Lode Gold's Wendy Chan: Reactivating a Gold Mine Suspended During WWII

0:00Thank you.

0:30as a producing mine until 1942 when wartime restrictions shut it down. In May, the company released a mineral resource estimate showing 1.1 million ounces of gold, 18.7 million tons at a grade of 1.84 grams per ton in the indicated category, 1.98 million ounces, 33.1 million tons at a grade of 1.86 grams per ton in the inferred. The company plans on releasing a pre-feasibility study in 2027 and a feasibility study by 2029. CEO of Load Gold Resources is Wendy Chan. Wendy, welcome to Mining Stock Daily.

1:08Wendy Chan: Hello, Michael. Thank you for the invitation. Really glad to be speaking with you today. Wendy, there's a lot that you have going on. We're going to get to it in a minute, especially the MRE. But firstly, can you situate Fremont Goldmine Project? The project is in California. In your deck, you say there's a lot of mining that's going on in California. Yes, Fremont is actually situated what they considered in California gold country. So why do they call it gold country? It is actually in the middle of California, just south of Southern Sacramento. And Southern Mine was the first mine that created the California gold rush.

1:45Wendy Chan: It was situated right in the southern end of the Matalot Belt, which has been credited for 50 million ounces of gold over the years. And so if you watch Yellowstone and Ransom Cannon and one of those shows on Netflix and Paramount, you'll get a flavor. So basically the pioneers moved over here in the 1800s and this basically mining created its surrounding towns. So Fremont is a legendary mine that has been around since the 1800s. We have deeds and documents dating as far back to 1865. Is there a community nearby you at all? Yes, it is in the town of Mariposa, which is about 2 ,000 people, and the county is about 17 ,000.

2:34Wendy Chan: And we are only about 20 minutes out of town, but it's far away from town, but yet close enough to all the facilities and also sourcing of people and labor as we move forward. Roads and electricity? road and electricity is all there we're just off highway 49 but in a stretch that is very quiet meaning if you're standing there uh you have about five or six cars passing uh in an hour the substation is on our property so we have electricity and we're also close to uh rail airport sea and so on seaport um we are hour and a half professional and three hours and a half from Sacramento and San Francisco and off highways, which is nice.

3:17Now, let's go back to May and then talk about that mineral resource estimate. You did an update. You did it with the gold assumption at 3 ,500 versus the 1 ,800 for the previous MRE. This also was an MRE that was based on historical samples. Correct.

3:37Wendy Chan: So when we talk about brownfield project, there are brownfield and then there's very brownfield. I think we belong to the group that is very brownfield. So basically, as it stands right now, we have 23 kilometers of tunnels underneath our property of development, 10 ,000 channel samples, and 43 ,000 meters drilled over three periods of time. Half of them are RC and half of them are diamond, and the cores are actually preserved on site. So we have an acreage, as you mentioned earlier, over 3 ,000 acres, but we actually have an office, we have ATV cutting machines, jeep. So we have actually quite a bit of infrastructure sitting right there in California, preserved over the years.

4:17Wendy Chan: It stopped mining, as you said, in 1942, when the price of gold was$35 and it was mining at 10.7 grams. So even without doing anything, we know there are ounces left behind. Very similar to an old project I was on, Skeena Resources. It was mining when price of gold was$24 and the cutoff grade was 20 grams per tonne when the price of gold was$24 and the average grade was 49 grams per tonne. So very similarly without doing a lot of analysis we know there's gold but in the last two years we've been digging you know going into the weeds into the details to not to say how much gold but exactly how much gold how do you extract it what methodology to extract you know to extract understanding the permitting environment and so on so forth.

5:01So at this point right now, so you also recently announced that you've got three years for drilling permits as well, and that's going to be the drilling. So you had historical samples before. Now you're going to be able to apply the drilling, and then that's going to be leading to your PFS in 2027. Can you talk about what the drilling program is going to be? Is there going to be any type of expiration? Is this just going to be resource estimation?

5:28Wendy Chan: So both. We are basically doing about 3 ,500 meters of drilling, possibly to 4 ,500 meters. So the first 3 ,500 meters is mostly infill drilling and is focused on metallurgical drill holes and also rock mechanics and geotech. And then we are looking at potentially doing another thousand meters of expansion drilling. So let me go into the infill drilling details first. So three-phase, the metallurgical drilling is what we have. Historically, we are now looking at 91.5 % in terms of payables. We got some estimates, but we want to confirm that. And then secondly, we are also looking at optimizing the mine plan and trying to determine what size of operation.

6:15Wendy Chan: So in the PEA 2023, we are looking at 2 ,000 tons open pit, which we're not doing anymore, and 4 ,000 tons underground. So the question is based on the rocks and what type of rocks we have, we need to determine what size of operation that can be. So we have two types of rocks, sedimentary rocks on the foot wall and on the hanging wall site with metamorphic rocks. So what we're doing right now is trying to figure out the access could be from the metamorphic sites from the hanging wall site so that we could develop much bigger stokes and much faster rate of extraction. So the extraction we're looking at potentially in the PA we're looking at about 100 ,000 ounces in 2023, the PA.

6:57Wendy Chan: But now in the PFS, we're looking at possibly raising that bar. But that's still being evaluated. We cannot confirm what that would be. But could we go more? Could we go to 200 ,000 ounces or somewhere in between? Or is there a plan to basically go from 100 ,000 ounces and then to 200 ,000 ounces? So all those questions will be answered at the PFS level this time next year or thereabouts. We are too early at this pitch to be able at the stage to be able to answer that question. What's the trade-offs that you're kind of looking at right now for the PFS? Is it just because these gold prices look like they've built in a new higher level?

7:37Is it the trade-offs between doing underground versus an open pit? Is it makes sense for just kind of doing larger production? Kind of what are the factors that you're kind of weighing right now?

7:48Wendy Chan: So the 2023 PA has a combination of open pit and underground. The concern I have with the open pit is your low grading in the early days, which means your NPV doesn't look as good because of the discounted cash flow model. So what we did when we first got in was to look at this from an underground perspective, both from expediting permitting as well from the economics. So it's not just how much you will make, but also how quickly can you get into cash flow and production. So from an underground perspective, and that's when the pivot happens in terms of strategy, is that can it be economical? Can we do this from underground?

8:22Wendy Chan: So that analysis took a couple of years. We just completed all that information. And to go from underground, the disturbance is only about 20 % of 3 ,000 acres. And so if you're going by the side of the road, all you really see is a building because everything is going to be done underground and a few trucks coming in and out. So in terms of disturbance and all is not much. And remember, this is already an old mine. We're not opening a new mine. This is previously already an underground mine. So from that perspective, we had pivoted to looking at this with underground perspective, with the lenses of underground.

8:58Wendy Chan: So the next question then, can we do this from underground? In the beginning, we explored basically a vein extraction. So if you were 10.7 gram, and you were able to do that when the price of gold was$35, surely you can do this at a higher price, which is similar to some of the projects that you see, including some of the old ones that I've worked on, previous ones. And the initial thinking was that. But what we also found out was that the mineralized ore body that is outside the veins were completely left untouched, 100 % of it, and has consistent grades with what's in the veins. So if we do a vein extraction, we basically are leaving a lot behind again.

9:39Wendy Chan: So the thinking then pivoted to underground

9:53Wendy Chan: So from an average true width perspective, we have up to 80 meters, when an average true width, depending on a cutoff, it ranges in the 30s and 40 meters, and the gram meters are pretty high in the average, about 80 gram meters. So the average true width is a pretty high in the average of 80 gram meters. So from that perspective, we started looking more into the underground scenario, which looks like, you know, at first blush, it is going to be very nicely, you know, a nice underground project. Now in your deck, you discussed incremental approach. Does doing that underground approach also amount to incremental work?

10:34Wendy Chan: Yeah, so the incremental approach really is, at the end of the day, you need sort of a minimum, you know, hurdles, if you call it, in terms of IRR and free cash flow and so on. So what we're looking at, because of the gram meters that we have, and what we're looking at in terms of underground belt mining, we can potentially be economical, even at smaller tonnage. And the smaller tonnage means the faster approval process. That's what we're going to explore from a strategic perspective on expediting permitting. So it's a 3 ,500 meter is just on mostly infill for metallurgical, geotech, and rock mechanics work.

11:15Wendy Chan: So additional to that is that this MRU right now that we have are only coming from three of our seven deposits. Some of these other deposits were already previously mined as well. So we know we have more ounces than what we have. It's just when do we go about finding out about them. Then last year, we did some work with an AI company, Verify, and they identified nine additional drill targets. And two of the areas lit up. It's across about 400 acres. So what we're doing is doing some soil work and analysis to identify potential drilling for these targets for expansion drilling. So the question always has been, you know, with an underground project, what is the right life of mine, if you have it?

12:04Wendy Chan: Typically in base metals, you have life of mine in the high 20s or 30. But precious metals tend to be, you know, the 8 or 10 years. And if we already have 1.3 million ounces in M &I that we will further prove out in the next phase of drilling, can we move towards a path of permitting and production? and then think about increasing the life of mine and expanding? Or do we do more work now so that we have a bigger project? That's always debatable. And right now, at this stage, we don't have the answers, but we will this time next year after the PFS. Some PFS. Oh, sorry, that was an aside, Wendy, that I wanted to ask, but I think I know the answer.

12:47So it was just regarding that this is a historical mine. Do you have any permits that are out there right now just regarding it, or do you still need to get all your permits for operating a mine?

12:59Wendy Chan: We don't have the mining permit. We have the drill permit for three years. And what's interesting with this county is that it is a mining county in the sense that not just us with the 23 kilometers underground workings, the town itself has a lot of secret tunnels. I was told that behind shops and restaurants, there are all these tunnels because this was built on a mining town. And if you were to show up there, it actually looks still like it's a mining town. And what our name is, is John C. Fremont and Fremont Mine. And John C. Fremont is famous. The street name is Fremont. The hospital is Fremont.

13:38Wendy Chan: The senior home is Fremont. And so the Fremont name is kind of all over the town. What is also interesting is that there are now three projects in Mariposa, and the Mariposa County has actually just kicked off a meeting where they want to put together a development policy that is conducive to mining. So there's eight pillars of development, and one of them is mining, and mining by far is going to be a big one. There are three projects right now live in Mariposa. Blue Moon, ourselves, and a smaller plaza slash alluvia project called Mariposa Gold, which also are sitting, all these three projects sit on previous mines.

14:21Wendy Chan: Basically, they were previously mining, right, and with some infrastructure on it. Because it's a patented land situation, so in the U.S., you have BLM forest and patented land, And with patented land, what you need is just a county approval for mining. So if the county wants you to be a mine, they can give you that approval. You don't need to go to a federal or state to get a mining license, unlike BLM, unlike Forrest. So our county supervisor is a mining supervisor. He is a miner and has been mining for the last 30 years. And he is also the head of the Mining Association for the American Right to Mine.

14:59Wendy Chan: So he is a big champion of mining and we need three supervisors out of the five to be a mine. Wendy, what are you keeping an eye on in terms of costs as you kind of get to your PFS? There's been a couple of PFSs that have come out and how would you say they've been underwhelming just because that we're seeing costs ratchet up for everything like diesel and labor as well as equipment? Yeah, so we have already updated internal scoping study-wise the cost numbers from 2023 PEA. So we've taken into account the increases in price of gold, but also the increases in cost. And with that, the numbers are looking pretty positive from internal scoping point of view, which is why we're moving forward to the PFS.

15:50Wendy Chan: And we are also staging the PFS in a way that we will not make the decision to go full PFS until we have the mine plan and we have some idea of what the internal scoping study of this round of PFS would look like, what the mine plans and some optimization. So come December 2026, we would have a preliminary plan which we could start the environmental work and permitting. But more importantly, we have the numbers, the financial economics, the internal scoping study to determine if we should expand the number of ounces we have before moving full on, or we stay with what we have because of the economics making sense.

16:30Wendy Chan: Despite rising costs because of the rising gold price, And because we have the thickness and the grade, the gram meters is excellent. I don't think that is going to be an issue for this project. Now, your most recent announcement, you did touch on it with the permitting that you, with the drilling for the, with the permits for the drilling coming up, Wendy, is that you mentioned metallurgy, which was going to be updating metallurgy from 2014. Why do you need an update on the metallurgy? I think because the data is all we need fresh information, fresh drilling just to confirm the data. Just the data.

17:10Wendy Chan: Yeah. So we are doing a lot of work in this, not exactly twinning the holes because all the cores are there, but we're reconfirming with the areas where they are extracted from to make sure that what we have is good. Now, all the work, all the drill calls or the previous drilling has been brought up to 43-101 compliance. And in the latest, there's been three MREs so far. So one in 2025, one in 2023 with PEA, and actually there's another one in 2021 and then the latest one in 2026. So there's been quite a bit of work. And in the last round, we had a QP that is now currently SRK, previously from SRK, went to Hoss Child.

17:55Wendy Chan: So he is a specialist in resource modeling. He was very particular, took a lot longer than I would have liked it, but it was good that way because everything was vetted and he asked for certification for everything. So the course and everything that we have has been brought up to 43-101 compliance, and he's taken into account strict criteria with the RPEEs and hence determined the cutoff of what he needs to do. So if you read in one of the fine print paragraphs, the cutoff is actually 0.82 is what he's using for the RBEEE, but we published on our deck one grand cutoff, just to round it up. Let's talk about your financing.

18:34So in late July, congratulations, you closed just under$10 million for the financing. How far do you expect that that's going to take you? you've got the drilling program that you've kicked off, plus you've got all of these milestones that are coming up.

18:50Wendy Chan: This will take us to PFS, actually. So basically, the drilling and the PFS will be taken off with this financing. Obviously, if our warrants become in the money, we would have another$10 million coming in, but we're good for a while.

19:11Wendy, can you talk about the company? your experience was with Skeena Silver and Gold up in the north and now you're down in California. But talk about why you took over the reins at Load Gold.

19:32Wendy Chan: Yeah, so I came from more a strategy, corporate development, fundraising background. and prior to being in mining in 2010, I actually ran businesses for Fortune 500s like Johnson & Johnson, Lexus, SmithKline, so product portfolio management. But when I got into mining, I actually ended up taking a lot of new courses because mining is very different from other companies. Took a geology course on BCIT, took mining valuation courses, took strategy courses with Institute of Corporate Development, etc., etc. So I came into the picture because the largest shareholder that owned 35 % of the company was recruiting me to join.

20:16Wendy Chan: And together with the chair of the board, who is also the CFO right now at New Found Go.

20:25Wendy Chan: And it's a turnaround. So when I was here in November 2023, there was a 10 to 1 rollback. So factored that in, it was a 7 cent stock. And the average that year was around 15 cents. We are now around 40 cents. So it's been two and a half years of work to get a lot of things sorted out. And one of the big overhang we had was the debt. So we had a secure debt that was like a noose around the neck. So finally, we were able to pay that off and be able to create momentum them in value that way for our shareholders. Wendy, so outside the flagship project, you have two other assets. Yeah, we have two other assets.

21:17Wendy Chan: In fact, this tiny little company had five assets. We took two assets out and spin it out. It's called Gold Origin. Let me give a five seconds, you know, review on that one, because essentially they're high potential assets. Those two assets sitting in gold origin still belongs to the shareholders of low gold, 20%. And we have a common shareholders insert between the two companies and shared services. So those two assets sitting in what we call gold origin, because all of them are originic, actually has two high, high, high potential. I know everybody says that, but if you know what it is, you will agree with me.

21:53Wendy Chan: The Yukon asset sits on the tombstone belt, southern tombstone belt, and has confirmed reduced intrusive targets, just like the snow lines of the world. And also we have two types of mineralization. So reduced intrusive, RARGS, and we also have sedimentary hosted mineralization. And so this asset was really drilled 4 ,500 meters with economic intercepts back in 17, 18, some time ago. At that time, there was no such thing called reduced intrusive. So they were not looking for reduced intrusive, right? So it's sedimentary hosted or organic. So that in itself is very interesting. And in the recent round, in the recent field season, the two seasons, we did extensive geophysics on this Yukon property.

22:37Wendy Chan: We partner and piggyback on Seabridge and Snowline's programs. And we used submarine technology called SQUID that was originally used for submarine detection and military and now being deployed for mining to identify at depth what we have. because if you have overburden, sometimes you cannot tell unless you do proper geophysics. So that's what we did. And we have areas that lit up. And to make sure that we're doing this correctly, we spent another season going in the field with five-man crew to do mapping, geological sampling, and trenching to identify the drill targets. So we are ready, drill ready for the Yukon property.

23:18Wendy Chan: We've got permitted from the government. We have yet to be permitted fully. We got conditional permits from First Nations. So that's something that's pretty exciting as well. To have another intrusive play in Yukon would be very good for the industry. And that alone could be a standalone because in terms of carried value, it's really over$8,$9 million. But we have another asset on that because with exploration, it's one or zero or$1 ,000. So it's good to have that optionality. So we have another asset in the I.M. Patris Suture Belt, which is in New Brunswick. So that is the same trend as Newfound Gold in Newfoundland.

24:02Wendy Chan: Calibri Mining, which is purchased by Akronaut School. Dalradian, which is Orion's private project now, used to be Ross Beattie and Sean Rousens. And so all that is on the same trend, very prolific area. The asset that we have actually has a huge land package, 405 square kilometers, but it's relatively inexpensive to do work in New Brunswick. We're talking about drill calls like$95 a meter, we have road access, we're right by the Barthas camp. And in that area, traditionally, it's been looked at as a base metals. Nobody has really gone in there to look at it for gold mineralization. And so we're just beginning to do work there.

24:39Wendy Chan: We have drilled only a few holes, less than 2 ,000 meters. and the results are good. And what we were able to confirm, again, with Jill's physics, soil sampling, and so on and so forth, that we have exactly the same geology as our next-door neighbor, which is Kinross and Pruma. And this is mineralized rhyolites. So that's pretty exciting. So we all know that for anybody that is surrounding you, Kinross is not a bad one to have next to you because they didn't go in there just to do exploration play. They go in there to look for a potential mine. And if they become a mine and work contiguous to them next door, you know, there's an imminent, you know, potential exit strategy built in.

25:27Wendy Chan: So that's pretty exciting as well. So two projects, high, high, you know, potential, that is a sister company that we own 20 % of and have common shareholders and shared services with, right? So that's been spun out recently. And you asked me about the additional assets inside the company. We have another one that's really exciting. It's called Dingman in Ontario. And we have already done quite a bit of work, 22 ,000 meters drill. And we have a PEA on it that shows us economical at 1800 price of gold. Remember when I came on the project, price of gold was only 1800. So this sat on the shelf and was collecting dust.

26:06Wendy Chan: And until recently, several months ago, we looked at it way more seriously, develop a geological model and better understanding of this. And it was, again, similar to Fremont, may have been looked at incorrectly. So instead of an open, pitiful story, it really should be an underground story. So we have 400 ,000 ounces on that, 375 ,000 ounces at M &I. So this is nothing to sneeze at in this gold market. We just need to build a bigger team and stronger team to be able to also take on this and advance it. Then we have another VMS deposit in New Brunswick, also close to infrastructure, roads, access, all that.

26:48Wendy Chan: And it's a VMS with copper, silver, and so on on it. So all that needs some attention and love. We just haven't had enough bandwidth because the focus has been on local and also spinning out the other asset with Yukon and New Brunswick. But very soon, we would be doing work on those two as well. There will be news coming, essentially. Lastly, Wendy, let's talk about the news flow. But talk about the milestones into the next 12 months and what you're going to see in terms of drill results. Yeah, so we are expediting the first two holes in discussion with the labs right now. So instead of the typical five weeks delivery of the first two holes, we are asking for two and a half weeks delivery, which means we would have news in September if they can, you know, meet that commitment.

27:36Wendy Chan: So I said, you know, we should prorate it, you know, if it's two and a half weeks versus five weeks, what if it's three weeks, we will still, you know, pay you a bonus was giving us that. So that's going on. And we are also going to amend our AUP, which is the drill permit, for the expansion drilling. So we're looking at doing the expansion drilling right now on those high potential targets that have been identified by AI. And then we're also looking at beginning to initiate the process for underground access, which is next year. So once we finish this surface drilling work, the next phase of work would be from underground.

28:18Wendy Chan: We are registered with MSHA, which is the regulatory body. Federally, we still need to register with Cal OSHA and then opening up the edits that we have to either a refurbish or looking at building ramps for exploration. So that would also significantly drive the cost down. So that's kind of things we're doing. So once we have identified areas of drill, we're initiating a biosurvey on that. We also have a hydrology assessment work coming up as well. So there's a lot of activities in a very, very small company. Preliminary mine plan will be ready in December, at which point we can then start the environmental work and the permitting work related to it.

29:04Wendy Chan: Internal scoping study will probably December, of January. And from there, we could determine whether we would go full scene into PFS with one of the big companies or we drill a little bit more before we get into PFS. Thanks for speaking with Mining Stock Daily. Thank you. Really appreciate your time. The information presented should not be considered investment advice. Mining Stock Daily and its affiliates are not responsible for any loss arising from any investment decision in connection with the material presented herein. Please do your own research or speak with a licensed financial representative before making any investment decisions.