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Alianza Minerals (TSX-V: ANZ) CEO Jason Weber on Drill Results from the Horsethief Gold Property in Nevada
Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the President and CEO of Alianza Minerals (TSX-V: ANZ)(OTC: TARSF), Mr. Jason Weber. Jason, how are you this morning?
Jason Weber: Great, Gerardo. Thanks for having me on.
Gerardo Del Real: Thanks for coming on on, frankly, short notice. You had some news earlier today. You announced additional results from the Horsethief Gold property. It's assays that people have been hoping would lead to a significant discovery. Doesn't mean there's not one to be had, it just means in these three holes it hasn't happened yet, right?
I joked off-air that if exploration was easy and simple, and finding gold deposits was easy, everybody would do it and gold wouldn't be near $2,000 an ounce. Anyhow, can you provide some context on today's news? Then let's talk about next steps.
Jason Weber: Yeah. These three holes, it's holes 4, 5 and 6 from a 10-hole program that we completed earlier this summer. We announced the first three holes, which were targeting our Horsethief North and one hole into our Horsethief South target. Then these three holes now are two more holes in the Horsethief South, and then we ventured a little bit off to the east, undercover where we don't actually know, with any certainty, what rocks were out there. But we suspected the carbonate package that we wanted to see existed at depth.
Obviously, we were hoping, as you alluded to, for a discovery on these. When you look at these in retrospect, we had the previous drilling that was done at Horsethief North and Horsethief South that told us there would be anomalous gold values there. We tried to test that deeper. It didn't pan out for us. So we got similar results with the previous drilling.
Then moving out to the east, this is where the carbonate package is underneath a younger volcanic cover. Our geophysics work outlined the fact that the carbonate package looked to be sitting underneath the volcanics at depth. So our 6th hole tested that idea and we hit the carbonates at just about the depth that the geophysics modeled it to be. That was really good to see that that hypothesis was correct. We did see, at the bottom of that hole, almost 80 meters of anomalous gold values in limestone that accompanied some weak alteration and zones of pyrite and oxidation, the stuff we want to see.
Really what that's telling us is that the system here, there is an expanse to it. It looks like it's part of a big system. The challenge for us, what we're working on now, is finding where in that system you're going to potentially locate economic concentrations of gold. Hole 6 was a great step in the right direction for us. We've got another hole just to the southeast of that, hole 8, a few hundred meters to the southeast that also looked really interesting. And two more holes out at the Stallion target, which is where the carbonates reappear to the northeast. So some good potential at those holes. Then our 10th hole was drilled back at a new area called Thoroughbred.
These next holes that we're looking to get results from are all kinds of new areas. It's uncharted territory, but they look good. We have a real positive outlook on the potential to locate some economic concentrations of gold out here. While, as you said, this is not easy, it's a difficult game, we just need to see indications of direction, where to go deeper along strike. Is there a structure that we can be targeting to help us refine drill targets? That's the crux of the programming going forward for us.
Gerardo Del Real: You have four remaining holes, Jason. Do you anticipate those sometime in early to mid-October? Is that what I recall from the release?
Jason Weber: Yeah. We had a call with the lab just to get a real projection on the timeline of those. We were told the first week of October at the earliest. These days I'm stretching that out a bit because it seems to be coming in later than projected all the time. So I'm saying mid-October for those.
Gerardo Del Real: Sounds good. Jason, anything else you'd like to add?
Jason Weber: We've got other projects in the portfolio that I think get overlooked a little bit. When you're drilling, that's where all the focus goes. Rightly so.
But we're active on our Twin Canyon project in Colorado. We'll have a field crew out in the field again next week, following up on some of the work we did earlier this summer, trying to get that last bit of work done before it gets too difficult to work in that part of the world.
Then we're looking at a drill program at Haldane through the fall here. So we're really busy. I think it's going to be a busy fall for us, right through till Christmas, most likely.
Gerardo Del Real: Well, you have a supportive precious metals environment. You have some quality projects and an excellent team. So a lot to look forward to. Thank you for your time today, Jason. I appreciate it.
Jason Weber: Thank you, Gerardo.