Oreterra’s Trek South Is Right Beside Galore Creek, Visible Copper in Core, Assays to Come

0:14Orgera Metals just finished the first drill program ever at its trek south, the porphyry copper gold target and BC's golden triangle that only came out from under a glacier in the last 15 years right next door to Tech and Newmont's Galore Creek. The company says Phase 1 Drilling puts it directly over what it believes is the core of the system. CEO Kevin Keogh knows the Golden Triangle. He was a former head of GT Gold, which was acquired by Newmont at 2021 for$456 million. Kevin, welcome to Mining Stock Daily. Thanks, Mike. Good to be here, of course. Kevin, now you took on a lot to get Trek South, mainly the restructure of the former company, Romeos Gold, that held the asset.

0:58What did you see at Trek South that made it worth it? Well, I was introduced to a project by Steve Boreg, our current president. It's called Trek South, and it was totally new to me, Mike. I had known of Romeos for a long time. It had been around many, many years, but had accumulated some baggage. And what really caught me, caught my eye was Trek South. As you mentioned in your intro there, it melted out of the ice pretty much over the last 15, 16 years. Just happened that the glacier pulled back about 200 meters in that time frame. And based on the work that Steve and some of the guys had done prior to me getting involved, it was an extremely compelling core-free copper-gold prospect.

1:52So yeah, it looked good across the entire spectrum of geosciences that you could apply to it. It looked great. It didn't just look good. It looked exceptional. Explain a little bit more on what that was based on. What was the historic data that was into it? And I guess kind of the IP? Yeah, John Bitsock, our current VP Exploration, had done a lot of mapping, a lot of sampling across a large area at the toe, kind of outboard to the toe of the Trek South Glacier. what's kind of unique about Trek South in comparison to many BC properties, including, by the way, the former Saddle North for GT Gold.

2:42Most BC porphyry plays don't really have great exposure on surface. I either covered in till or trees or whatever. But uniquely, of course, at Trek South, you had this vast area of essentially bare rock, covered with shattered rock here and there, true, but basically bare rock. So John had done a lot of sampling across that, got values across an area about one kilometer in width. I'm talking about copper, gold, and silver values, some tungsten as well, and of course could also see in the rock some really intense widespread porphyry style alteration which really looked good and so we coupled that the team had coupled it with geophysics they did ip and there had been airborne mag over this area as well and combining all of those data sets it really looked strong There was a really compelling chargeability anomaly associated with this area, and of course, an underlying magnetic anomaly.

3:59So basically, everything you might hope to look for in a new porphyry copper gold prospect was there at Trek South. Let's talk about the drill program that wrapped up. I believe that you were planning to target about 600 metres. You did note that there were some issues in terms of late starts, getting rigs started. How deep did you go? What were you able to accomplish and what was missed? Yeah, we laid out a technical report at the beginning of the year that called for two phases, an initial phase and a subsequent phase. We got through the first days this season, primarily, yes, because we started really the drilling only at the beginning of August because our permit really wouldn't allow us to get going earlier this year.

4:53So the plan is laid out, the drill plan is laid out in the 43-101 was for a gridded approach covering the large area of alteration outboard to the toe of the glaciers. So that area is like 850, 900 meters in the southwest to northeast direction, and quite a few, maybe half a kilometer wide. So the idea was to set up a gridded approach of a drill fence, actually two drill fences, covering that footprint, the alteration footprint. And that's what we started with phase one. We started at the extremities of the drill fence, northeast and southwest, and progressively worked toward the center. So we drilled about 4 ,600 meters, ultimately in about 11 holes, I'm talking about on the Trek South footprint itself.

5:56and we pretty much evolved that program as we went forward. Our initial scoping study, shall we say, or scoped out plan in the 43-101 envisaged, you know, eight holes at about 600 meters each. We really didn't have any understanding at the time as to what we'd really get when we drill down there, But we were able with the phase one drilling to basically rapidly develop an understanding of the orientation in the ground of the alteration package, where it appeared to be going, where it was not going. And we used that knowledge gained from the drilling to basically evolve toward the center of the drill fence, where it turned out we got the very best of the program.

6:52And as you mentioned at the outset, we think in our final holes that we're basically sitting above the underlying intrusion, which we're pretty well certain has to be there. I believe in August you mentioned something about a hole 8 that would target the most intense part of the magnetic anomaly. What did you get from hole 8? Well, it was actually hole 6 that first gave us a very broad intercept of combined really intense porphyry-style alteration. By that I mean it's, you know, really green, a lot of epidote, pervasive through the rock. And within that alteration, we also saw a variety of copper minerals, chalcopyrite, of course, but more interestingly, boronite, chalcosite, so on and so forth.

7:50Those are very high copper content minerals. So that was hole six. And we drilled through several hundred meters of this kind of material. So we actually followed up that intercept with hole 9 and 10. And the important outcome from those holes, the holes 9 and 10 were on the same section and basically targeted the same volume, but from different directions, diametrically opposed azimuths actually. And then hole nine came in perpendicular to that section. So we, of course, don't have assays for any of this yet. In August, yes, we talked about the excitement in terms of what we had seen, the visible copper minerals.

8:42I would caution listeners that, of course, we just don't know until the assays come back really what those visible minerals will translate into in terms of actual metal content. What I can tell you is as well that there's a lot that we cannot see in the Trek South Core. We know, for example, that there's gold with the copper and that there's silver. We know that from the sampling that was done across the broad area ahead of time. So basically, we have a large volume, which we've demonstrated now as copper minerals in it, coupled with the most intense alteration we saw in the program. So it's really the combination of those two that gives us a lot of confidence that Phase 2 will be able to be targeting that a lot more precisely than we were able with Phase 1.

9:44Just to clarify, so Phase 1 was this season and Phase 2 is next season? Yes, absolutely. We had rather hoped that maybe we could do both phases this season, but as it turned out, you always face challenges. Pardon me. In the first phase, you know, no one had ever drilled the Trek South Prospect before. You've got rock conditions, camp conditions that you're just unfamiliar with. So we learned a lot about that. But yeah, we got the phase one done very successfully. Pardon me. And we're really looking forward to the second phase to come. Tell us, Kevin, what success is going to look like. Again, as you said, assays are pending right now.

10:38But do you have in mind in terms of like a size or grade? And then also, could you kind of pair that against, you know, you are in the Golden Triangle. just given support that you might get for taking this further for location infrastructure? Yeah, people have to understand the location is really, really good. Strategically, I'm talking about because our camp, the Trek South camp, is literally just 1.2 kilometers upslope from the end of the partially completed road that Tekken Newmont built. Their ISPA camp is actually visible from our camp. There's a photo of this in our PowerPoint presentation.

11:24So we're very close to infrastructure, assuming they eventually get that road finished, which I do expect they will. And our property rather injects itself up into the tech Newmont ground, if you look at it in plan view. So ideal location, the topography as well is really advantageous. It's not the side of an extreme mountain slope. It's pretty well moderate by BC exploration standards. And we can actually potentially use the topography, i.e. there is quite a difference in elevation between trek south and valley bottom. We could use that to our advantage going forward because it would be relatively straightforward to add it into the guts of this system for much lower elevation.

12:22This is kind of an approach that companies like Collective Mining are adopting for some of their porphyry targets down in Ecuador or Colombia. there. So, well located and I would say at this point we really just have to do a lot more drilling. Mike, that's the key to this program. More drilling. Not necessarily too widely spaced, but probably bring it up to about 100 meters centers and follow or drill below where we've already identified the source. So we'll be trying to drill below this year's drilling with the pending phase two program. Normally, what do you expect a drill program to be in your location phase two on a summer season?

13:17What month? Well, if we had two drills, we could certainly drill 10 ,000 meters. It depends. And that's, by the way, if you were able to start in the middle of June, which next year, assuming the weather lets us do this, we should be able to start mobilizing middle of June, maybe late June rather than the middle of July, which was the case this year. So, you know, at Saddle North, for example, well, when we first achieved the Saddle South part of that discovery, We set out to drill up there 4 ,800 meters in one season. We really scaled that up. By the end of the season, we had drilled about 18 ,000 meters.

14:08So theoretically, we can get to 10 ,000 meters of drilling at Trek South. We'd need two drills to do it. If you asked, as you did, what success would look like, Mike, this is porphyry copper gold that we're hunting here. We need to drill many hundreds of meters of, let's call it, ore in quotation marks, grade. And that might be anything greater than half a percent copper equivalent up to and ideally more than one percent copper equivalent. And I would think based on the work we have done to date with phase one that we definitely the potential of getting there it's just i think the key is to find the uh a taskally altered chord of the system which the magnetics and we talked about this and shown it in the powerpoints the magnetics suggest it is directly below the best of this year's holes.

15:20The only other thing I'd say is that, you know, I do expect some of what we've drilled to return some pretty good numbers. That might be shorter intervals within a much broader envelope. So it's highly encouraging a trek south that we have truly hundreds of meters and drilled in several directions of the intense porphyry style. So we have consistency across a huge volume lithologically and with the alteration. It just gives you a sense of the scale of this thing. And we know within that package we've got copper minerals. So I wouldn't be surprised if we get some pretty good values even close to surface or at surface as we eventually bring the drill density up because we have sampled at surface boronite, for example.

16:24So let's just see how it evolves with time. But it's really, I think, in my view, the key is just doing a lot more drilling. Let's just do a catch-up with the other assets that are under Oterra. You do have the asset in Nevada, Kincaid. I believe there's talk about an IP survey and being drill ready by year end. What's the status on that right now? And I guess also, how are you looking at those other assets vis-a-vis what you're focused on at Trek South? Well, it's always wise to have a bit of a pipeline with these companies, right? Although our flagship at the minute is Trek South, and I hope it continues to be that.

17:09And Kincaid is a property that Steve had identified a few years ago and brought into the company. It is really attractive, firstly, geologically, because historically, there was a lot of small-scale mining. And so across quite a large area, which we've now sewn up with our own staking, there are some pretty impressive numbers. copper, gold, silver, usually a mix of the three coming out of the historical workings. And they were mainly vein workings across a large area. Our VPX, John Bitzock, thinks it's got a porphyry flavor. And yeah, I could agree with that, actually, based on my knowledge of it.

18:02It's, of course, got terrific access. I mean, you can drive right on to it, and it's not far from a major highway. So it's got all of those advantages. We haven't yet done the IP. We're evaluating submissions for that work at the minute. We'll see when we get to doing that. We're just not quite sure at the minute. But yes, it should be drill ready. And what I've really been saying to people is it could be ready to drill, depending on the outcome of the IP, of course, next year, but obviously not this year. So Kincaid is a really good-looking property. It's coming along. We also have Lundmark Lake in Ontario, which I've always liked.

18:50It's up near the Muscle White Mine. It's both VMS-style copper gold as well as gold, and we'll see where that evolves. That's a more remote property, but that belt, you might have noticed Ross Beattie's people with Equinox recently bought the Muscle White mine. And there's a lot to be said for what this company, or at least Romeo's predecessor, drilled at Lundmark. There were some very good intercepts, which should be followed up on at some point. We'll just see when. What's your current cash position and when might you need to raise again? We will need to raise ahead of next year's program. Right now, it would be around$2 million.

19:42Next year, these phases are expensive. I think we can do next year's program, the phase two, at a significantly lower cost than this year because, as you might have noted with our recent news releases, etc., that we left much of the infrastructure in place at Trek South. So the drill pads, we've got a lot of those, all of the camp pads, quite a bit of the materials, etc. So coupled with the earlier start to the season, we'd probably have a much higher productivity and I've managed to do a lot more drilling next season than we were able to this. So lastly, Kevin, talk about the news flow right now that you expect.

20:36So assays are due. When do you expect those? Any other news? And also, as those assays come out, what do you want investors to pay attention to? What do you want them to in terms of understanding the story at Orterra? Well, I think they need to understand, firstly, that we are just exploration. So don't look to us for revenues. Some people still have that misunderstanding about what we do. We do the exploration. We're trying to offer our shareholders capital gains. They could get that obviously from drill results. So this is perhaps not a bad time right now given the sector has been a bit weak.

21:21I think across the board for the last couple of months now, a lot of companies, a lot of the share prices are down somewhat. That's true of us. Good timing. As far as news flow, we have a lot of assays to come, of course. And there'll be a combination of drill results plus, of course, sampling results. And I might say that at Trek South, we are getting some very strong support, at least from the sampling we have done out of the tundra zone, which might emerge as another significant porphyry target due west of Trek South. We did drill, of course, the tow zone, which is just 500 meters west of Trek South.

22:14and we've also sampled a couple of other terrific looking areas right at Trek South proper. So a lot of drill results to come. When exactly, it's kind of hard to predict. Mike, you know, things have been slow. They had to send some of the samples that we had processed to Mexico to kind of speed up the process, at least in terms of crushing them, you know. So let's hope that by the end of the year, we have all of our samples. It could linger into early New Year. I'm not sure. But there will be quite a bit of news between now and the end of the year, I hope. Kevin, we look forward to those drill results.

22:59Thank you for speaking with Mining Stock Daily. Well, thanks a lot, Mike. Appreciate it. The information presented should not be considered investment advice. Mining Stock Daily and its affiliates are not responsible for any loss arising from any investment decision in connection with the material presented herein. Please do your own research or speak with a licensed financial representative before making any investment decisions.