Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

K2 Gold (TSX-V: KTO) CEO Stephen Swatton on Pending Assays at the High-Grade Mojave Gold Project in California and New Large Regional Gold Target

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president and CEO of K2 gold, a very busy Mr. Stephen Swatton. Steve, how are you?

Stephen Swatton: I'm good. Thanks Gerardo. Yeah, just quarantining here in Canada, having just got back from California, but everything went well down there.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Let's talk California. You just completed the Phase 1 Drilling Program at the Mojave Project's 17 RC drill holes, a total of 2,540 meters. How did the drilling go? I know that this follows up BHP's very successful program in 1997. It's the first time it's been drilled since then. Got to be excited, right?

Stephen Swatton: Yeah, it went really well. I mean, I must admit the first eight holes went aggressively slowly, but that's because we're getting very broken, altered and silicified rock, which is a good sign. But so, we were carefully trying to get through these different units and then we went onto the Newmont Zone from Dragonfly and the rocks are quite different, a little softer. And so we managed to drill a lot quicker, but we completed exactly what we set out to do, what we said we're going to do, and I would say we're probably about a week and a half, maybe two weeks slower than we anticipated, but simply that's a good sign for us that the rocks were fractured.

Gerardo Del Real: And for people that aren't familiar with why it's a positive to have the fractured rocks, can you explain that to everyone?

Stephen Swatton: Yeah. What we're looking for here is an epithermal gold situation where the gold comes along fractures and then permeates within the limestone that we have, this Permo-Triassic limestone, and where the actual break occurs they have difficulty drilling simply because they have voids. In other words, holes in the rock and they have to be really careful with how they drill that. They start losing the casing down the hole. So they have to be extremely careful.

So sometimes, for example, we had a maximum of 250 foot per shift, but when they're going through this fractured rock, they could only do about 20 foot, 20, 30 foot per shift. So they're just being super careful that they don't lose their drilling equipment and we don't lose the sample.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Excellent. Now you've also applied for a modified plan of operations for a larger program. I understand that that will happen by December. Is that accurate?

Stephen Swatton: Yes, I'm just going through the final draft right now and it will be submitted within a couple of weeks, and this is an area which has already been approved for development by the BLM. They simply chose, this is the Bureau of Land Management, they simply chose the helicopter option as opposed to two other options that were on the table. So, what we've done is we've slightly modified it to suit our needs because we need now to do a road based program, but we don't anticipate that there's going to be any problems with that with the BLM. And we have to then go to public review...

Gerardo Del Real: Comment.

Stephen Swatton: Comment. That's right, and then we'll receive a positive or alternative recommendation.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Assays, I understand, are anticipated within four weeks. So maybe an early Christmas present?

Stephen Swatton: Yeah, the lab that we used, we were one of their first customers. They are a spin off of the different lab. So we get preferred status and we're hoping that our samples will be pushed through a little quicker than maybe some of the others that were in front of us.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, that's a luxury in this market. As you know, the labs everywhere it seems like are backed up, and so that would be a beneficial to shareholders. You also sampled a new, large regional gold target. Let's talk about that.

Stephen Swatton: Yeah, very exciting. I mean, when you're flying in from Lone Pine, which is the local town, in the helicopter, we could see this alteration, but it also appeared on the worldview analysis that we did. So, what we decided to do is we had our local prospector and another guy who went and sampled and they took 400 odd samples from this area, but when we went down and had a look as geologists, and I'm one myself, it's extremely altered, brecciated. Not only that we saw some old workings, which we guess are from the 1900s, early 1900s, and that gives us encouragement that there must be something out there, but certainly the rocks look like the right makeup.

Gerardo Del Real: A lot to like. I'm looking forward in speaking with you in the next three to four weeks, hopefully talking about positive assays and new discoveries and extensions of existing ones. Anything else to add to that, Stephen?

Stephen Swatton: No, it's just I would say this new zone in Upland Valley is pretty well hidden from everywhere. It would be a perfect location to find the next anomaly or the next area for us to explore. So thanks very much, Gerardo. I appreciate your time.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, you have tons of targets. So it's going to be interesting for me to see how you prioritize all of those targets. I suspect that the assays, when we start receiving them, are going to dictate how much emphasis is placed in which areas, right?

Stephen Swatton: Correct. That's correct.

Gerardo Del Real: Perfect. Stephen, thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it.

Stephen Swatton: Thank you.