Viva Gold: New Discovery Opens Up Tonopah’s Exploration Upside

0:16Mining Stock Daily: All right, everybody, welcome back into Mining Stock Daily. I'm picking up this corporate update, taking you all back to the great state of Nevada and the Tonopah area. It's been a while since we've gotten a corporate update from Viva Gold, but they continue to expand their Tonopah Gold project there in Nevada. It's been an active, active summer of drilling, hitting some decent hits, but also making a new high-grade gold discovery back mid-year, back in July at Midway Hills. This allowed the company to go in and not only announce a new financing, but almost double and upsize that original financing.

0:54Mining Stock Daily: So happy to welcome in Jim Hesketh from the company here. Jim, an active 2026. It's great to have positive drill results when you have a gold market that supports it. So thanks for your time. Welcome back to the pod. Hey, Trevor. Thanks. Thanks for having me here. Yeah, it's been a busy summer and spring. Yeah. Let's talk, maybe let's take a step back and we'll talk about, you know, let's talk about this drill campaign from the spring and into the summer heading into that discovery. But what was the general strategy for this campaign before you kind of hit that huge hit at Midway Hills? Yeah, well, the first 16 holes of the program was focused primarily on the main deposit.

1:42That's our resource deposit where we currently have a pre-feasibility study underway. It's primarily measured and indicated, but we were targeting still open zones within the main pit resource model, as well as converting inferred material to measured and indicated. it. So out of that program, out of the total of 16 holes, we had very strong hits on 12 of those holes. And a lot of the mineralization was shallow. And, you know, that converted inferred to measured and indicated. So we're having a big step up in measured and indicated material. Plus we've added additional inferred. That work on completing the new resource estimate for the main pit area is still currently underway.

2:47The final three holes of the program was a fence of drilling. These were three holes 100 meters apart, focused in the Midway Hills portion of the project. and out of those three holes, two of them hit very strongly. TG 2617 hit 35 meters at 1.6 grams, and 2616 hit 38 meters at 0.9 grams, plus high silver grids. So that was a new discovery, and it was drilling below the historic drilling in the Midway Hills area.

3:36Mining Stock Daily: I want to talk about this Midway Hills area. You and I have chatted off and on about the project for a number of years now, Jim. Why this year? Why was this the time to finally kind of go back and test this thing at depth? Why 2026? Well, we've been telling people for years that we believe that this project has a lot more exploration upside. And it was to prove the point, to be honest. Fair enough. Yeah, we had taken a look at the historic drilling in this area, and it was primarily conducted by Rio Algamum and Kennecott Minerals back in the 80s and 90s. and they had been pursuing the Round Mountain model.

4:25And Round Mountain, the mineralization at Round Mountain stops when they hit the older underlying argillites. Same as our deposit. But at Round Mountain, they call that stop-drill rock. When they hit that rock, they quit drilling. Well, the original people on Tonopah quit drilling when they hit the argillite. The difference between our two deposits, you know, they're a half hour's drive apart, is that we do have mineralization in the main deposit in the argillite, and it's 50 % of our gold ounces are in the argillite. So we inspected the bottom of the holes from the 1980s, 1990s vintage drilling.

5:21And a lot of those holes had gold right in the very last intercepts. So what we did here is we took the preferred trend from the main deposit, projected it up through Midway Hills, and then drilled these three holes on the 100-meter centers. And those two big hits I mentioned earlier are 100 meters apart. I mean, that's not a small distance. So we didn't twin two holes in a discovery. We actually spread a solid discovery out. And we are planning to drill there later this year. We're just waiting on drill rigs right now. But that'll continue to expand that resource. It's a, you know, we do have some resource that we're looking at in there from the existing drilling.

6:32And that should hit our resource statement later this year when we publish that.

6:37Mining Stock Daily: How old are those previous holes, the historical stuff? The Rio Algamark was from the 1980s, and the Kennecott work was from the mid-1990s. Okay. And just—oh, I'm sorry. I'm looking at that main hole, the 2616, that was the 38 meters of 0.89 grams per ton gold, 6.7 grams per ton silver. So that was the big discovery that you announced back in July. Does any of that mineralization include in the same area that was drilled historically, or does this start underneath that historical drilling? It's underneath the historic drilling. Okay. The historic drilling mainly focused on the upper tertiary volcanics, which is the pay zone at Round Mountain.

7:38When it hit the underlying, in our case, Ordovician Age argillite, they stopped drilling. And so we drilled into the argillite, and that's immediately where we hit.

7:53Mining Stock Daily: Okay. All right. And what do we know about kind of, you know, how this thing is formed? I did notice you put that hole was 90 degrees. So it's obviously a very steep hole, but can't get any steeper. But kind of following up on this, what needs to happen to really kind of understand the dimensions of this anymore? First and foremost, we're going to go back. Our first, we have a core rig that we believe may be available for October. It'll be just a short program. It's demobilizing from a project near Tonopah. And we can pick it up for probably, you know, two to four holes. So our first step will be to twin the discovery, the big discovery hole, that's the 2617, with a core hole.

8:50We drill 2617 as a reverse circulation hole, and we want to understand more of the geology. Then what we'll do, we'll also punch through the bottom of 2617 because we've bottomed in good mineralization. So we don't know how deep this goes. So that's part of our goal is to twin, make sure the quality is good. And then from that drill station, we'll probably do a number of lower angle laterals, both back towards 26-16. There's a fault in between those two that we want to locate. and then punch forward a long strike to see if the zone continues to go. We also need to drill some lateral holes left and right to see how wide this thing is.

9:50At this point, it's just stepping out probably in 50-meter centers to continue to expand the resource potential. And, you know, we do have, we are planning another RC program towards the end of the year. There's a rig coming available where we can do a much larger program. So that's really the goal. We also are planning another round of geophysics, particularly detailing this area, because this mineral potential does show up in geophysics, the signs for it. And we've signed a contract to have that work conducted probably next month.

10:43Mining Stock Daily: Okay. All right. So it's going to be an active fall and into the winter. Where does this leave the main zone here, Jim? I mean, obviously you mentioned the PFS work is kind of underway. Is the drilling for this kind of wrapped up? Is it all just kind of, you know, desk work now and more allocation, capital allocation towards this new discovery? No, it's we're allocating capital in both directions. We were financed sufficiently to continue the pre-feasibility study. Plus, we are moving ahead on the creating the infrastructure required to complete the baseline study work. Our goal is to take the layout from the pre-feasibility study combined with the baseline environmental work.

11:37We combine that early next year into a plan of operations, and we submit that to initiate the NEPA process, which is the EIS, Environmental Impact Assessment Process. in 2017. And our goal is to have this project largely permitted before, you know, next year. All right. All right. So we're moving ahead on all fronts. We're expanding the deposit. We're continuing to do our engineering work, leading into permitting. And then next year, while we're in the EIS process, we'll also be looking at opportunities for financing. So a lot of these things, they don't run in series. They run in parallel.

12:42Mining Stock Daily: Absolutely. All right, last question for you here. Let's do talk about that financing, which recently closed. You originally announced$3 million financing after that discovery at Midway Hills. You closed six and a half. So obviously, you can make looking at these headlines, you can make the argument that capital is still readily available for this type of gold market here, Jim. Anything that kind of stood out with you during this financing here that maybe you learned in all of your years of exploration and mining? Anything that was unique about this one? Yeah. Yeah. Well, number one, we probably could have closed 10 if we wanted to, but I didn't want to over dilute at this level.

13:27We did cut some shareholders back or investors back. So, you know, the market was very hot for this story. It's a reality story because we're de-risking through a pre-feasibility study, baseline study, permitting. Plus, we have new discovery on top of that. So you pull all that together. It's starting to become a very real story. And we're in a location that's second to none. You can permit mines here. And you've got a supply chain. You know, we've got paved road access, commercial water supply. We've got access to grid power. I mean, this is about as good as it gets. And the more savvier investors are starting to really take a look at us.

14:21And, you know, we're starting to attract the type of investors that are looking for not just growth through the drill bit, but also the reality through potential production. All right, Jim.

14:37Mining Stock Daily: Well, let's follow up here later this year. We are just a few days away for the best time of the year when everybody in our sector comes our way. Nice to be from Colorado, both of us here, when the conferences kick off next Tuesday afternoon, a week from today. So I know we both got a lot of meetings lined up. You'll have a lot of conversations. Look forward to seeing you up on the mountain. All right. Look forward to seeing you there. And we can hoist a beer together. Yeah, absolutely. All right, everybody. That's your update from Viva Gold and the Tonopah Project. They do trade on the Venture Exchange with VAU and on the OTCQB with VAUCF.

15:19Mining Stock Daily: All right, Jim, take care. Have a good rest of your week. Hey, thank you. Have a great day, Trevor. The information presented should not be considered investment advice. Mining Stock Daily Yance 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.