14 km offset along the regional Homestake shear zone directly juxtaposes the two camps and connects the two in a single early structure
- In both camps, gold mineralization is hosted in iron formation
- Although the iron formations are different in age in the two camps, the architecture is nearly identical
- 125 years of intensive exploration and mining in the Homestake area produced over 40 Moz gold. What awaits the Rochford area???
In Q4-2020, MMV raised sufficient working capital to cover overhead costs and ongoing research while it completes the negotiations with different parties for funding of the 18,000-meter core hole program at Standby! Presentations to interested parties are presently taking place and upon the announcement of completion of this $10 M raise, drilling will commence immediately!
