Authored by Lemuel Daher.
Introducing Happy Creek!
We’re thrilled to be partnering with this metal explorer, and we’re confident you’ll want to add Happy Creek (TSX-V: HPY) to your portfolios. Suffice to say – the story here is strong. Put simply: Happy Creek is focused on its incredible resource in British Columbia: their 100% owned Fox Project.
It’s here where the Company just completed 2,176m of diamond core drilling in eighteen holes between September 5th to October 5th. This is just the first phase of a planned multi-phase drill program for the project.
Happy Creek’s campaign at Fox revolves around one dense, strong metal in particular. It’s a metal used in countless heavy duty and industrial applications, it’s a metal that is deemed a critical element in Canada, the USA, and the EU due to its importance and supply risk, and it’s a metal with zero primary producers in North America.
It’s called tungsten.
As there are no primary tungsten producers in North America – the last being Cantung Mine, located in the Northwest Territories and Yukon, Canada – it’s actually China that produces over 80% of the world’s tungsten supply. And, as of this last February, China has implemented serious export controls on tungsten.
Obviously, supply constraints tend to push prices upward when demand remains stable or increases. Take drill bits, for example. According to Reuters, tungsten comprises up to 75% of the drill bits deployed in oilfields. But now that Chinese export controls are squeezing the supply of Tungsten, the metal’s price has jumped from $330 in February to over $600 per metric ton unit in October. Because of this, PDC drill bits now cost an additional $3,000 to $25,000 (Reuters, 2025).
Essentially, what we’re looking at is a massive area of growth for Happy Creek. It’s easy to put the pieces together: the biggest tungsten producer in the world is now squeezing Tungsten supply, the United States remains a major importer of tungsten, and there is now a strong desire for non-Chinese tungsten sources…
…and did we mention that Happy Creek happens to be sitting on one of the highest-grade tungsten deposits in the world?
So, let’s dive a little deeper into Happy Creek’s Fox Tungsten Project. The project is located in southern British Columbia, approximately 70 kilometres northeast of 100 Mile House in the south Cariboo region. Several mineralized zones have been identified here; among the most advanced are the Ridley Creek (RC), BN and BK Zones, which have both been subject to drilling and a resource estimation.
Happy Creek’s NI43-101 Project Resource Estimate was defined in 2018 and included an Indicated Resource of 582,400 tonnes at 0.826% WO3 within the RC Zone. It also included an Inferred Resource of 565,400 tonnes at 1.231% WO3 located predominately at the BN Zone (453,000 @ 1.321 WO3).
But even with this impressive estimate, Happy Creek knows that the Fox Project potential has barely been tested. That’s why the goal of the Company’s aggressive exploration drill program is to expand the project’s high-grade tungsten resource.
14 diamond core drillholes were completed at the RC south zone. This work defined the continuity of and expanded the calc silicate horizon- the rock unit that hosts tungsten mineralization on the project- to the southwest and is clearly open to the west beneath Deception Mountain.
And at the BN zone, a total of four diamond core drillholes were completed. From deeper drilling to the northwest of the known zone, Happy Creek intersected two thick zones of calc silicate approximately 100 metres between each other, which supports the concept for potential of multiple mineralized horizons at depth that remain open.
This also indicates that further drilling to the northwest of the BN zone holds potential to host considerably more tonnage than previously defined. This is notable given the strength of past drilling at BN, such as hole F12-27, which returned 14.8 metres of 4.0% WO₃ starting at 83.2 metres- in the realm of the best intercepts known.
Based on this year’s drilling, the favorable geology is open to the northwest and west at the BN and RC zones respectively and together suggests potential for additional tungsten mineralization to occur beneath Deception Mountain, providing a clear path for the next phase of exploration within this untested large-scale area.
Looking ahead, selected core intervals representing samples yielded from the Fox Tungsten campaign have been sent to ALS Geochemistry Laboratories in Vancouver for assays.
Happy Creek also has preliminary plans for follow-up drilling around the RC and BN zones, at the BK zone, as well as at the Nightcrawler and South Grid targets. The Company is also planning to conduct more primary geology and surface work around the resources and at many areas that have never been prospected.
Happy Creek is tightly held, the Company recently closed a $3.75M private placement so the Company is far from cash-starved, and they have the requisite funding to advance exploration.
The simple truth of the matter is that Happy Creek is one of the few pure-play tungsten explorers left. And, at a modest market cap of just over 30 million, owns 100% of a high-grade tungsten resource within a district-scale project. The Company plans a multi-year effort for the Fox project and if exploration succeeds – and we’ve listed several reasons why we’re confident it will – the upside on Happy Creek could be multiples of its current value.
Like we said earlier – just like tungsten itself – the story, value, and future prospects of Happy Creek are looking strong.