Midas Gold (TSX: MAX) Concludes Winter Drilling Program at Stibnite Project with Two More Impressive Holes of High-Grade Gold

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is President and CEO of Midas Gold (TSX: MAX)(OTC: MDRPF), Mr. Stephen Quin. Stephen, thank you for joining me again.

Stephen Quin: Good to be back Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Well the last time that we talked about assays you reported the best hole every reported by Midas at the Stibnite Gold Project and you just had a news release yesterday that's equally impressive, let me read the headline. Midas Gold Reports Final Results from 2016-2017 Winter Drill Program, of course at the Stibnite Gold Project. Let me just go through some numbers really quick. You hit 193.6 meters of 2.46 grams per tonne gold, 6.3 grams per tonne silver, and as important, 0.55% antimony which takes that gold equivalent grade from 2.4 grams per tonne to over 3.63 grams per tonne over 193 meters. Really, really impressive stuff, obviously an impressive program. Stephen, what can you tell us?

Stephen Quin: Well it's a really good way to end the program. You know, with some nice holes like these. These two holes that we announced yesterday were in the core of the Yellow Pine deposit and essentially passed underneath and beside the former small scale open pit that was there. The point of the drilling was to provide additional confirmatory drilling on the gold side, but more particularly to look to confirm the higher-grade antimony trends, which trend in a different direction to the gold mineralization. So a lot of the drilling has been very gold focused. As you can see from the gold equivalent calculations the antimony was an equivalent of about 1 gram a tonne in these holes or more. It's quite significant, additional value and we just didn't have enough data on the antimony to really be able to model those higher-grade zones sufficiently well to constrain them so we can preserve them in the resource model. The drilling we've done late last year and this year, including these two holes here, have gone a long way to be able to really define these zones. As you said, these are very impressive intercepts, 190 meters of 3.6 grams a tonne and 180 meters of 3.5 grams a tonne.

These are very impressive widths and perhaps equally as important, the first hole started at two meters from surface and the second one started from 35 meters from surface. These aren't way down at the depths of the earth, these are starting very close to surface so they're going to be early life production for the mine.

Gerardo Del Real: Absolutely, now moving forward Stephen, I understand that one of the goals is to provide a new resource estimate that will incorporate hopefully the antimony, is that correct?

Stephen Quin: Yes, that's correct and one of the opportunities identified in the 2014 pre-feasibility study was to do this drilling and do a number of things to optimize and increase the confidence in the resource. Obviously there's very simplistically converting inferred to indicated because inferred weren't used in the reserve calculation because they were inferred. If we can convert them to indicated we can use them in reserves. It’s also again to look at that higher-grade antimony and see can we better define it. We're taking all of the recent drill holes, but we also re-logged and reevaluated all the prior drilling that we've done, and we've gathered a substantial amount of additional geologic and structural information. People look at the cross sections that are attached to the news release, you can kind of see these small faults that the high-grade seems associated with. Well now we have much better control on those faults, we can create a better resource model that more appropriately models the resource and better defines where the higher-grade zones are. That should result in a better quality resource estimate that better models and reflects what's there in the ground. That's a quite intensive effort, because we're not just dealing with the addition of the assay data from the holes we drilled in the last six months or so.

We're basically reworking the entire resource model right back to day one, including every hole drilled. That's a fairly complex and intensive effort, but it's under way now. We'll evaluate where we are as we advance through that process and see are there still additional opportunities within the reserve pitch. That's where we're really focused to add more into the resource and eventually into the reserve, or is it time to move on to the next deposit and focus on Hangar Flats where there are similar opportunities sitting there. We'll be doing that over the next few months and we'll be making decisions on an ongoing basis.

Gerardo Del Real: You know I joke that you have more gold than you know what to do with, and I know that the winter drilling program consisted of 14 holes. Initially I believe, there was going to be an effort made to drill some of those holes into Yellow Pine and then some at Hangar Flats. I think 13 of those holes ended up being Yellow Pine holes. Can you explain why that went that way, Stephen?

Stephen Quin: Yeah, essentially when we laid out the program initially we sort of defined our priority targets, but we also set the program up to be very iterative and reactive. When we started drilling some of the holes, particularly in the center of the Yellow Pine deposit, we had a theory or an interpretation if you want to call it that, that by drilling these holes in the center of the Yellow Pine deposit we could not only confirm and upgrade the gold part of the resource, but we defined these high-grade antimony zones. If we were successful that could warrant more drilling. Well we were successful, so we basically pulled all the drill meterage into these areas where we were having success. Based on that success it basically consumed all the drilling that we had planned for the combined deposits, but that doesn't diminish the value of what we can do at Hangar Flats. That's still very low hanging fruit, in fact, it's some of the most potentially valuable rock in the entire mine plan is sitting there. Sitting in the inferred category so therefore not part of the mine plan. Obviously it's a high priority to get in there and drill that and do the same thing that we did at Yellow Pine and convert that.

You know, success begets more drilling and it's always the challenge of exploration and mining companies is if you're having success it just means you have to drill more holes. That's not a bad thing because you're adding more ounces.

Gerardo Del Real: Absolutely, well Stephen I want to thank you for your time. I look forward to having you back on, I know it's going to be an important spring and summer as you do some of the behind the scenes work that I think is going to pay big dividends later in the year for shareholders.

Stephen Quin: Yeah, thank you Gerardo, it's definitely going to be a busy year. Lots of things going on with the permitting process under way and the feasibility study about to start, resource modeling, and metallurgical programs, there's lots of things to talk about as we move forward.

Gerardo Del Real: Fantastic, well like I said thank you so much for your time and hopefully we can have you back on as you start checking some of those boxes.

Stephen Quin: Thank you, Gerardo.