Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: Gold Stocks

Trident Resources (TSX-V: ROCK)(OTC: TRDTF) CEO Jonathan Weisblatt on Mobilization of Drill Crews and Equipment for the Summer 2026 Drill Program at the Contact Lake Gold Project

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Trident Resources (TSX-V: ROCK)(OTC: TRDTF), Mr. John Weisblatt. John, it is great to have you on. You are having yourself one heck of a 2026. How are you today?

Jonathan Weisblatt: I'm doing great, Gerardo. As always, it's a pleasure to be on your program. Thank you for having us.

Gerardo Del Real: I think it's timely. Thank you for making time. Listen, we chatted a bit off-air. We have what we both think is a healthy pullback in the precious metals space that I think provides fuel for the next leg up. So I'd love your thoughts there. And then I want to talk about just the phenomenal drill results that you've had here recently, including 17.88 grams per tonne gold over 11.25 meters and 42.53 grams per tonne over 4.5 meters from 86 meters depth, and that part I think should be emphasized as well. So congrats on the Contact Lake Gold Project, which has been an absolute, absolute barn burner this year. Share price wise, you're performing. Market cap wise, I know you're going to make a great case as to why you still have a lot of runaway. But talk to me about the gold space and the metals space in general and what you see out there.

Jonathan Weisblatt: Yeah. So Gerardo, the pullback in the price of the precious metals, let's focus on gold from around $5,500 earlier this year just in January, down here around $4,300 I think when I last looked at it, it's a nice healthy pullback, and you're starting to see that now in the GDXJ. It looks like valuations maybe got a bit extended for a short period of time, but you have to look at these trades over long duration. So we're talking the average commodity bull market being somewhere between 12 and 14 years. And if you look at this particular cycle, by my estimation, you're looking at years four or five. So still quite a lot of runway room here left in the market. And all of the economic factors, the macro factors are really going to drive this thing forward. We don't need to get into that today, but we can spend some more time on another call just talking about pure gold macro.

Gerardo Del Real: I love it. Yep.

Jonathan Weisblatt: Yeah. As it pertains to our project in particular, Contact Lake has been an amazing success thus far, but still again, in the very early innings. For those of you who are familiar with our project, we didn't really get started here until the fall of last year. We drilled a very small program, 7,000 meters in the fall of 2025, which really kicked things off. It was confirmation of the high grade at shallow, mid-shallow, and then I want to underscore this point, at deep levels well below the old mine workings of Contact Lake. And then we followed that fall program up early in 2026 when we launched our winter program and the winter program really focused above Contact Lake through 44 inches of ice and we focused in an area of the old Contact Lake mine. I remind your audience that it was owned and operated by Cameco in the 1990s.

We really focused the winter program from the ice in an area called the BK3 zone. The BK3 zone is directly to the east of the main zone one and main zone two where Cameco focused its mining operations in the 1990s. Was a very high grade section. They built a mining stope. They built an exploration drift under the lake to go and eventually mine BK3. But then in 1998, they shut the mine down, low gold prices, Cameco was focused on uranium, and they moved on. So what we did really for 10,000 meters of drilling at Contact Lake over the winter was we keyed in on that BK3 zone and that's where we hit those very high grade intersections that you quoted earlier. Specifically highlighted in hole 36, which was 15 grams over 52 and a half meters. It was a barn burner as you put it and it was well below where a lot of that mineralization was well below where Cameco was hitting their high grade back historically.

The hole was mineralized top to bottom. There were very high grade portions of it, but very consistent mineralization. So what our objective was in the fall and the winter was to one, better understand the mineralization of Contact Lake as it hadn't been drilled in the last 30 plus years. So that was number one. Number two, extend strike length across the lake to the north northeast, which we've done, and also testing mineralization at depth, which we did last fall and we plan to do on the upcoming summer drilling program, which I think we're going to talk about next.

Gerardo Del Real: Absolutely. Let's get to it. You just announced this morning that you have mobilized crews. Obviously a lot of attention and eyes on the drilling. Let's talk about what that 2026 summer program is going to look like.

Jonathan Weisblatt: Yeah. So we have a fully funded summer drilling program, which is commencing just about now. We're going to drill up 20,000 meters. Most of those meters between now and November are going to be focused on the Contact Lake Gold Project, focused on Contact Lake itself. We're going to be back to the shoreline trying to advance our exploration in that area of the old mine workings. But the biggest piece of new development here is we're going to be drilling below the main zone. We're going to be trying to extend this deposit at depth. As you know from our fall program, specifically in holes 17 and 18, we drilled well below the old mine workings, which ended at 340 meters, and we hit very good mineralization at depth. Several of those holes were also mineralized when we ended the holes. So we're excited to get back there over the summer program, which is starting right now. The key here is to scale the deposit, build ounces, build economic ounces as quickly and as effectively and efficiently as possible.

Gerardo Del Real: It's a lot of catalysts for a second half of the year that I believe is going to see Trident continue to hit new highs. Couldn't be more excited to get assays, couldn't be more excited to see everything really start to come together as you further define the depths and the multiple zones that you have here. Anything to add to that, John?

Jonathan Weisblatt: I just want to say this is still a very small company. It's $150 million market cap. We have two million ounces on our books, which would imply $75 per ounce on the ground, and that excludes all of our cash, the two million ounces on our books, it also excludes any 43-101 ounces from Contact Lake that is over and above the two million. So you are paying a very low price for good jurisdiction, excellent access to infrastructure, two million ounces, plus you're getting a past producing high grade underground mining operation near infrastructure, the way I see it, for free in the stock price. So a lot of upside, a lot of excitement, and catalysts throughout the back half of this year.

Gerardo Del Real: John, always a pleasure. Thank you for your time.

Jonathan Weisblatt: Appreciate it, Gerardo. Thanks again.

Gerardo Del Real: All right, chat soon.

Click here to see more from Trident Resources