Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Westhaven Gold (TSX-V: WHN)(OTC: WTHVF) CEO Gareth Thomas on Latest High-Grade Gold-Silver Intercepts & Mobilization of 3rd Drill Rig to Flagship Shovelnose Gold Project, British Columbia, Canada

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president & CEO of Westhaven Gold — Mr. Gareth Thomas. Gareth, how are you today?

Gareth Thomas: I'm very well. Thank you for having me, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: It's good to have you back on. The last time we chatted, we spoke about the fact that it looked like you were getting a better handle on the structures and the controls. And man, if these numbers are any indication of what's to come, it should be a busy, busy, busy second half of the year for you. Let me provide a bit of context to the most recent bit of news. 

You drilled 0.45 meters of 614 g/t gold and 2,070 g/t silver. That was within 41.55 meters of 8.17 g/t gold and 34.64 g/t silver at Shovelnose. 

Congratulations! Excellent numbers! Give me a bit of context, Gareth, as to the continuity of the mineralization because now it's starting to look — I had a mining professional tell me — that it's starting to look as a potential multi-million ounce deposit, right? And so I'll let you take it away and give us the context. Congrats, though.

Gareth Thomas: Yeah, thank you. Well, we're certainly excited! I mean, this is the South Zone where we're working towards our maiden resource by the end of the year. So this is within the South Zone. 

Back in 2018, where we made this high-grade discovery — the 17.77 meters of 24.5 g/t gold — we didn't do very much in terms of drilling in and around those areas. We were pretty aggressive with the drilling by doing pretty big step-outs so this hole falls within there. But we're certainly adding flavor to the — I'm going to refrain from using the word ‘ounces’ — because we don't have a resource yet… 

Gerardo Del Real: Right, yeah… 

Gareth Thomas: But numbers like this, you're certainly adding to the overall, as mentioned, where we're certainly adding ounces to this. And the 0.45 [meters] of 614 g/t gold and 2,000 g/t silver is easily our highest silver intercept there. And it should be mentioned, this is very shallow. The 41.55 meters was 82 meters to 123 meters. So if not the number one, our definitely number two shallowest, best intercept to date on the project. 

So very exciting to see those high-grade bonanza numbers; numbers that we haven't really seen before. So yeah, it's certainly adding to the potential of our resource here, which is due later this year. 

And yeah, I think it's going to continue surprising us with some numbers in and around the South Zone that we hadn't really drilled a lot of these — I want to call them ‘cherry-pick’ — targets that are sitting there. These are targets we just are coming back to now. We always knew that there would be some sort of numbers there but these are pretty impressive. So we're excited about this at the South Zone for sure.

Gerardo Del Real: You've mobilized a third drill or it's being mobilized. Can you speak to that a bit?

Gareth Thomas: Yeah, that's definitely one of the key messages from this news release is we've got the one drill still on FMN [Forget Me Not Zone] where we discussed our last news release when we last chatted. That was the 16 meters of 9 g/t gold and we carried along with it… the goal of that drill was to close the gap between the FMN and the Franz. 

And of course now, to our good surprise, it appears that this vein is deflecting more northwards and may not be a part of the Franz or it may be a separate vein. And there's evidence of a potential fourth vein zone there.

So we're back there drilling. We're doing an upper-cut to that 161 hole now. And it's looking quite interesting where we may have been a little too deep on hole 162 which we're expecting back in the next couple weeks here which was 13 meters of quartz. Then, we had another meter of fault gouge… then we got into another 8 meters of vein. 

So really, we've got 20-plus meters of veining in that hole. So not entirely sure if we're in the exact right horizon there but we're doing an upper-cut to that as we speak. So we've got the rig there. 

Then, we're heading down to the Franz to continue on northwards while we continue to explore in and around the South Zone. And we're going to be heading more northwards and doing more exploratory holes on the South Zone as well, hence, bringing in the third rig.

We've got hundreds of other targets here on the periphery that we're keen to get to… so we just don't have enough time and resources at this point. So, hence, the third rig which we always were planning. We had three rigs last year, as you know, so it certainly will help us expedite this drill program as we have, like I said, hundreds of targets that we're certainly narrowing down to sort of high-priority targets. 

But we've got lots. And that third rig is going to be testing quite a few different targets in and around quite a distance from the South Zone and this Tower Creek fault that we're on right now with the two rigs. 

So it's going to be exciting. It's going to take a lot of drilling but, as we discussed before, we don't think this is a one-off vein system here. Hence, what we really believe is there's multi-million ounces of gold and silver here just based on evidence we're seeing on-surface and with our CSAMT survey. 

So yeah, lots of targets that we'll sort of be doing with that third rig… will be more of a very exploratory program which is always exciting. But it certainly is going to take some time and patience with that. But yeah, we're hoping to prove to people that there's going to be a lot more than just this four-km-long… hey, we'll take that as well… but we think there's going to be more here.

Gerardo Del Real: It sounds like you're pretty excited about the aggressive step-outs and exploration drilling that's coming up, Gareth.

Gareth Thomas: Yeah, certainly. It's exciting times for the company. I think it's going to be a very crucial year. One, with the resource coming out… but we've always said we've got a great world-class discovery there with the South Zone but we want to prove that there's more of these. And it's our belief that this isn't just a one-off. 

So we've been working really hard behind the scenes; got boots on the ground. We've got geologists in the field looking at some of these ground-truthing… some of these geophysical anomalies along with some of the hydrothermal outcrops we found last summer prospecting. So yeah, they're sitting there waiting to be tested. So it's exciting times and we'll still be putting out regular news flow here with the South Zone and FMN targets as well.

And we can't discount the Franz. What we think is going on there to the northwest — where we had some good evidence there late last year with what we intercepted — it appears to be quite downfaulted there. So we will be testing — after this last FMN hole — we will be going down to the Franz about 600 meters away. 

Then, we'll see what comes out of the FMN. And then, we'll likely be back there chasing that 60 meters of 9 grams as well. So yeah, lots on the horizon. And yeah, exciting, exciting times.

Gerardo Del Real: Lots of news flow; lots of exploration; really good work. Congrats to you and the team! How's the treasury looking, Gareth?

Gareth Thomas: Good question, yeah. So we're sitting at around C$10 million cash. Then, as I've mentioned to you before, we have the Exploration Tax Credit which we receive from the government. We get 20% back on every hard dollar spent, and then we get an additional 10% because we're in the Pine Beetle Kill Area. So that's 30% on every hard dollar we get back. 

So from last year, we'll be getting about C$2 million back in the coming months from that. So that would be C$12 million cash on-hand. With the third rig, obviously, that's going to increase our costs. But I think it's a very good thing when we're expanding the program and bringing on more rigs… means we're pretty excited and we've got lots of targets to test. 

So yeah, we're in a very good position financially. And yeah, we're hoping to grow in all this. So yeah, we're feeling pretty good.

Gerardo Del Real: Sounds like we're going to have lots to talk about. Thanks for the update today. It's a good one. And we'll chat soon it sounds like.

Gareth Thomas: Yeah, I appreciate that, Gerardo. We'll talk to you very soon.

Gerardo Del Real: Thanks, Gareth.

Gareth Thomas: Take care.