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Cross River Ventures (CSE: CRVC)(OTC: CSRVF) CEO Alex Klenman on Discovery of 41.1 g/t over 0.5 m in First Holes Drilled at Bear Head Zone, McVicar Gold Project, NW Ontario
Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the President and CEO of Cross River Ventures – Mr. Alex Klenman. Alex, how are you today?
Alex Klenman: I'm good, Gerardo. How are you doing?
Gerardo Del Real: I am well. It's interesting times for sure. We had a Fed rate hike decision yesterday that has led to a sell-off in the overall indices, but a rallying in the precious metals price. You just announced the results from the very first holes ever drilled at the Bear Head Zone at the flagship McVicar Gold Project in Ontario. The headline number was a discovery of 41.1 grams per tonne gold over half a meter, obviously early on in the property's history. I know this was a property that the technical team feels has the potential for greater widths and significant grades. I'd love to get your take on the release.
Alex Klenman: Yeah you framed that quite well. Obviously, what I think happened here is we have to trace backwards here. And what we did really was we followed the methodology that was set out by the tech team, which included... we've talked about this numerous times, the data compilation and then the LIDAR surveys, and then structural interpretations of where they think gold might be found in this area. What we did with some sampling here is we found this 700-meter corridor that's open east-west, open along strike, and the team decided this is worth putting some holes down. It's virgin ground, no one's ever drilled it. But they really liked the potential of finding mineralization, and we just confirmed that. Their methodology works. That's exploration at its base, at its primary best, taking virgin ground and finding gold.
So we got a nice 41 gram hit over half a meter. There were some other lower grade hits, nothing real lengthy, but what we've proved here is that the area is mineralized, there's a system in place. The great thing about finding a 41 gram hit there, even though it's only a half a meter, is those things typically aren't isolated. Gold moves, it pools as a fluid and drops. So somewhere there there's going to be more grade and there's probably going to be lengthier intercepts to be found.
But discovery success. I mean, I had a long call this morning with a shareholder and he suggested to me, he said, "Look, the only thing you could put out in this market that would've got attention is 10 meters of 10 grams. Otherwise, no one's here to watch," and I get that. So we're going to continue to plug ahead here. We've got more holes to put down at McVicar. We've got six or seven holes we're waiting for assays on the Altered Zone, which is a little north of this zone. And again, the first holes we've put down at McVicar and we're onto something. We're excited. We already know there's mineralization there. There's a lot of spots to hit on the property, it's big. But these are the first holes in the Bear Head, and we like it.
Gerardo Del Real: You mentioned the property being big and you mentioned these are the first holes ever put into it. Can you provide a sense of the scale? Because let's be frank here, you announced the holes and, yes, the widths aren't there the way that we would love to see them, right?
Alex Klenman: Correct.
Gerardo Del Real: But this is just one part of one zone, which is part of a big, big property. Can you provide some scale, Alex?
Alex Klenman: Oh, yeah, there's at least a dozen zones of interest. We have a copper deposit on the property. We've got multiple zones that have been drilled prior. One of the things this tech team really wanted to do was make a new discovery, not just hammer around known areas. If you're going to prove up ounces and large amounts of them, you're going to have to open up new zones as well. I mean, we're just 600 meters south of the Cello vein, which has some astronomical grades, and that's just north of the Bear Head Zone. So, I mean, we've got multiple zones. The Altered Zone which we're waiting for assays back from is another one of these zones that had a little bit of previous work done. The biggest thing here is all of these areas were not connected over the last 20, 25 years. We put them together in this large consolidated package that is McVicar now, and so we're excited about tying them together and getting some more drills in the ground.
We also have a second project we're going to get to pretty quick here called Manitou. Again, this similar sort of targeting done. Same methodology that was applied to McVicar was applied to Manitou. We got 129 gram sample that we picked up there last summer. So that one's probably going to get drilled before we get back to McVicar, only because we have to drill it. It's close, it's road accessible, lots of infrastructure down there at Manitou and Dryden. Again, these two projects really are going to be the two that we work.
Gerardo Del Real: Six holes pending from the Altered Zone. When do you expect to have assays out to the market?
Alex Klenman: Yeah, I would think in the next two to three weeks. Right now we know labs are busy. Everybody's waiting. There are lots of delays and we're going to be hopeful that over the next couple weeks we're going to see something. But it could stretch into July. Timelines, it seem stretched and it's taken us a while to get Bear Head back, but Altered's not too far off.
Gerardo Del Real: Looking forward to it. Alex, thanks for the update. We'll chat again soon.
Alex Klenman: Appreciate it, Gerardo. Thanks so much.