Endurance Gold Corp, despite still being rated as Bottom-Fish Spec Value, was made a 2025 Favorite because the Reliance drilling results in 2024, unacknowledged by the market, have pushed this epizonal orogenic high grade gold project in southwestern British Columbia to a tipping point where drilling in 2025, backed by $4 million in working capital, will finally force the market to recognize Reliance as a major gold discovery. Endurance optioned the Reliance project in late 2019 and during the subsequent 5 years has drilled 84 RC and 108 diamond drill holes within a 1,500 m segment of the Royal-Treasure shear corridor. Meaningful gold mineralization has been intersected in 75% of the holes, but the market has not responded because a mineable geometry is not self evident. The junior is in a position to produce an open-pittable resource estimate for the near surface mineralization, but is reluctant to do so because the gold content may not exceed the 1 million ounce threshold the market insists on. That is understandable but what the market fails to understand is that this is an orogenic system whose gold mineralization can persist over several thousand vertical metres and in this system the geochemistry indicates the surface is near the top. What the market wants to see is a deeper vein system emerge that is comparable to the 4 million ounce high grade resource that was discovered and mined at the Bralorne deposit a century ago. That means drilling ever deeper, something CEO Robert Boyd has been reluctant to do with big stepouts because it is in his conservative nature to build a system incrementally.
2023 was supposed to be the breakout year but the drilling season was curtailed by major forest fires in the district which proved to be a problem that year across much of Canada. In 2024 the major shareholder Richard Gilliam stepped up with a $4 million financing at a premium to the market which allowed Endurance to execute a major drill program which filled the "Crown" gap between the Imperial and Eagle Zones and doubled the depth at which high grade mineralization has been intersected. As a bonus hole #106, the last one reported in 2024, revealed that there is a second mineralized zone in the footwall of the Imperial Zone which past holes stopped short of testing. The market, which in the 12th year of an endless resource junior bear market only responds to barnburner drill intersections, has ignored the 2024 story building accomplishments which justify much more aggressive drilling in 2025.
During the past couple years Endurance has done several 100% farm-in deals on land to the north and done target development work in an area that has never been drilled because the bedrock is obscured by ashfall from a recent Meager Creek volcanic eruption and the mountainsides are thick with unlogged forest. In late 2024 Endurance violated "just-in-time" textbook dogma by accelerating all cash and stock payments to vest 100% in the entire land package. There appear to be a half dozen structural trends parallel to the Royal-Treasure Shear corridor on the original Reliance claim, some of which have soil geochemistry anomalous with gold and the arsenic-antimony pathfinder elements. The vendors are all truly arms length, so this decision to lock up 100% now, and pre-empt future litigation when something clearly worth fighting for is visible, is a sign that management believes 2025 will be a breakout year for the Reliance project.
What is missing, which explains the Bottom-Fish Spec Value rating, is market acknowledgement that Reliance is an unfolding multi-million ounce high grade gold discovery. Beyond the Reliance play Endurance also owns the Elephant Mountain project in Alaska which is an intrusion related gold system similar to Fort Knox but which has been explored in the manner of blind men grasping at parts of an elephant. The Tintina Gold Belt and its Tombstone rocks have garnered fresh market interest thanks to Snowline's Valley discovery in southeastern Yukon where previous operators grasped at the Rogue project without definitive success. At the moment the market seems to think that $2,600 gold is a mirage that soon enough will fade back to a reality below $2,000. But the gold market does not yet reflect the potential mayhem Trump may unleash if he puts his words into action. Elephant Mountain is not worth touching without a minimum $5 million exploration budget, but its potential for bulk tonnage gold mineralization in contrast to the high grade largely underground mineable potential of Reliance turns Endurance Gold into a side bet on gold blasting through $3,000 and igniting a gold based bull market for resource juniors. |
