Although the province of BC is well known for its golden triangle up in the northern part of the province, southwestern BC has also emerged as a hotspot for gold.
Meet
Westhaven Gold Corp. (TSXV:WHN, OTC Pink: WTHVF, Forum) a company exploring BC’s newest gold belt — the Spences Bridge Gold Belt.
Stockhouse Editorial recently caught up with Westhaven Gold CEO Gareth Thomas to discuss what the company’s been up to and what investors should be watching for.
TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
SH:
Can we start by you providing a quick introduction about the Spences Bridge Gold Belt, its history, its location as a Tier 1 Jurisdiction (Canada), and your 4 properties across it. What’s the overall potential of this new gold belt in B.C.?
GT: Sure. As we were just chatting there before, I'm up in Merritt where you used to reside and I'm kind of in the middle, I guess what you'd say of Spences bridge gold belt, our flagship Shovelnose project, which we're currently drilling on is about 30 kilometers to the south of Merritt and our most northerly project is our Skoonka North, which is about 40 kilometers from here towards the towards Lytton and Spences bridge. All in all, Westhaven has about 37,000 hectares of land. A hundred percent owned in four properties on the Spences Bridge gold belt. Then we have another 70,000 hectares that we have an NSR on from a group called Talisker. So we're very active on the belt and it's relatively new in terms of geological time or exploration if you will. It was really discovered in the early 2000’s and we've been working here since Westhaven was formed as a company and we've been working here since 2011.
SH:
Okay, now that we understand the big picture on the gold belt let’s talk about what kicked everything off for Westhaven. Can you begin with a quick timeline of initial discovery at Shovelnose to your recently released first-ever Maiden Resource?
GT: Yes. So as mentioned there, we've been working here since 2011 but all be it we did very small work programs up until about 2018. 2018 was when we first started seeing multimeter quartz veins, which got us quite excited. Hence, we ramped up the drilling a little bit and in late 2018 in October, we made a discovery of 17.7 meters. We drilled 24 and a half grams per ton gold and about a hundred grams per ton silver. So that really kicked off Westhaven as you know, really got eyes on us and our share price did really well and since then we drilled 20,000 meters in 2019, 40,000 meters in 2020. Then in 2021, we just did about 40,000 meters there as well. We have been actively drilling here and we're finding lots more gold and of course, we just came out with our maiden resource here in January, which we're very excited about. Then as of just a few days ago, we had another high-grade gold discovery, not far from the south zone. So very exciting and lots going on up here.
SH: Your technical team believes there could be even more ounces of gold around the South Zone resource, could you provide us with some details about this?
GT: I'll just retouch on our maiden resource. As mentioned, we put out in January, which was 1.1 million ounces of both indicated and inferred and 841 thousand ounces in the indicated. So 75% which is something we're very happy and a little bit surprised with, which is always good and this new discovery you asked about the potential for more ounces here, this new discovery in the Alpine zone where we had drilled in the area but we were intercepting broader more low grade gold in these associated halos, more sort of disseminated gold. The fact we are getting 8 meters of 20 grams per ton gold, 100 grams of silver, and then three meters of 45 grams per ton Gold, is very encouraging and we're very excited about the opportunity there as we moved to the Northwest towards the tower which was some of the initial discoveries on this property, moving up to FMN where we're drilling right now. So we're really connecting dots along with this vein zone one and now vein zone two trends and it's exciting.
SH: The recent news release announcing a very high-grade gold hit at the Alpine zone sounds very exciting! Could you go into a bit of detail on this intersection?
GT: Yeah, the big key takeaway, at least what we're really excited about as I kind of touched on there is the fact that this is open towards the Northwest. There is drilling around there but nothing due to the Northwest where this was within a hundred meters of some other holes but we are sometimes in these low-sulphidation epithermal systems. It's a bit of a needle in a haystack scenario. It can take a lot of perseverance in patience and sleuthing out these higher-grade vein zones. So the fact that we're onto one now and just talking to Peter here, as mentioned, I'm in Merritt and chatting with him, he's very excited about the potential of this running for quite some time up towards the tower and FMN as mentioned. So yeah, we're going to be back there on the Alpine pretty soon here and be following up on this high-grade intercept. So news will come out of there fairly shortly.
SH: Are there any more developed mining projects that you would be able to compare to your project?
GT: I mean, in this particular area, there's not per se but there's certainly mines or projects we strive to sort of set ourselves so that project looks good but some key takeaways that make us pretty unique at least is the fact where 30 kilometers south of Merritt, we’re right off the Coquihalla highway, we have 450 kilometers of roads up there from forestry. It's a pretty unique location in terms of two and a half hours from Vancouver literally and it makes it pretty unique. Lower cost, we have no helicopters, we have no planes, and the fact is location, location, location, we can't really say it enough. It makes what may seem maybe not economic in some parts of the world but for us where we're at, it makes it okay. Well and the fact that we're really scratching the surface, it seems like with the amount of drilling we've done, that's a bit of a cliché or what you want to say but it really is true since 2018 when we had this big discovery and as mentioned, these things can be a little time consuming to find but once you find them it's exciting and it certainly adds to the story.
SH: Management and Insiders appear to be very aligned with shareholders by having 25% ownership, what are you doing to unlock more value for shareholders?
GT: Drill, drill, drill, really at this stage and of course something where we pride ourselves in having is being very well aligned with our shareholders and some great shareholders we have. We certainly are trying to unlock more value. We think we de-risk this project by putting out that maiden resource and we're hoping to have potentially another resource out on the FMN by year-end we're also working on an underground scenario at the south zone as well, where we have the open-pit scenario. So you know, de-risking it and of course, we started environmental baseline surveys as well and of course drilling, I mean, depending on what the market conditions are like but drilling's really how we think we can get things going here. It's been a bit of a tough go. I'll be honest with the way these markets have treated us but sitting here at 47 cents today, we think there's a ton of value to be unlocked here in Westhaven. We're drilling and de-risking it as we go along. That's really how we see shareholder value growing.
SH: And finally, is there anything we might have missed that you would like to share with our investor audience?
GT: No, we certainly appreciate the conversation and just lots of catalysts on the horizon. We've been drilling since mid January back on the project after Christmas, which not many companies in BC can say, year-round exploration is another very positive thing about this project and so lots of flow, a lot of catalyst on the horizon and we're looking forward to a very busy 2022, so stay tuned and thank you very much.
FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a paid article produced by Stockhouse Publishing.