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

Gladiator Metals (TSX-V: GLAD)(OTC: GDTRF) President Marcus Harden Provides Update on Multi-Target Drill Program at Flagship Whitehorse Copper-Gold Project, Yukon Territory, Canada

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president of Gladiator Metals — Mr. Marcus Harden. Marcus, great to have you back on. How are you, sir?

Marcus Harden: Very well, thanks, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Listen, let's get right into it. We have a four-handle on the copper price. I am a very big proponent of copper being one of the key metals if we are going to transition into this new future of energy. 

And look, whether we agree with the politics or not, we're going to need a whole bunch of copper to make it happen on a global scale. It would not surprise me to see US$7, US$8 copper. But at US$4/lb copper, a lot of the equities are starting to react. 

You keep announcing drill results that speak to grade and scale. So I wanted to have you on and just get an update real quick on the ongoing drilling program and how things are coming along there.

Marcus Harden: Sure, as you know, Gerardo, we've got two rigs going at the moment. Our overall objective for this year is to put about 5,000 to 10,000 meters into our top five targets in the Whitehorse Copper Belt. 

We have one target area, Cowley Park, which we are fairly happy is resource conversion ready. We've got mineralization consistent over 700 meters at good grades of 1.5% copper and approaching 2% copper equivalent over much of that. 

Our recent drilling has been in two of the other target areas; we currently have 10,000 meters going into the Little Chief and Middle Chief areas at the moment. And that was where we recently announced the first 2,500 meters of that. That was actually into a new and unmined area where we had some results, including 22 meters at 1.41% Cu and 16 meters at 1.29% Cu. 

One of the things we're really excited about is we're starting to see some significant gold credits along with that number as well; hole LCG-003 hit 13.75 meters at 2.71% Cu, and we're really encouraged to see almost 1.5 grams per tonne (g/t) Au accompanying that. And that result was actually from the bottom of the hole with the hole finishing in mineralization. 

And the reason we're encouraged to see those gold results, Gerardo, is because we're drilling in an area of a lot of historical drill results, which are unmined. Some of those include results up to 49 meters at 3% Cu. Importantly, none of that historical drilling was assayed for gold, and that's despite gold being a significant credit in production.

One of the other things we've been excited about — which we announced but haven't got results back for yet — is we did a step-out hole about 250 meters to the northwest of those results in that unmined area. And we've been intersecting mineralization from surface. We've only put in three holes so far but all three intersected the same style of mineralization, which is magnetites with, generally, bornites and chalcocites as the main copper minerals. And that was from the top of the hole.

We’re obviously pretty excited about being able to extend mineralization over more than 1 km. We're seeing Little Chief emerge as a major potential contributor to future resources on the project, and we're looking forward to announcing the further 7,500 meters there.

And then, we also have our initial holes going into another target at the Cub Trends. This is about 2.5 km to the west of Cowley Park, and we're starting to see some significant mineralization there. 

We’re very excited about that area as there are a lot of historical high-grade copper hits from surface, which are unmined as well, over about a 1-km-long trend. We're drilling that trend out from under cover, and that target horizon has been indicated by recent magnetic surveys that we've conducted. So… very excited about news flow for the next couple of months.

Gerardo Del Real: Absolutely, as am I. And for those that aren't familiar with the Gladiator story and are looking for quality copper and gold exposure, can you just give a brief overview of the scale? 

I can't emphasize enough how important it is — when you're looking at projects and you're looking at companies — if you're going to allocate capital towards a company and then speculate in this high-risk, high-reward space, you want the potential for a big win, right? And the scale here is what's really attractive to me.

Marcus Harden: Yeah, that's right. We've got about 35 km of strike on the copper trends under tenure. But we're really focusing on, as I mentioned, our top four targets within the southern 12 km of that. 

I think one thing to note is that we're not out there having to make discoveries. This is a mature copper district; it produced 10 million tonnes at 1.5% Cu, including around 1.0 g/t Au well. 

It was mined by Hudbay between 1967 and 1982. And when Hudbay left, they actually left the resources and reserves on the books over that 12 kilometers. Obviously, those aren't modern NI 43-101 standards but, essentially, we are going back through and we're digitizing that historical data and we're starting to convert those historical resources and reserves into modern standards. 

I think what has really excited us about this project is that previous exploration was very much outcrop driven; so outcropping high-grade copper mineralization… they'd go and they'd drill fairly closely-spaced fences around that.

That’s because they had a hungry mill there, and they were very much driving near-term production as their focus. Whereas we've got a bit more of a luxury of starting to step back and try to prove continuity under cover between those outcrops and start really looking for much larger targets and building that continuity between those already discovered zones. 

We feel like we've already got one potential area at Cowley Park, which would meet that standard, and we’re looking to build up the next three. And hopefully, our objective is to have a line of sight on around 50 to 100 million tonnes whilst maintaining that higher-grade copper picture of 1.5% copper.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, you're off to a heck of a start. The drill bit is hitting everywhere, and I think — with gold near all-time highs and with copper breaking out — the timing couldn't be better. Marcus, thank you so much for the update, and I'm looking forward to having you back on as soon as we get assays from the other areas.

Marcus Harden: Thank you very much, Gerardo. As I mentioned, we've got a lot of news flow coming from another 12,500 meters of diamond drilling, which is underway. 

And also, we’re really looking forward to presenting the results of the drone magnetic survey. I think listeners will be able to start to see the continuity we're talking about between those advanced prospects at the moment and the potential scale that we are talking about.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, looking forward to seeing all of it. Thanks again.

Marcus Harden: Thank you very much, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Cheers.