Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Alianza Minerals (TSX-V: ANZ)(OTC: TARSF) CEO Jason Weber on Mapping Out a Large Potential Ore Body by Following High-Grade Silver Veining at Flagship Haldane Project in Canada’s Yukon Territory

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president & CEO of Alianza Minerals — Mr. Jason Weber. Jason, busy August for summer doldrums, huh?

Jason Weber: Absolutely… but it's fun! We're drilling good drill holes, getting silver, and it's nice to have a good busy season when you're building something.

Gerardo Del Real: Spoken like a true geologist. You're being modest. You're not drilling good drill holes… you're drilling some spectacular numbers! Let's get into the headline today. The headline reads:

Alianza drills 1.6 meters of 1,485 grams per tonne silver equivalent at Haldane.

Congratulations! That's obviously a phenomenal, phenomenal number. But there's more to it than just the one number. That was within a wider zone of veining, and I'll let you provide the context for it. But excellent, excellent numbers. 

I know it's a flat market. I know it's the summer doldrums. But these are results that follow up already excellent results. And I suspect these types of results are going to continue just because it seems like you're really getting more comfortable with tracing the mineralization.

Jason Weber: Yeah. Well, I'm glad it appears that way because we're learning a lot as we go here with these drill holes. But you're exactly right. That intersection is part of a wider fault intersection where we really do key on the fault itself because, the bigger the fault is, the better the potential it has to host wide, high-grade veins. 

So that's probably the biggest thing we've come away from this program with is that the West Fault — which we now call a complex instead of just a structure, meaning this is a series of faults and splays off of these faults that host this mineralization — we hit it over almost 13.5 meters in this drill hole. And so that's exciting to a geologist… maybe not so much to the market… gives us just a sense of how big and how significant this structure is.

And then within that, we've got an interval of veining that's almost 7 meters wide. It works out to about 4.25 meters of veining and brecciation where we see good vein and breccia development, siderite, sphalerite, galena with faulted sections through it. But that's running 363 grams silver, plus lead and zinc, which, on the silver equivalent basis is over 500 grams per tonne silver equivalent. 

So that's, again, a nice thick intersection… really gives us confidence that we're on to a structure here that's got some size and the ability to produce an orebody. 

And, obviously, no guarantees in our business but if you're not targeting big wide structures, you don't really have that potential. So that's probably the thing I walked away from the project when I visited it last month was just how significant this West Fault structure is.

It's interesting because we know these structures exist and we see the traces in the hillside… but when you stand back and look at it, the West Fault really has a much bigger trace on the hillside. And looking back… hindsight is 2020… it's like, wow, this is a much more significant structure. And that's exactly what we're seeing in the drilling.

Gerardo Del Real: Well let's put some numbers to it. I understand the West Fault complex now is traced for over 650 meters. And you mentioned in the release that it can be interpreted to extend to 1.4 kilometers in length. And that's before it merges with the 2.2-km-long main zone structure. 

So clearly, I'm not implying that the entire zone, and that the entire trend, is mineralized with kilo-plus silver equivalent mineralization… but the ounces add up quick when you're hitting those types of numbers.

Jason Weber: Yeah, and that size, the length that we talk here — you're exactly right — we're not saying that the whole thing is mineralized. But because it's a big structure, it just lends itself to being more significant. It's going to have a longer history of fluid flow along it that's going to deposit the silver mineralization. So those are important facts when we're exploring this. 

It just tells you these big structures can host wide veins. And I think something that gets lost in this a little bit is, in the Keno district itself, it's not uncommon for these big structures to host multiple ore shoots. So we found this one part of the West Fault… there is potential that there are others along. There's not necessarily just one ore shoot on these vein structures. 

So that's exciting as well. That's the whole reason for the excitement in exploring this target is just the expanse and the ability to be a host to wide, high-grade veins.

Gerardo Del Real: I mentioned the summer doldrums. We both know that we're close to turning the page there. Post Labor Day in September tends to be where people come back from vacation, and they're back at the desk, and they start paying attention a little bit more. 

You have a couple of assays still pending. You mentioned in the release that those should be, hopefully, published by the end of September. I think the timing, frankly, could be a blessing in disguise there. Am I accurate in that, end of September, hopefully?

Jason Weber: Yeah, in fact, I had an inquiry at the lab yesterday just on timing because our first set of results actually came fairly quickly. And so it was just as the results of this Hole 25 — the big one we just announced came through — that was just as things were starting to get busy. And now they're saying at least mid-September. 

So if they're being at all optimistic, we could easily see them late-September. So I think when we talk mid to late-September, we're probably being on the optimistic side. It could be into October as well. Just knowing how busy the labs were last year, I could just see that happening for sure.

Gerardo Del Real: At the end of the day, it doesn't mean much unless the assays come back in a positive fashion. But can I ask you what the rocks look like?

Jason Weber: Well, even if you look at the cross section that we published in the news release itself, the one that has Holes 19, which was the “discovery” — I say that just because it was the first wide, high-grade intersection we had that was from last year, and then, Hole 25, which we announced today — in-between is Hole 26.

And on the cross section, we know how things look on one side of Hole 26, and we know how they look on the other side of Hole 26. But we don't know what these results are going to come back yet. The rocks look good. But what we're just still learning is what mineral species are really carrying this silver mineralization. And we've seen quite a bit of variability. In Hole 25, we saw lots of sphalerite, which is a zinc mineral.

And if you were drilling here 50 or 60 years ago, you would say, Oh, we're seeing lots of sphalerite; the system's starting to lose its silver tenor. But that's not the case at Keno now… they do see zinc-rich sections of their deposits that are still good, high-grade silver veins. So we can't read too much into that. 

What we are starting to get a feel for, though, is whether it's finer-grain galena versus coarse-grain galena. And the finer-grain galena seems to carry more silver with it. And that's just a visual observation made off one or two holes right now. And we'll see how these next holes fill in that knowledge gap for us. So that's Hole 26.

Hole 27, we're actually drilling just on strike at about the same elevation as the intersection from Hole 19. That hole was a little more oxidized. So again, we question on these holes that are near the surface where you do get some oxidation; how much of the silver has been downgraded by this weathering from surface? 

You can imagine these faults… they're conduits for the surface water to run down, and so they can carry some of that silver mineralization away just through erosion and chemical weathering. So even though it looks good, I can't say for sure it's going to be high silver bearing with what we know. So we're encouraged. But only the lab can tell us at this point how good it's going to be.

But I think what we can say with confidence is that the structures look strong in the remaining holes. So that's the overriding factor. If we see that West Fault wane to just a 50-cm-wide structure, that's when we'll be like, Okay, we've got to move further along to find where the structure gets strong and wide again. 

Not to go on too long… but the other thing we're starting to see is, we started to call it the West Fault complex rather than the West Fault structure because it is a number of faults and splays. 

And we're seeing what we think is the vein mineralization stepping over from one fault splay to another. Because in Hole 25, we actually hit mineralization sooner than we thought. And then, at the depth of where we thought we should hit the main West Fault, it was a narrow zone of gouging and faults. So that's telling us the vein stepped up to a higher up structure. 

So lots of stuff to figure out. But again, when I see that, it tells me it's dynamic… means there's lots going on. And I think that just adds to the potential for there to be an ore body in a scenario like this. When I see that — I think that's really intriguing.

Gerardo Del Real: Jason, I love that you allowed yourself one second to get excited, to call the rocks good, and then put your geo hat back on and gave me a five minute thesis on the mineral package.

Jason Weber: Well, we can't help it, right?! Gerardo, there's so much we've learned or we think we've learned in the last couple months here that we're just trying to figure out. And as we get the results back and we can start to pair that with what we're seeing in the geology — it gets really exciting. 

You start going… Okay, maybe we're starting to figure out what's happening here! And we've got some other surveys that we're doing here next week, hopefully, that we hope will help targeting this mineralization as well elsewhere on surface. So yeah, it's exciting times up there right now.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent! Jason, thank you for the thorough update. I'm looking forward to having you back on. Looking forward to the next set of assays and being able to talk in more definitive terms. Thanks again!

Jason Weber: Thank you, Gerardo!

Gerardo Del Real: We'll chat soon.

Jason Weber: Bye-bye.