Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

U.S. GoldMining (NASDAQ: USGO) CEO Tim Smith on Highest Grade Intercept to Date at Whistler

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of U.S. GoldMining, Mr. Tim Smith. Tim, how are you today?

Tim Smith: I'm excellent, sir. Thank you. Thanks for having me on the show.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, let's get right into it. You just had some pretty spectacular results. 547 meters of 1.06 grams per tonne. “Phenomenal” is probably understating it. It is the highest drill intercept to date at the Whistler Gold-Copper Project in my old stomping grounds of Alaska. Congrats on that. I'd love some context on it.

Tim Smith: Yeah, absolutely. Look, thank you. And yeah, look, we're very excited. These are excellent drilling results. I think we expected good results from this hole. Visually it looked good. Did I expect 550 meters of continuous mineralization at better than a gram per tonne gold equivalent, 1.06 grams per tonne? That really outperformed my expectations. And what this means is that it's really increased our confidence in the continuity of mineralization and the grade on the southern portion of what we refer to as the high grade core. It certainly looks like there's potential to extend it further to depth as well. We actually ended the hole in mineralization because at the end of the season, the Alaskan winter hit us hard and we had to get the guys off the hill. But that hole is open, and the plan for early this coming summer is to get the drill situated over that hole to reenter it, get back down to 600 meters and keep drilling and see how far we can chase this.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, listen, I think it's worth noting that within that there was a higher grade intercept, right, of 176 meters at 1.55 grams per tonne gold equivalent from 131 meters depth. Can you speak to the grade there and then that high grade core that you're starting to flesh out?

Tim Smith: Yeah, so this high grade core is really important for a porphyry deposit. It gives us optionality, it comes right to surface, and it means that there's potential for when we get into the eventual mine design and economic scoping studies, it means we've got the potential for what we call a starter pit, and it gets us into high grade mineralization that pays back capital faster, gets us into profitable return on the mine site quicker when you've got this high grade core. And then over the length or over the life of the mine, you can look at cutting back to get deeper and deeper. But having some high grade that comes right to surface is important.

Now, this is a body that's about 600 meters by 400 meters across. As I say, it extends from surface to at least 600 meters below surface based on this latest drill hole. And this particular hole that we drilled was in the Southern portion of that. And so it's going to help with the confidence in our model, the interpolation of that high grade in the Southern part of that mineralized zone. And the fact that it's open at depth means that potentially it could extend for significant depth deeper to the bottom of the pit and potentially even below that. This could be something that could help us pull the eventual open pit design deeper and get more ounces out of the ground.

Gerardo Del Real: What comes next, Tim?

Tim Smith: Okay, so we're getting ready for basically the summer season. We've got a technical team. They're very excited about the results in 2023. Even though it's still January, in the middle of winter here in Canada, they are still thinking about getting up to Alaska this coming summer and getting the drill back onto the property. We're in the thick of planning. We're excited about doing some follow-up around Whistler. And the other thing that we're really excited about on this property is the potential for a brand new discovery. So we're going to be working in that district around Whistler, we call it the Whistler-Raintree area. We've come up with at least a dozen or more targets that could deliver brand new discoveries. We could be looking at new Whistlers within that sort of five to 10 kilometer radius from our existing deposit. So we want to mix it up. We want go do some follow up on the Whistler drill holes and really make that deposit the best we can, really optimize it, and we want to undertake some exploration for potential new discovery on the property.

Gerardo Del Real: Listen, once upon a time, I used to kid with Amir Adnani about how he had all these great projects, but were they ever going to drill? And I remember at the time his response, and he was right by the way, was, “Well, Gerardo, it's a bear market and I could buy ounces cheaper than I can discover them. So what I'm going to do is accumulate a ton of gold ounces, right, millions of them, tens of millions of them and when the time is right, then we'll deploy the capital to add to these properties that we feel deserve drilling." And it's good to be at the part of the cycle with $2,000 gold where not only are these properties being drilled, but you're getting exceptional, exceptional results and there's still lots of exploration upside. So looking forward to a golden 2024. Want to thank you for your time, Tim. Anything to add to that?

Tim Smith: No, look, you nailed it. We're really happy with where the gold price is at. It's been sustained over $2,000 for well over a month now. It's building a new base. We're looking forward to seeing it climb through the $2,000s in the coming months. A lot of commentators are saying it could go a lot higher, and we're just thrilled to be executing on our plans to advance the Whistler Gold-Copper Project. Our first batch of drill results were very, very encouraging and we look forward to getting back into the field and presenting updates to the market on our progress in the coming months.

Gerardo Del Real: Looking forward to having you back on. We'll chat soon.

Tim Smith: Thanks so much, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Thanks, Tim.

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