Categories: Base Metals / Precious Metals
Topics: General Base Metals / General Precious Metals

Chakana Copper (TSX-V: PERU)(OTC: CHKKF) CEO David Kelley on High-Grade Copper-Gold-Silver Intercepts from First Deep Holes at Huancarama Target, Soledad Project, Peru

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president & CEO of Chakana Copper — Mr. Dave Kelley. Dave, how are you this morning?

Dave Kelley: I'm doing great, Gerardo! How are you doing?

Gerardo Del Real: I'm doing excellent! Thank you so much for asking. You’ve got to be happy… you put out some more high-grade results from Huancarama. Let me read the headline and then I'll let you provide the context, Dave. The headline reads:

Chakana Copper extends Huancarama mineralization 290 meters below surface at the Soledad Project in Peru. 

You're hitting high-grade copper; you're hitting high-grade gold; you're hitting high-grade silver. Give us the context. Good work!

Dave Kelley: Thanks, Gerardo! Yeah, it's exciting when we get to this step of drilling on a new discovery because, as you know, we spend a lot of time early on with shallow holes and short holes, getting the geometry down, checking the grade, trying to understand the breccia pipe. And then, once we get enough information, we can start doing deeper holes and running the contacts further down at-depth. 

And we've talked about this many times how these breccia pipes are vertically extensive. We've never seen the bottom of a breccia pipe yet even though we’ve drilled, like at Breccia #6, down to 824 meters below surface; Breccia #1, 490 meters continuous mineralization from surface. And they're all open at-depth. We've never seen the bottom yet.

So this was our first deeper hole at Huancarama just to push the breccia pipe down further and with great results. We were on a step-out platform, so we weren't at the top of the breccia pipe; we were on the side of it and we were drilling at an angle. And we came into the east side of the breccia pipe and continued for 175 meters in the breccia pipe. And then exited on the west side at a vertical depth below surface of about 290 meters. And again, it's still wide open. 

So it opens the door for continual drilling, definition drilling, down to that depth. And we probably will take some deeper shots too after we do some definition drilling, and we’ll even have better control on the geometry. 

But the grades look really good. That 175 meter intercept was about 1.06% copper equivalent. It was 0.42 grams [per tonne] gold, 0.48% copper, and 35 grams [per tonne] silver. But importantly, very, very high-grade within that 29 meters of 1.21 grams gold, 1.35% copper, and 95 grams silver. 

So we're really, really happy with these results. They really look good.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent! I suspect that you're going to continue drilling the west side of Huancarama as it appears that you're hitting, again, just excellent grades over excellent widths, right?

Dave Kelley: Well, the results we were just talking about… that's what we're now calling the Huancarama East Breccia Pipe. And we've got that as a very large defined breccia; it's the coalescence of the H1 and H2 breccias. So yes, that's going to get a lot of attention; a lot of infill drilling. We've already planned the infill drill program for there, and we'll be starting that soon.

But since we last talked, we've been drilling a lot of holes on the left side. And we just put up the very first hole on the west side in today's news release, and it had a very nice high-grade intercept. It wasn't a wide intercept. We suspect that it's one of these breccia dikes that comes off the edge of one of the larger breccia bodies; it's a very common feature that we see. 

Just to see the high-grade in that 6.5 meter intercept; it had 1.63% copper, 305 grams silver (really, really high silver) and 0.27 gold. And so we've got to track that down. And that's what the drilling on the west side has been doing lately… is exploring that western extent, or western half, of the breccia complex. And we'll have lots of results coming out on that soon.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Second rig on the property now?

Dave Kelley: Yes, it started drilling February 15th. It's been dedicated to infill drilling on Paloma East. And I think we had 7 initial holes there. Then, we'll move over to Paloma West; I think there's probably about 7 holes there. And then we'll move it back and forth. 

It's really nice that those two discoveries are so close together with a number of platforms around both of them (and in between them) because we can work back and forth between the two discoveries and get some more information… spend a little time while the drill rigs move over to Huancarama West… we can be putting the model together and updating our thinking about the shape of the breccia and the control and the structures and that type of thing. And then, we'll pull the rig back over there to do more drilling. 

So it's great to have a little bit of a pause in between, collecting a lot of information, getting your head around it, and then pulling it back in and drilling more.

Gerardo Del Real: A lot of news flow to come. Anything else to add to that, Dave?

Dave Kelley: No. Things are going well. Laboratories have slowed down a little bit. I know that, in Peru, they're having a really hard time with the second [COVID-19] wave right now, and they're getting laboratories to fill up oxygen bottles for them. And I understand there are no vacancies in the hospitals right now. So we're real concerned about the people of Peru right now. And we're doing everything we can to help the local communities.  

We just did another round of donations to the local communities and medical supplies and that type of thing; we continue to work with our communities to try to keep them safe and keep our people safe and our contractors safe. So far, fingers crossed, it's going really well. But, obviously, it's something that we're concerned about and keeping an eye on.

Gerardo Del Real: Good work; stay safe! It's great to hear that you're keeping with the precautions… important, obviously, for all stakeholders… you've got to do things the right way first and foremost, right?

Dave Kelley: Yes, absolutely. The communities are super important to the success of our project. They help us on the program, and they're important stakeholders in the area. So we'll do everything we can to help them.

Gerardo Del Real: Fantastic! Dave, thanks again for your time today. Look forward to having you back on soon. It sounds like we have lots to talk about here throughout the year.

Dave Kelley: Yes, for sure. Thank you, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Alright, thank you.