Third installment - mine tour:
Again, please let me say this is only for those who wish to read it. It is also not intended to promote the company nor to suggest that you purchase, hold or sell the stock. It is simply a posting of what I saw and interpreted for myself. Please feel free to corroborate any information herein with the company itself.
Standing at the bottom of the parallel ore shoot Stan pointed out how wide the uncovered top part of the hanging wall was, about 17 feet. He was very excitedly showing Lilly the amount of quartz and malachite (?)(green rock)and all the mineralization right there indicating the presence of gold. He and Lilly were excitedly saying things like, "look here how it is twisting and here how it narrows up" meaning, I gathered, that the geological events which created this twisting and dipping meant that there was sure to be larger concentrations of gold where those events occurred. Jim explained that the thing about the Mother Lode was exactly that....that it was not consistent, that it did dip and turn. This made/makes it more difficult to follow (as "following" is not tracing with one's hand but tracing with a chisel andn a hammer a large enough hole to walk through). On the other hand it is what makes the consistent .5 and 1 oz per ton suddenly jump to 3,4,7, and 700 oz per ton, the jewelry grade ore. All of the ore is "high grade" ore, meaning that the concentration is such that the production costs are low because less rock has to be removed for each ounce of recoverable gold.
Stan said, "OK, up we go!" "Up" means climbing hand over hand straight up (not a lot of angle)on steps spaced about 12 inches apart (a ladder is a better descripton)which they built as they chipped out the space. After about 90 or 120 steps (I was not counting)up (not daring to look down)we reached wide boards chucked into the mountain side which were the working platforms from which the 5 or so miners work. What we had just climbed was the access part of the three-compartment raise (pronounced rise). Where they had gotten, what we saw, was where the rock was suddenly changing in color and pattern. Even I could distinctly see the "ceiling" of other rock, not quartz bearing, and this wide vein, clearly different, turning and coming down through. On either side of our "ladder", the raise, were two chutes down which the chipped ore was sent to waiting ore carts below.
We must have spent about twenty minutes up at the top, there was so much to see and understand, before starting the long descent down.
At the bottom we encountered another group of 5 or so miners, the next shift just coming on to start work. All of the miners clearly glad to see Jim, even though Jim had just been there on Monday with the Mr. Danielle (spelling?) and potential investors brought in by the new JV.
The Sterling group is described as being a group of very wealthy real estate investors who are very interested in this property and believe in its potential. They are also persons with whom Jim has done business and known personally for many years and with whom he has had other very positive experiences. He believes in their integrity and business ability.
After making our way back to Pillar 4 Jeremy announced that he wanted to go up and see it. He was warned that there were a minimum of 200 steps (200 feet up the raise) but he could not contain his excitement. Stan undid the latch to the wire protector "lid" and the two of them crawled through. Lilly said she would stay below, my back decided to decline the trip, and Jim said he would stay and keep us company.
We talked about production to some degree. I mentioned to him that IR has been saying for some time that they were taking 40-60 tons a day out of the mine and that Stan had said 60 tons a day, but that he, Jim, upon hearing that remark, had seemed surprised, had inferred that he thought it was lower. It became clear to me in the conversation that they are in the process of taking rock out, but that the various areas still have to be assayed and that takes time. This is why they are going to put up their own assay plant next spring. Right now they take ore out of the mine, store it, send off the assay, wait 10 days or more for the results to come back, and then say, OK, this is it, lets go to work....or say, this area not rich enough, lets move over 10 feet and the pile gets used for reinforcing the road. BCMD is considered a "small mine" (despite the fact it had and has a big strike)and therefore only produces 10-12 assay samplings per shipping. The assay company perhaps receives 200 samplings from some other mine (say an Arizona copper mine)and therefore considers that mine its bigger customer and so pays attention to those assays first. When the company (BCMD) builds their own assay plant they will have immediate information and it will speed up their production tremendously. It will cost about $30-40K to build an assay plant. They suspect that all the local mines might also come to BCMD to get their assays done as well, thus defraying costs, once the BCMD assay plant is built. (I say 'plant' because tht was the word I thought I was hearing, but when you go into mining ghost towns, it seems the assay office is a small wooden building and a 12 x 15 foot space would be sufficient. Perhaps that is the office where the assay results are collectd by the customer, or perhaps assaying in the past was a much less refined process.)
Jeremy and Stan finally came down from their Jack in the Beanstalk climb. Jeremy was litterally 'a-twitter' with excitement. He even had a piece of Pillar 4 in his pocket over which I was very jealous and reminded him that had it not been for me he would not even be there and demanded a piece of Pillar 4 which he kindly had broken up, despite my "only teasing" protests, and gave to me. He talked about having crawled across the wins (I think it is "wins", Jeremy, and not "win" - I could be wrong, am wrong often). The wins was an access and egress shaft that was built in the 1800's during their effort to get to Pillar 4 area. In the 1960's ('70's?) another group attempted to mine Pillar 4 but were doing it on a shoestring, did not have the finances to correctly shore up, and the area collapsed on them. To remove all the rubble and rock from the collapse would have cost thousands of dollars which they did not have. The miner who attempted that, and "created" the collapse, is one of the miner's working there now. He wouldn't miss this find for all the proverbial tea in china (or gold in this here mountain)! He just wants to know that he was right in his guess as to where it was. When they fell into that old raise (as mentioned in the telephone conference call we posted a while back), they were so high on excitement that they could have floated out of the mine like so many hydrogen balloons, or so it seems to me as I watch and listen to them speak about that day.
OK. Posting this one now and then will go on to the next posting about the Ruby Mine and the production plant. |
