One of the most unique junior mining companies that I am a shareholder of is Bitterroot Resources (TSX-V:BTT, OTC: BITTF). At Bitterroot's flagship project in Michigan's Upper Peninsula the company is exploring for copper/nickel conduit hosted massive sulphides. The company also has two gold projects in Nevada, one of which is set to be drill-tested this month. 

From my estimation, Bitterroot is not well understood by most investors and the company is essentially a one man show with a tiny marketing budget. Bitterroot has managed to do a lot with a little. 

Since the 2nd half of 2020 BTT has drilled 26 diamond-drill holes at its LM Project in Michigan - the company has intersected several smaller intervals of semi-massive and even massive sulphides in multiple holes at LM. It's safe to say that BTT has clipped the edges of 'the beast' at LMI and the company has learned a lot about the shape of the conduit at the LM intrusion in the process.  With all of this learning,  Bitterroot has narrowed its focus to the southeast quadrant of the intrusion. This area will be the focus of the next drill program at LM, and as Bitterroot CEO Michael Carr says "the days of missing the conduit are over". However, first up is a maiden diamond drill program at the Coyote Sinter Project in Northern Nevada. 

During the recent relative lull in news flow I decided it was a good time to catch up with Bitterroot CEO Michael Carr to get an update on Bitterroot's plans and learn a bit more about its Nevada projects. 


Goldfinger:

Bitterroot drilled an additional five holes earlier this year in Q1 at the LM project in Michigan. What did you learn from those five holes?

Michael Carr:

We constrained the position of the feeder, but until we increase our land position, it doesn't make sense for us to continue drilling.

Goldfinger:

So you're pretty confident where the sulfides are coming from, in terms of the plunge of the conduit.

Michael Carr:

The analogy with Eagle East is still valid. Our pipe is steeper-dipping, but the analogy is still the same. The sulfides that we saw in the LM intrusion are indicative of more sulfides at depth.

Goldfinger:

If we look at the drilling that Kennecott did at Eagle East, how does the drilling that BTT has done stack up against sort of the timeline from the discovery at Eagle to the discovery of Eagle East?

Michael Carr:

Well, that took several years. Kennecott/Rio Tinto and current owner Lundin Mining did what we were doing, which was to follow the conduit down plunge with drill holes. As they went further and further down the conduit, they started seeing more and more sulfide. At LM, we saw sulphides, plus some brecciation, magmatic breccia where it was clear that rocks from below had been brought up the conduit. It's what we call a dynamic conduit. It was active and it was pumping large volumes of magma through. It has all the same geological characteristics and similar composition as seen at Eagle East.

Goldfinger:

Yeah, if we look at the shape of Eagle East and say that's a pretty good analogy for what we've got at the LM project could this keel be 900 meters? Or, or is there evidence that it has to be shallower?

Michael Carr:

Kennecott/Rio Tinto drilled some holes about a mile to the east of LM back in about 2007. They hit the basement rocks at about 750 meters. The mineralization at Eagle East is just above the unconformity with the Archean basement. And as I said, that's deeper over there, but where we are, it's probably not as deep. I would guess that it's probably 150 meters shallower at LM. So we are probably looking at 750 meters to the basement, where we are. And, hopefully there's mineralization at some higher elevation above that.

Goldfinger:

So the plan will now be to tie up some more surrounding land to give you some breathing room, is that correct?

Michael Carr:

Yes.

Goldfinger:

It’s kind of ironic that you're more confident and you have more information than you've ever had, and there's a very good chance that this next set of drill holes, whether it's 5 or 10 holes will sort of give it pretty strong yay or nay on whether this thing has some juice or not. so why didn't you have that land tied up already?

Michael Carr:

I've been working on that since before we started drilling two years ago. Things are happening beyond my control and all I can do is wait for it to play out. It doesn't make sense to risk anymore of the company's money on drilling at LM until we have some clarity.

Goldfinger:

There are two untested magnetic anomalies to the south that we've seen in prior presentations. Would you say that those are high priority targets to be drilled in the future? Or would there need to be some more work done to optimize those targets?

Michael Carr:

We have part of those anomalies leased and are working on leasing the rest of them, they are currently well enough constrained by the ground magnetic survey for an initial drill-test.

Goldfinger:

It's interesting that hole 26 seemed to have a very similar look in terms of the core textures to holes 7 and 10, which ran pretty good grades of nickel, copper, gold, and PGMs. Those were some nice hits of semi massive sulfides even though they were only 2-3 meters. And this one had a little bit of semi massive sulfide, I guess over maybe a half meter or something. But it looked pretty good, but it didn't run as well as those other two holes. Is there any explanation for that?

Michael Carr:

We combined the narrow higher-grade interval into a larger lower grade interval with that blebby sulfide, so it tended to dilute it. But the actual grade of the sulfides is the same, or not far off. It's not as if suddenly the sulfides aren't carrying nickel and copper, it was just the composited sampling interval that affected it.

Goldfinger:

I think we're pretty clear on where we're at with the LM project. Let's talk bigger picture about this area of the world, this area of North America, the Mid Continent Rift, where on one side of Lake Superior, the Northern side, you have some of the biggest and highest-grade base metal mines in the history of the world (Sudbury). And then on the Southern end, we have Eagle. Eagle is the only primary nickel mine currently in the US right now that's operational. What are your thoughts on how much more there is to be found in this area of the US?

Michael Carr:

Sudbury is about 1.85 billion years old. That was an asteroid impact feature, a one-off event that created the Sudbury basin and its famous nickel-copper-PGM ore deposits. The Midcontinent Rift (MCR) is about 1.1 billion years old, or 750 million years younger than Sudbury, but it happens to be relatively close, geographically. And I would say that's just a happy coincidence. The Midcontinent Rift geological environment is analogous to Noril’sk, which hosts the worlds largest and highest-grade nickel-copper-PGM deposits.

On the north side of Lake Superior in Ontario, you have the Thunder Bay North and the Coldwell Complex deposits, plus many other prospects. On the US side of the MCR, the Duluth complex in northern Minnesota is a huge, albeit low-grade nickel-copper resource. South of the Duluth complex, also in Minnesota, you have the Tamarack deposit, which is another high-grade conduit-hosted deposit, its size is yet to be determined, but it's hosted by an 18kilometre-long intrusive complex that is well-mineralized. I think that will eventually grow into an orebody that is bigger than Eagle and Eagle East.

The thing that's different in this part of the world from say, Ontario, is that the surface ownership or the surface estate and the minerals estate in this region are quite often severed, meaning they have different owners. You need to employ a good land man here. It's not as simple as just staking ground. That's been a barrier to entry for a lot of people. They just don't want to have to deal with the land situation. I can't ignore that reality, but I view it as a manageable risk. Kennecott/Rio Tinto also viewed it as a manageable risk, and it led to the discovery and development of Eagle and Eagle East. Despite the issues we're having around LM, I'm quite comfortable working in Michigan.

Permitting can be simpler in this situation where you have private minerals under private surface. Regardless of who is the surface owner, the minerals estate is usually dominant over the surface estate. The permitting situation is not really as onerous as some people might think it is.

In Michigan, Bitterroot initially acquired the 250-square-mile Voyageur Lands in 1996. The Eagle deposit was discovered in 2002 and has been a huge success technically, environmentally and economically. There are many other untested or early-stage magmatic nickel targets in Michigan in general and specifically within the confines of the Voyageur Lands.

Our Voyageur Lands are now subject to a joint venture with Altius Minerals, who own 50.1% and are the operator of the JV. Voyageur hosts a pretty exciting opportunity to find something like Eagle or Eagle East. The mineral rights which we refer to as the Voyageur Lands were severed in the early 1920’s. Our minerals estate predates the surface estate acquired by the USDA-Forest Service (USFS). These are known by USFS as “Outstanding Minerals”, which simplifies our permitting situation. Generally, we provide USFS with a Plan of Operations and they have 60 days to analyze it and negotiate mitigations with us. So it's not necessarily an onerous permitting situation. In my opinion, the biggest barrier to entry is people's willingness to accept and deal with the land ownership situation, which is more fragmented, like an oil and gas play, where you need a land man to figure out who owns the minerals and put land together strategically.

Geologically, I'd say the area has a ton of potential, and there's a lot of things that should be drill-tested. You have some outcrop exposure, but not a lot. Exploration here relies heavily on geophysics and good geology and drilling. Soil geochemistry doesn't necessarily work that well either because of the glacial till and glacial lake sediments that tend to mask the bedrock’s geochemical signature. However, exploring under cover is more the norm than the exception in many mature jurisdictions these days.

There's been a lot of things discovered under cover in the upper Midwest over the years, like Tamarack in Minnesota. There's a bunch of VMS deposits in Northern Wisconsin that aren't too far south of us. There's a lot of historic copper mines in Michigan. And now there's a couple of copper deposits that are heading to production. I think you're going to see a lot more exploration and mining activity in Michigan over the next few years.

Goldfinger:

I feel like the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is a sort of hidden gem. I think that Michigan is misunderstood as a mining jurisdiction, generally speaking. People just think, "oh, well, it's a blue (Democrat) state and it has high population density", but they don't realize that the Upper Peninsula is a part of Michigan that has relatively low population density. And it's red (Republican), definitely more pro-mining-leaning than some of the big cities and college towns in the Lower Peninsula, like Detroit, Ann Arbor or Lansing. I think it's just largely misunderstood by most people, except for those who live and work there, or are intimately involved in it, like you.

Let's talk about the Voyageur Lands because I've always seen this as kind of like a hidden gem in the company's portfolio. Obviously not much has happened here for a few years and that's probably why the market doesn't seem to pay attention to it or ascribe any value to the company for it. But if we think about the big picture situation in the world and in particular in the US with a demand for nickel and battery metals, and the fact that nickel is now critical to the security of the country and the fact we don't have much of it, we don't mine much of it, and most of it gets shipped in from Canada, Australia, New Caledonia or southeast Asia. We were buying a lot of metals from Russia for a while and now that's not happening, obviously.

It seems to me a natural place for more exploration dollars to be spent by big mining companies, to bring on some new supply. Obviously, the minimum from a new target to bring it into being a mining operation is a minimum of 10 years, but you gotta start sometime. Let's talk about Voyageur. And there was a question from a shareholder on CEO.ca, he asked about Voyageur and what the plans are there.

Michael Carr:

The Voyageur Project is a joint venture between Altius Minerals and Bitterroot. They earned 50.1% interest in it in late 2015, and they're the operator. When we originally did the deal with Altius, neither of us expected that we would be sitting on it for so long. Nickel prices had been quite depressed from 2015 to 2021. Today everything has changed and nickel is on people’s radar so it's been sort of sitting there, waiting for the right market environment, right commodities environment. I think we're there, frankly.

I see a bright future for the Voyageur Lands. There are some really good targets there that were developed by a “VTEM Plus” survey that was flown right after the Altius transaction in late 2015. And these are good quality VTEM targets with good geological support. They have never been drilled. Altius's business model has moved away from doing exploration drilling per se. They like to acquire projects and then vend them off to other groups who will then do the exploration and Altius keep a royalty. So they've done all the steps they normally do.

Goldfinger:

Would you consider vending out a few of the targets to somebody who was interested in a couple of the targets, but not as interested in the others.

Michael Carr:

We've got a lot of ideas. There's a number of ways that this can be moved forward. We have had some discussions about how we can advance it, but I'm just not really able to kind of get into those details.

Goldfinger:

So there's things in the works here. And, as you said, this is the time. So would it be fair to say that shareholders can expect some sort of news on these projects in the next six months?

Michael Carr:

I really can't put a timeline on when, but there's definitely a will to move things along. And for the first time, in a very long time, we're in a favorable nickel pricing environment here. I would say the future's looking brighter. But whether it's 2, 4, 6, 8, 12 months, 24, I honestly, I don't know. I don't want anyone to be expecting a deal to be announced imminently.

Goldfinger:

Well, the good news is that the company is currently being given zero value in the market for this. So basically, if anything happens at all positive, it's a win.

Michael Carr:

Agreed.

Goldfinger:

I think we've covered Michigan pretty well. So let's move south, and what is BTT planning this summer at your Coyote Sinter project in Nevada.

Michael Carr:

We're just on the verge of drilling the Coyote Sinter gold/silver prospect. We've got a drilling contractor that is hopefully mobilizing in early July-fingers crossed. Timing of drill mobilization is a bit of a moving target these days. Fortunately, we've got permits to drill multiple holes from 20 drill sites. We've got 100% ownership of these mining claims on BLM (Bureau of Land Management)-administered Federal land, with easy access and gentle topography.

There's been some great previous work done on that project that gives us encouragement. Coyote Sinter hosts a fault structure that was identified by Chevron in 1990, and they drilled a few RC holes into it, very shallow holes. Chevron tested it to only about 50 meters depth, or about 165 feet. This fault zone has a really good epithermal signature. Lots of antimony, arsenic and mercury. Mercury is all over the place in these epithermal systems, but tends to be mainly at the top. So our view is it's a fertile structure and it's never been tested at the appropriate depth. And there's also other structures that have never been tested for bonanza-grade gold/silver, all sitting underneath this highly chemically anomalous sinter horizon. It stands up really well, geologically and geochemically.

We did some detailed geological mapping and a CSAMT geophysical survey, which gave us targets that coincided nicely with vent areas that are mapped on the surface. This will be a pretty interesting drilling phase for us because it's got all the hallmarks of a mineralized epithermal system, but it's never been appropriately tested with core drilling.

Goldfinger:

There's a bunch of very big gold mines around here. The Carlin Trend is 20 miles west, Jerritt Canyon is a few miles north and Tuscarora is just a few miles west on the other side of the valley. This is a prolific area of gold mining in the best gold mining state in the US. Coyote Sinter is interpreted to be a low sulphidation epithermal gold system, where there would be a boiling zone, that would be located at a preferred elevation in the system where you would expect the high-grade gold and silver to be found. So tell us about the four holes that you planned and how you're going to target this boiling zone.

Michael Carr:

If you think of a hot spring, like at Yellowstone or in New Zealand at Rotorua, the siliceous sinter precipitates at surface in the hot pools, that's the surface manifestation of it. And it's fed by faults. The mineralized, acidic hot water is coming up a network of faults. Typically, the boiling zone is 200-400 meters below the sinter horizon. We've mapped the sinter on surface here and we know where Chevron's holes are. The Chevron holes tested the fault at only about 80 meters below the sinter horizon. We need to test it deeper. It's really not that complicated. We're stepping back and undercutting the previous Chevron holes.

Chevron drilled reverse circulation holes, which yield rock chips instead of core samples. We don't have access to those chips anymore, but we have the assay data. We're just going to undercut those Chevron holes in three of our holes and try and drill the same structure at the appropriate elevation to hit the boiling zone and hopefully some bonanza gold/silver grades. The fourth hole that's planned is going to test the CSAMT resistive geophysical response underneath the vents that have been mapped, on surface in the sinter.

A lot of the good science has already been done. It's just a matter of looking at the geometry and trying to test the structures that are mineralized at the appropriate depths. And these are not going to be deep holes. We're looking at 400-500 metre holes. They will be angled core holes which drill across the structure. We'll get more structural information, plus a lot more geological information out of these core holes as well.

Goldfinger:

You think drilling could start in early July, but obviously things can happen. Are you fully funded for this program?

Michael Carr:

Yes. The good news is that since we stopped drilling in Michigan, in March, we haven't spent much money there. We've been sitting on our treasury. Since the last financing was done in late March, we've allocated half a million dollars to the drilling in Nevada. We're funded for the drilling and we're not bleeding cash anywhere else in any of our other projects. I'm hoping that by the beginning of July we will have a drill rig. But again, that's subject to Murphy's law. But I'm pretty confident we'll be drilling here in the next month or two.

Goldfinger:

To be clear, this was drilled, but drilled with RC rigs to shallow depths. So nobody has tested more than 200 meters depth here with a diamond drill. Is that correct?

Michael Carr:

That's right. There's no core drilling at all. Chevron drilled four RC holes, in the 50-meter depth range down the structure. Another Vancouver based exploration company had the property about four years ago. They drilled five RC holes, but they didn't target the depths or structures we're planning on targeting. We did get their chips from the underlying property owner. We were able to log the chips from that drilling and got some good geological information. Found some favorable horizons that would be brittle, which would be conducive to forming vein structures. But the actual spots where they spotted their holes are not the areas that we're going to be focusing on.

Goldfinger:

This looks like, to me, like a very attractive drill target. It checks all the boxes in terms of being in the right area of the world to find a big gold mine, and the geology is compelling. How did you acquire this project? I would think that a project like this would be very hard to come by.

Michael Carr:

Well, a bit of luck, really. I was looking for some projects in Nevada and I approached a well- respected Vancouver-based structural geologist, who's worked for a lot of the major mines in Nevada. He put me onto another geologist who was also very well versed in epithermal gold deposits, Rick Streiff. Rick has worked for Newmont in Nevada and at Martha Hill in New Zealand. He subsequently worked for OceanaGold in New Zealand, after they purchased Newmont’s assets there. More recently, Rick ran OceanaGold’s Reno, NV exploration office, where he identified the Coyote Sinter opportunity and had done some due diligence on it. Unfortunately, Oceana ran into financial difficulties and closed their Reno exploration office and laid everyone off.

I was referred to Rick, and asked “…Are there any projects out there that you like?". And Coyote Sinter was one of the ones that he mentioned. Oceana’s Kiwi expert on sinters and hot spring environments had favorable views of it because of the stibnite (an antimony mineral) crystals in the sinter. He felt that it likely indicated Coyote was a fertile mineralized system. In short, Rick had already done due diligence on Coyote, so it made it quite easy for me. I was able to negotiate a deal with the underlying property owner who owned the claims.

We've advanced it with some detailed geological mapping and compilation of the data, relogging the core chips, and some CSAMT geophysics. It's ready to drill. Coyote is located on BLM-administered Federal land, so permitting the drilling was relatively simple.

Goldfinger:

In Nevada, permitting exploration drilling on BLM-administered land is pretty straightforward.

Michael Carr:

Correct. I have been fortunate to be introduced to some very good people in the area through Rick. Our permitting consultant has decades of experience in Nevada working for majors. And he was able to get us our permits from BLM on a nice, efficient timeline. And we’ve got a drill supervisor working for us who used to run Newmont’s drilling operations, he’s assisting with logistics. And of course, Rick Streiff has guided the geological effort and will continue to supervise that. Our geologist from Michigan will sit on the rig and log/sample the core, with Rick's supervision.

Goldfinger:

So the drilling starts, let's say in roughly a month, how do you plan to report the results to the market? Are you going to post any drill core pics? Are you going to just wait for assays to come back on all four holes? Especially with a junior of your tiny market cap, the market can get very skittish and especially if there's a long wait for assays. What are your thoughts on that?

Michael Carr:

Drilling rates can be around 1500 metres a month, which is a rule of thumb. Sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse. But we're trying to drill 2000-2500 meters. That's a month and a half, maybe as much as two months. The samples will go to Reno, to ALS, which is one of the bigger international assaying companies, that we've used for 30 years. ALS has the same delays and backlogs as everybody else in our industry currently has. Predicting exactly when assays will be ready for the market is hard to do. But I would guess if we do this drilling in July/August, we are probably looking at September/October for results.

Goldfinger:

So that sounds like you're going to put out all four holes at the same time.

Michael Carr:

They'll go into the lab probably one at a time, so they'll be staged. In Michigan when you're looking at nickel-copper and you're dealing with sulfides that are easy enough to see, you can get a sense of what you're looking at, just from the core, without an assay. With gold/silver deposits, it's not always that simple. If you're seeing visible gold, well, that's a good sign. But you have to be careful. With gold, you can always be surprised and it can be either way. It can be positive or negative.

Would I put out core pictures? Maybe, depends what the core looks like, depends what I want to say about it. But ultimately, until you have an assay, you always run the risk of misleading people. So again, it's all about managing expectations here.

Goldfinger:

That makes sense, you don’t know the future and lab turnaround times can be tricky. There's two more questions actually. What about the Castle West project? Do you have any plans there?

Michael Carr:

We're permitted for drilling there, as well. If I can get some success at Coyote, then I'd want to go drill Castle right away as well. Drill-it-to-kill-it-kind of thing. There are some good targets there, I think it requires some core drilling. There's a large body of low-grade gold in an intense argillic alteration zone. It's only ever been tested for that bulk tonnage material, which seems to be in the 0.1 to 0.3 grams gold per tonne range. There are probably a few tens of millions of tons of that grade, but it's not ore, it's too low grade. But clearly that stuff came from somewhere. And again, it's about targeting the feeder structures, which are obvious too. There are these big silicified ribs, they call them, or veins basically, cutting right through the argillic altered zones and no one's ever tested those with core drilling at the appropriate horizon, at the unconformity with the underlying Paleozoic metasediments.

What I see there is a large, intensely altered and very chemically anomalous gold-rich alteration zone. It's very, very anomalous, but it's not ore grade. But it's telling me that there's a lot of gold in that system and deeper down, in these feeder structures, is where I'd want to go and test to see if it's high grade there.

I don't have a budget for that right now. I have talked to various people in the past about joint venturing it, and that's still a possibility, although I don't have anybody champing at the bit at the moment to option it. But that doesn't mean that won't change. We would definitely consider a joint venture on that project, but I'm happy to drill it myself too, if the financial situation allows it.

Goldfinger:

Somebody asked about insider buying. Why don't you buy shares in the open market? At 6 cents, 7 cents. It's so cheap. Obviously you did buy, you participated in a financing in December 2020, at 6 cents. You put $60,000 in the company, and then you exercised $40,000 worth of options at 10 cents. So you invested $100,000 in the last 18 months. That's nothing to sneeze at, but what would be your answer to this shareholder’ question?

Michael Carr:

Why aren't I buying more stock?

Goldfinger:

Yeah.

Michael Carr:

I own over 10% of the company. My interests are fully aligned with all the other shareholders. From time to time, I've kept this company alive, financing it out of my own pocket over the last couple of decades. When there was no one else around willing to help finance it, I was keeping it alive. I'm fully committed to this company, whether or not I'm buying day to day.

Goldfinger:

I agree. As far as insider buying goes, you're very aligned with the company, both through your common shareholdings, through your options, through your salary, through the fact that you've invested 30 years in this company, and your reputation. There's no doubt whether or not you're aligned with shareholders. There's no question at all. And actually, you can't sell. You can't sell easily. Really, your only way to sell is through an M&A transaction where the whole company gets taken out. If you were to sell a million shares in the market, it would have a very negative effect on the share price and the optics of the company. Insider buying, a lot of retail investors like to see it, but honestly, most management teams are already very much incentivized and align with the company. And to even put more of their net worth into the company via open market transactions is not necessarily always a prudent move.

Michael Carr:

That’s right. I would suggest that a little bit of research would show anyone that my level of ownership is significantly higher than many junior mining company management's ownership of their deals. I don't think I have anything to apologize for on that front.

Goldfinger:

Absolutely not. So Coyote Sinter is next on the menu and it's coming up very soon and then hopefully we will get some news of some sort from Michigan. It seems like there's a lot that should be going on there very soon. But we'll wait to see a news release from the company or maybe from some other parties that might be getting into the area. I'm hearing, just personally, that it's heating up a little bit, there's a little more activity there (Michigan). So hopefully that'll be good for BTT and we'll get some joy in the market. So thank you for your time, Mike. I really appreciate it.

Disclosure: The author owns BTT.V shares at the time of publishing and may choose to buy or sell at any time without notice. Author has been compensated for marketing services by Bitterroot Resources Ltd.


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