How a bored Canadian won Alaska's 'billion-dollar mountain'

Bloomberg Businessweek tells the story:

"I was willing to go down a turkey trail and not really know where it would end," [McKenzie] says. "Maybe it was the situation. I did have the time to do it, but I don't know how many people would have."

A hierarchy exists within the mining world, and prospectors like Dotson sit at the bottom, lacking the status brought by geologists' degrees or investors' money. They piece together the science and the trade by themselves. To his advantage, McKenzie carried none of the industry's prejudices. So when Dotson explained his theories about the mountain's geology, rather than dispute him, McKenzie just wanted to know more. Within two days, he checked out of his hotel and moved into Dotson's basement. He woke up with the Dotsons, drank coffee, and watched Fox News with them. Occasionally he whipped up eggs and sausage for the couple.

He relished Dotson's stories about living in Alaska when it was still a territory, about being stalked by wolves in the snowy woods, about claim jumpers and gunfights and nuggets of gold. "Bob made me feel like this was treasure hunting," McKenzie says.

The long Businessweek piece continues on to describe how McKenzie closed a deal with the Dotson family, how McKenzie's newly formed company -- Ucore -- initially pursued uranium on Bokan, how international political events convinced them to switch their attention to rare metals they had detected on the mountain. McKenzie now has the support of Ketchikaners and the Parnell administration, and he's hoping to begin production in 2015.

"What Ucore has in the ground is valuable, says Jacob Securities' [Luisa] Moreno. "The question is, is it economic to remove?" Mineral exploration is an obstacle course with a finish line that most never cross. Still, McKenzie plunges ahead, perhaps optimistically, maybe naively.

McKenzie is as surprised at the results of his venture as anyone. "I didn't think I'd get into the minerals business," he says. "It looks like I orchestrated this brilliant move, right? But it's just inadvertent luck." McKenzie acknowledges that this good fortune rides on the shoulders of people who devoted their lives to the mountain.

Read more at Bloomberg Businessweek.