High Grade Starter Pit Some fascinating historical reports about the Moss Lake gold deposit have been archived on the web, here:
https://www.geologyontario.mndmf.gov.on.ca/mndmfiles/afri/data/imaging/52B10SE0217//52B10SE0217.Pdf
The first report in this pdf was written by an Exploration Geophysical Consultant in September 1985. By the standards of that era, the Snodgrass Lake gold mineralization (as it was then known) was not rich enough to be an economically viable deposit. At that time, the price of gold was $325 an ounce, and a substantial body of higher grade ore was required before a mine could be built. But it's clear that many geologists were intrigued by the visible gold at the north end of Snodgrass Lake, going back at least to 1936. Despite the higher grades that companies were looking for in the 1980's, there was a lot of interest in our deposit.
The report mentions that some of the drill core samples in our deposit were impressive: "0.6 ozs.Au/ton over 10', 0.22 ozs over 35 feet" (I'll let you do the math to convert those numbers into the modern metric equivalents).
Of course, a lot more drilling has been done since then (including underground drilling), and we now know a lot more about the Moss Lake deposit (as it's now called) than was known in 1985. The most recent 43-101 report gave a Resource Estimate of 3.1 million ounces (measured, indicated & inferred) at 1.1 grams/ton. But the reason why this old 1985 report still intrigues me is the prospect of a high grade starter pit at the north end of Snodgrass Lake. It's clear that there is some rich ore, close to the surface at that spot. I think that the project economics in the upcoming PEA will be very attractive, and if there's a good chance that some of the ore mined in the first year or two has a grade of several grams per ton, then that will help reduce the payback period to just a few years. Very attractive!