Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Gaia Metals (TSX-V: GMC) CEO Blair Way on Drilling at the Flagship Freeman Creek Gold Project In Idaho

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president of Gaia Metals, Mr. Blair Way. Blair, how are you?

Blair Way: Hi, good, Gerardo. It's great to be speaking with you again.

Gerardo Del Real: You know, it's funny. After the new year, I wished you a happy new year, and you and I talking off air, I did it again because it feels, after last week, like this week is a new year. Right? And so it's good to have you back on. You had some news. We know that we were anticipating assays. We received those assays this morning. The news reads, "Gaia Metals intercepts 4.11 grams per tonne gold and 33 grams per tonne silver over 12 meters in drill hole at the Freeman Creek Gold Property in Idaho." Good jurisdiction, solid numbers. This was drilling in one hole from a historical rotary drill hole, so we expected good mineralization. You learned some things from the four hole program. Let's get into that.

Blair Way: For sure. It was a small drill program with the intention to twin a hole and to allow us to gain better understanding of the property. And four holes, and we hit gold in meaningful ways in all the holes. Certainly it was a fantastic outcome and it's a contribution to understanding of the property and obviously leading us down to next steps. But yeah, the numbers, there's always a worry when you're twinning a hole. Are you twinning a hole that was real or not? So we know it was real. We know we're in the right place. And now we get to work understanding where to go next. And that's what this information has really led us to, the next steps on this property at Gold Dyke.

Gerardo Del Real: Hole three was obviously the highlight. Right? 47.6 meters starting from surface of 1.12 grams per tonne gold, 9 grams per tonne silver. Tell me about the other three holes. What did you learn? What were the main takeaways? How does that influence the next steps at the property?

Blair Way: So the twinned hole is as we expected and it's followed our understanding from that historic hole. Those first two holes were a bit deeper and that was a function of ground conditions. And certainly it helped us better understand that part of it. If you look on our map that was provided on the press release, just so people can get the spatial awareness, so one and two are more sort of trending up in the northwest. And three and four were, I guess in a way, our sort of step out ones where we weren't completely sure on what we were going to see there. But what we have seen, and obviously when we cut our trails there, we had all this outcrop, which we did a release on earlier.

So we've exposed a lot more material and certainly we're finding higher grade in that area that we probably weren't expecting to see that shallow. So we're starting to see a trend off to this sort of northeast direction from our gold anomalies and our geochem. So it's really expanded, in a way it's unconstrained our understanding of the property than what we had before. And that's great, because now we consider the benefit now of possibly doing some remote sensing on the property, just to better understand where to step out next to find more gold.

Gerardo Del Real: The last time we chatted, we talked about the new outcrop discovery at the property. It was 5.7 grams per tonne gold and 49 grams per tonne silver. Is this a target that you see drilling or anticipate to drill here in the next several months?

Blair Way: Yeah. Well, the Gold Dyke property is fully permitted for drilling. So we will have to see and wait on how the snow cover is, but all things going well, it'll clear in a timely manner and we can get back on the ground. What's great about this little program is that it's just expanded our knowledge and so we're getting a better understanding of what it looks like. Not necessarily the orientation, so IP can help us with that, which will then help us define our next steps for placing a drill pad and actually putting some more holes in the ground, but we are seeing, I guess when I speak with the geos I hear words like, "There's smoke there, so we just need to, we need to follow it." And that's really what this drill program has helped us out a great deal, is combined with what we've seen in our trail cuttings, outcrops. And then with the drill data here, we're certainly seeing very justified reason to continue doing work on the ground, both drilling and, obviously, using IP to get better understanding of the orientation of what we're looking at.

Gerardo Del Real: Gold is at $1,855, silver is close to the $26 level. You are hitting good grades over good widths. This was a small program. It informed a lot of what you're going to do the remainder of the year. And yet your market cap is what today, Blair?

Blair Way: Yeah, I mean, we're making progress, but the market cap just doesn't seem to reflect what we have here and as we spoke the first time about the company, it really is about awareness. And we are seeing that change and people are starting to take some notice of what we're doing. We will continue to do the work on the ground that needs to be done and also the marketing, so people are aware of what we actually have here. But yeah, the gold price, silver price are all in perfect alignment for what we're doing here. We just need to keep doing the work on the ground and demonstrating the value that we believe is there.

As I mentioned, we've got permitting for our Gold Dyke. We've got Carmen Creek is sort of one step away for the last work to finalize that permit, and that's really just the final say so on the trails and what have you that we'd have to put in for drilling. We can conduct IP work on the ground to help us align those drill holes. So we were looking at a spring drill program for both Gold Dyke and Carmen Creek, and we're very optimistic of what we're going to see when we conduct more work on the ground, certainly based on this very small program of four holes and the fantastic outcome that we've seen from that.

Gerardo Del Real: To top that off, you have a portfolio of other properties that in themselves could be company makers. And we'll get into that another day. And to answer my own question, the market cap is sub C$4 million, folks. That will not hold up. I know that we are having a bit of a consolidation again in the gold and silver space, but anybody that's looking for an excellent entry point with a quality management team that knows how to develop assets and wants exposure to precious metals and other metals, by the way, I encourage you to go to the company website. You should do some due diligence on Gaia Metals. Blair, anything else that you'd like to add to that?

Blair Way: No, I think we've covered it. And as you've alluded to, there's more to talk about and I think we can maybe save that for the next chat that we have. But we're super excited about our Freeman Creek Property and we do have other properties to work on in the future. But what we've got right in front of us here in Idaho is fantastic. And we're very optimistic of the future of the property. We've obviously got tons of work to do, but exploration, that's the type of game. I mean, we could have easily drilled four holes and found nothing. It's the exact opposite and either way, we still would have reason to move forward. But when you get this sort of result on the first four holes, it puts everybody in a pretty good mood to move forward and continue to explore on these properties.

Gerardo Del Real: Agreed. Blair, thank you so much, appreciate it.

Blair Way: Thanks, Gerardo. It's always great to catch up. Look forward to chatting next time.

Gerardo Del Real: Chat soon.

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