Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Westhaven Gold (TSX-V: WHN)(OTC: WTHVF) CEO Gareth Thomas on Million Gold Ounce Plus Maiden Resource at Shovelnose & Aggressive 2022 Exploration Plans

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the President and CEO of Westhaven Gold. Mr. Gareth Thomas. Gareth, how are you today?

Gareth Thomas: I'm well, thanks, Gerardo. Happy new year.

Gerardo Del Real: Happy new year to you as well. You're off to a phenomenal start to 2022. I think we're going to have a much more supportive macro environment in the gold space.

You start the year off with some news yesterday that – you're known for, and we talked about it off air, under promising and trying to over-deliver. I will say that this initial mineral resource estimate for the Shovelnose Gold Property does that.

You came through with over 1.1 million gold ounces across all categories. Over 5 million or nearly 5 million ounces of silver. And I think it should be highlighted that I believe 75% of the gold ounces are in the indicated category and the exploration upside is phenomenal.

So with that said, I'll let you provide the context and the details but congrats. Heck of a first step.

Gareth Thomas: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I think it exceeded our expectations. So, yeah, we're very happy about this initial. It is an initial resource, a maiden resource. So, just encapsulates the South Zone there. So there's really only about a kilometer in terms of the pit and about 500 meters in terms of the actual resource. We think there's a lot more to give on that end as well.

But, yeah, very happy with over a million ounces of gold from... and 75% of that being in the indicated classification and a very solid grade there too. Seven times the cutoff grades, always a nice thing to see there as well.

So, yeah, it demonstrates excellent potential for future economic extraction and that's something you always want to see on these first go-arounds here.

As you mentioned there… starting drilling actually next week. We just got confirmation there on the FMN zone, which is about two and a half kilometers to the Northwest where we're seeing, getting up to 16 meters of nine grams there. We're looking to follow up with that, and yeah, lots on the go here.

But yeah, we've been obviously quite busy discussing this resource estimate over the past two days here and it's exciting and I think it's been well received. So, I think it bodes well for the future here.

Gerardo Del Real: Now that we have some numbers to look at as far as grade and gold ounces and even some silver in there and we can start looking forward to the exploration upside and adding ounces.

How important is the infrastructure that you benefit from because it is superior, right? And I know that in a better gold environment, with the grades that you have and the potential here, the exploration upside, you have to be excited about having that infrastructure advantage?

Gareth Thomas: Yeah. No, you're exactly right, Gerardo. I mean, we're right off a major highway. I sound like a broken record often talking about this, but right off a major highway. Grid powers, we got power lines right on the property and a major one just to the north, close to the rail. Large producing mines in the area as well. Canada's largest open pit mine, the Highland Valley, not far off to the Northwest there, you got New Afton, New Gold's New Afton to the north there about a hundred kilometers as well. Easy commuting distance from the city of Merritt where we have our operations, our office.

So yeah, I mean, you can't talk enough about it. It's a very unique advantage, our location and another, as mentioned there, we're starting drilling next week again on the FMN to see what we got sitting there, which we're very hopeful will add to ounces. But we're starting here in mid-January, which a lot of our peers up in the golden triangle in areas, there's a lot of snow there that you have to deal with, which often doesn't make drilling this time of year too economic.

So for us, we're very fortunate for the location and we can't really talk about it enough, I should say. So yeah, it's certainly very key for us here.

Gerardo Del Real: The company's been very open and public about targeting new discoveries aggressively in 2022. What will the drilling program look like in 2022? How do you see it playing out?

Gareth Thomas: Yeah. So with this starting up on the FMN zone here, we'll start with one rig to start to get everything, get our bearings back. It's been since mid-November due the floods where we had to stop there. So we're happy to be back. Happy that the city of Merritt is getting back on its feet there and things are looking much better there after a pretty devastating flood, and of course the wildfire.

So yeah, with us it's start with the one rig and we got about 30 holes delineated there with Peter and the team from last year. So we'll get to that. Then within a few weeks after that we'll likely be starting a second rig. And for now we're going to be focusing quite heavily on this four kilometer trend which goes from south of the South Zone up to Northwest of the Franz there.

And there's a big gap between the Franz and FMN we'd like to drill test as well. Then really testing a lot of gaps between this four kilometer on this four kilometer trend. Then we have lots of outlying targets. We're getting results back from last year's field programs. We're getting some silt samples, lots of interesting anomalies popping up all around the property on a more regional scale.

So yeah, it's a lot, but in terms of drilling we haven't put anything in stone for certain. We're still looking at all our targets, but we'll be likely something similar to last year where we're looking at about 40,000 meters. We've done that for the past two years in a row. Seems to work with the schedule, the budget, and that's something we'd be looking at. Lots of targets we'll be talking about here in the coming weeks and months and letting people know exactly what we're targeting and why.

Gerardo Del Real: I think your timing for another aggressive drill program is excellent. I couldn't be, we excited in 2022 for what we're going to see in the precious metal space. Gareth, thank you for coming on. Anything to add to that?

Gareth Thomas: Just, we'll likely have news out next week regarding the FMN where we have about 30 holes, actually, they're outstanding here, and we're looking to put out some news early next week from holes from the FMN.

So yeah, stay tuned for those. We're just getting those results trickling in being slow on that end, but we like what we're seeing. So yeah. Some steady news flow coming up.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, I'm looking forward to having you back on. It sounds like that'll happen sooner rather than later. Thank you again for your time today.

Gareth Thomas: Appreciate it. Gerardo. Have a good day.

Gerardo Del Real: All right, we'll chat soon.