Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Alianza Minerals (TSX-V: ANZ) CEO Jason Weber on Hitting High-Grade Silver at Keno Hill District

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the President and CEO of Alianza Minerals, Mr. Jason Weber. Jason, Happy New Year, and congratulations. How are you?

Jason Weber: Thanks Gerardo. Happy New Year to you as well. I've been doing very well. Thanks.

Gerardo Del Real: We haven't chatted in 2021. This is our first conversation. It's a heck of a way to get it started. You just announced 818 grams per tonne silver, over 1.78 meters true width. That's within an 8.72 meter wide fault vein zone, averaging 311 grams per tonne silver at the West Fault target. This is a wholly owned project. I joked with you off air that in a perfect world, you would make discoveries across all your projects. But if you had to pick one, this is a good one, considering you own the whole thing, right?

Jason Weber: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's like having kids and they're all your favorites, but now that... The Haldane's always been one we've been very excited to explore. The work we've done in the past has just reinforced our feelings that this project had great potential for these kinds of results. And now this hole, it's brought that to bear. We're really excited about moving forward here.

Gerardo Del Real: You talk in the release about it being open in all directions. And you were keen to point out that that 1.78 meters was true width, which again, these widths and this type of mineralization is similar to what's being mined out locally, right? And so can you provide some context for people that aren't familiar with the area, aren't familiar with the history of the project, and the projects that surround it? Because this is going to catch the market's attention.

Jason Weber: Yeah, so we're on the Western edge of the Keno Hill Silver District. The Keno Hill district is named after the namesake, Keno Hill Mines, which were discovered really back over 100 years ago. And it was about the same time that silver mineralization was discovered at Haldane as well. The difference being, Haldane being on the western edge and up on a hillside, it was a little secluded from the main area of mining. So it got left sort of forgotten about for a long, long time. And it's only been recent years that groups have gotten back involved. And so we picked this up a few years ago, 2018, decided to take a more holistic approach, using what's been known about the Keno Hill District in general. What's been learned, especially recently, our neighbor Alexco has been doing lot of work in exploration and development, and recently got their Keno Hill Mine back up and running. And so with that knowledge that has been gained there, we were able to apply that at Haldane, and, I would like to think that that helped me to the discovery here at the West Fault.

Gerardo Del Real: What comes next? Obviously the West Fault now is a priority target. I got to believe that you're pretty excited to follow that up immediately.

Jason Weber: Yeah. Well, we'll look at a program this spring. We'd had a program planned already. We raised money back in the fall. We knew we'd have to execute the program at Haldane over two phases. We were just going to run out of time before winter really set in, which is exactly what happened. So we'd planned to come back anyways this spring. So we'll be back in there. And it was just a matter of what was going to be the priority. We had to see what was going to come out of that drilling. We drilled two holes here at West Fault. We drove another two holes at the Middlecoff Zone.

One hole we terminated early, however, because it veered too much off from the target, but the Middlecoff is another zone on the property that's known to produce high grade mineralization. The old timers were in here, hand mining thousands of grams per tonne silver back in the 1920s. So yeah, that together with the West Fault, plus the new discovery, we made ourselves at what we call the Bighorn, three kilometers away. We've got multiple targets to test on the property, but with this result, certainly as you said, West Fault comes to the top of the list. So we'll be in there probably just after breakup this spring, and ready to go do as much drilling as we can.

Gerardo Del Real: A lot of people will be watching. Congratulations, Jason. Is there anything else that you'd like to add?

Jason Weber: Well, I think we just look around that Keno District and there's just so much activity there. There's been some great results out of Alexco. It's a great place to be exploring. So we can't wait to get back up there and start drilling. So, and just want to say thanks to you and your listeners and readers for their support over the time we've been talking with you guys. It's great to have this result for everybody.

Gerardo Del Real: I'm hearing rumors of a silver short squeeze launched by the Redditors, so we will see what the day and the coming brings. Your timing might be impeccable, Jason. Thanks again. Great chatting.

Jason Weber: Yeah. Thank you, Gerardo.