... While Westhaven is still very busy drilling with two diamond drill rigs at Shovelnose, management has decided it’s time to drill the Skoonka Project. So far, British Columbia has been lucky with a relatively light forest fire season and Westhaven has made plans to mobilize a drill rig to Skoonka within the next two weeks. This will be the first drill program at the project since 2007.
Westhaven plans to continue exploring the high-grade gold mineralized vein system at the JJ Zone - the JJ Zone is where Almaden intersected 12.8 meter of ~20 g/t gold in diamond drilling in 2005. In addition, Westhaven will step out to the southwest along the mineralized trend (JJ-Bermuda Trend) to test significant soil geochemical anomalies. At the northern end of the Skoonka Property there is another gold mineralized trend (Deadwood-Backburn Trend) with multiple confirmed gold showings. This season, Westhaven plans to focus on the JJ-Bermuda Trend in order to expand the confirmed strike extent of the gold vein system that was intersected 16-17 years ago.
Drilling success at Skoonka this fall could open up the map for the entire Spences Bridge Gold Belt by making them much more attractive exploration targets. This includes Westhaven’s other gold projects Skoonka North and Prospect Valley.They were strategically selected due to their geographic locations along the belt and prospecting work, which generated multiple gold in soil anomalies that are characteristics of the top of a fertile low sulphidation epithermal system. Drilling during 2006/2007 at Prospect Valley returned multiple impressive gold intercepts including 45.70 meters of 1.57 g/t gold and 61.40 meters of 0.70 g/t gold. Meanwhile, the Skoonka North Project boasts the highest gold silt samples on the entire Spences Bridge Gold Belt with 594 parts per billion (ppb) Au, 383.7 ppb Au, and 131.3 ppb Au. Furthermore, Skoonka North has seen limited exploration work and the project is yet to be drill tested.
It is still early days for gold exploration in the Spences Bridge Gold Belt, and Westhaven has the prime real estate. With drilling ongoing at Shovelnose and drilling set to commence at Skoonka within a few weeks, Westhaven will have a busy winter with plenty of drill results and news flow for investors to digest. With a 1.1 million gold resource at Shovelnose and today’s US$43 million market valuation (~137 million shares outstanding), Westhaven shares offer investors an excellent way to bet on headwinds turning into tailwinds for the gold sector.
Drilling success at Skoonka this winter could deliver a similar upside move to the one we witnessed and benefited from in 2018.
