Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Ethos Gold (TSX-V: ECC) CEO Craig Roberts on Encouraging Trench Results from the La Purisma Gold Project in Mexico

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the President and CEO of Ethos Gold (TSX-V: ECC)(OTC: ETHOF), Mr. Craig Roberts. Craig, we didn't speak for a month or two, and here we are talking twice within a week's time. It's good chatting with you again.

Craig Roberts: Yeah, good to be talking to you, Gerardo, as well. Yeah, absolutely. We've had quite a lot of news in the last week. It wasn't really planned that way, but that's the way it turned out, and we're certainly glad to get news out on the Nevada project and now the Mexico project.

Gerardo Del Real: When we talked about the Nevada project recently, I teased that the trench results were taking a little bit longer than I had anticipated, and thankfully they were definitely worth the wait. You trenched 0.47 grams per tonne gold over 127 meters, including, and this is important, 1.11 grams per tonne gold over 40 meters at the La Purisima gold project.

Something else that I know was an important takeaway for you, as was for me, was the fact, and you mentioned this before when we had talked about, but you had hoped that there was significant mineralization outside of the primary veins. It's why the project was selected. That was going to always be a critical component if this was going to work as an open-pit, heap leach project. We now have confirmation, at least through the trenches, that that is absolutely the case. I'd love for you to summarize the results, and then give me your reaction and your take on it.

Craig Roberts: Yeah, that's absolutely correct, Gerardo. Mel Herdrick is our geologist and a director of the company, lives in Hermosillo. He was always positive on this project, particularly based on the potential for this dissemination outside of the veins. We believed that the gold mineralization extended outside of the veins, based on some previous rock chip sampling and geologic mapping and that kind of work, but we didn't have any comprehensive work that demonstrated the gold mineralization outside of the veins and what kind of consistency we might get in the material outside of the veins.

So from that point of view, these trenches are very significant and very positive. We've got, as you pointed out, we have these long intervals. Trench 2, as you mentioned, 127 meters of just under half a gram with an interval of 40 meters of just over 1.1 grams. But then as well parallel to that in a second trench, another 118 meters of just under half a gram and a couple of good high-grade intervals within that trench as well. One at 0.76 grams and the other one at 1.13 grams.

So yeah, we're very pleased with these results and as good as we could've really asked for, I would say. And so we're pretty excited now to start moving on to the drill program, which we're intending to kick off here pretty quickly actually.

Gerardo Del Real: Let's talk about that. A lot to like there. First, it's a very modest budget to test the system of approximately $350,000 Canadian. That, of course, especially in these tough markets is great. That will allow for 15 RC holes. I have to ask you, you have a mineralized zone, that northwest trending zone, that has a strike length of at least 2 kilometers and a width of alteration that seems to be around 600 meters. Tell me a bit about the approach. I know you're finalizing that as we speak, but tell me a bit about the approach to the drill program.

Craig Roberts: Yeah, one of the things we're doing now is we did multi-element analysis on all of the samples. So in addition to gold, we have mercury, arsenic, antimony and a whole suite of other elements. And we're actually just going through the process of contouring that geochemistry based on the results from these trenches and also based on historic sampling. There's been actually quite a bit of historic work on the property.

In some ways that kind of geochemistry is even more useful than actual gold grades in vectoring the drilling because it gives indication of the temperature of the system at certain places and where it was harder and what the actual conditions were in different locations throughout each zone. And so we can use that in conjunction with the actual gold sampling to really optimize the location of our hole.

We're in the process of doing that work. Should have that actually done here fairly soon. And we're working to finalize our drill hole locations based on all of that work, based on all of the historic work on these trenches. In many places, the property actually has either a thin alluvial cover or there is one location where there's a thin basalt cover, which is a volcanic rock that's much more recent than the gold mineralization that's covered over some of the gold zone. It's quite thin, so it's not an issue in terms of mining, but it does mask the underlying mineralization.

So some of the work we do will give us some indication of the trends up towards that basaltic cover, and I think there's a pretty good chance we'll put some holes to drill underneath that cover. And you know, we've certainly tilled back the veil to a large extent on the deposit with these trenches through alluvium. We're definitely coming up the learning curve on the specifics on this deposit and we'll have our drill holes located here pretty soon.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. I understand that the project has excellent infrastructure. You are, of course, earning into 100% of the project. I also understand that the concessions are located on private ranch land, which I have to believe expedites everything because you have an agreement in place with that main ranch landowner. Correct?

Craig Roberts: That is correct. In fact, that agreement we have is a long-term agreement that covers us not just through the exploration phase, but if we are successful in defining a resource and we get to build a mine, then we're completely covered all the way through foreseeable development and mine production, actually. So yeah, it's very positive from that point of view.

Then, as you mentioned, the topography here is very flat. We're not in a mountainous area. There's good road access and it's a very positive place to be in terms of both infrastructure, topography and all of those elements. So that certainly is one of the other important features of this project.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. A lot to like. I'm looking forward to visiting both projects. I had been waiting on trench results, and of course waiting for schedules to kind of line up. Nevada now obviously is in play. I would absolutely love to visit that project as well. So hopefully we can get that done here in the next couple of months and hopefully we're documenting discoveries, right?

Craig Roberts: Exactly. I'd love to have you down there, Gerardo. Yeah, we're pretty excited. It's a great start and we'll be definitely gearing up with the drilling and then we'll certainly organize a site visit down there as well.

Gerardo Del Real: Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time, Craig. Appreciate it and fingers crossed.

Craig Roberts: Thanks, Gerardo. Really appreciate it, too. Thanks for the coverage and support.

Gerardo Del Real: A pleasure.