Oriented a little bit.
This is the 3D
modeling software that we use
for the drilling and
plotting up our drill holes after
we've drilled them.
This contains
all the historic drilling that was
done back in the 80s
and 90s.
So what are we looking at here?
I think I can figure it out, but run
your hand across the screen, show
me. What does each one of those
mean?
Yeah, so each of these is a drill
hole.
So this represents the surface
right here,
the ground surface.
And all the holes are drilled.
So if we look at this kind of
in plan view.
It's looking straight down.
I can add the
drilling that we just completed.
So that's these holes over here.
Come in.
And with that drilling, so this is
what we have modeled,
kind of as a preliminary model of
the bend deposit.
So what does that red represent?
That red represents the copper,
you know, primarily the copper and
gold mineralization that we've
identified to date,
including from the historic drilling
and incorporating our more
recent drilling.
So then a future, future steps
is to kind of fill in
and you can see the kind of the
variability and drill density.
A lot of drilling has been done and
kind of core area of the deposit.
This is looking kind of inclined
view looking north.
Much less drilling has been done
heading off to
the east and at depth,
as well as off to the west
in a sparse drilling.
So our objectives going
forward are to
infill
between these holes and what we've
drilled just so that we can better
define the deposit and
then to also see how far this
mineralization extends at
depth both to the East and
to the West.
So there's a chance that that red
area grows.
Yeah, and that's pretty
much the objective,
is to define the extents,
not only the extens of the
mineralization, but the quality,
the grade of that mineralization.
So can you point to which one on the
screen is the one that we'll be
looking at over on the table?
So.
So now I'm going to cut a,
what we call a cross section.
So we're looking.
Pretty much looking at a vertical
slice through the,
through the earth.
So this is looking to
the west.
And we will be taking a look at this
wall here, which is P2504,
which had one
of the thickest
in a mass of sulfide intervals that
had been identified.
Could you run your finger across
that again slowly just so we can see
which one?
It's this one right here.
When I see you do that...
Do it one more time, please.
And so some of these other,
those are historical ones,
not ones that you've done.
O4 is the hole that we had drilled.
But some of the other holes,
are these all ones that we're
seeing that you've done?
Or are there some others that are
done by other groups or back to
the history of them?
Yep, so we only drilled six holes
on this program.
I think there's been a total of
roughly 60 holes
drilled on the deposit
to date. So this is showing the
compilation of all of
the drill holes.
And so I guess in
that context, so this was
hole B7, I think this was drilled
probably back in 87.
You know, intercepted, you know
roughly two meters of
kind of ore grade
mineralization.
So these holes, B2503
and 04, we're kind of
testing that same,
testing that interval at depth
just to see how it changes.
And what we found was,
you know, it's showing that it's
thickening, thickening at depth.
And then through our subsequent
drilling, it is also kind of
thickening off.
To the east, and I've got some maps
that I can show you to kind of
better explain that.
Yeah, so this was a very, this was
an impressive hole.
I think it was about just over 22
meters, so, you
know, you're looking at 75, 80 feet
of, you know,
significant ore grade
mineralization.
So originally when this
deposit formed was
on an ocean floor, it
was a volcanic system and that
material came up,
settled on the ocean floor
over the millennia,
lithified as more volcanic
sediments were deposited on top
of it, and then the whole thing was
uplifted.
So it looks like, I always say, it
kind of looks like a piece of
baloney in a baloney sandwich.
That's what that tabular
red thing is.
And Steve is
right, I mean these things do form,
and they are currently forming right
now on the ocean floor in different
geologic
settings.
You've probably seen
on the Discovery Channel
those black smoker pipes
that they've found kind of with deep
sea exploration.
Those are actually modern day VMS
systems that are forming.
So what happens is there's
hot hydrothermal fluids kind of
percolating through the crust
and they make their way up, shoot
out those vents and
their mineral-laden fluids.
As they hit that cold water, those
minerals fall out, so you get this
kind of downfall.
Sulfide mineralization with copper
and zinc and precious metals.
And so, you know, back
1.8 billion years ago,
you know, this surface right here
does actually represent, you
know, what that
paleo sea floor looked like
at that time.
And as far as for us
kind of vectoring into
mineralization, you know, we look at
the geology very closely to
kind of put...
You know, we piece together that
kind of a stratigraphy and
kind of see where we are.
I mean, we're looking, you know
we're for that paleo sea
floor horizon and that's
where the mineralization is.
And so then from there,
we can see what happens.
Before this is.
This is a plan view, so looking
straight down.
These are the different, these are
the historic, historic drill holes
are more recent drilling.
The ore body is kind of sitting
there semi vertically, probably
dipping roughly 80 degrees
to the south.
Thank you very much.
Take your left hand and just
kind of point out a few things
on the screen again, please
Alright, so these are showing, you
know, the historic drilling on
the site with this area
right here representing the
area that we drilled this past
summer, completing
six holes,
connecting up a lot of the
historic mineralization that was
identified, as well as
a few step out, historic
step out holes that had identified
additional mineralization, so
we pretty much connected.
Showed the continuity between
the core deposit and this
kind of extension to the east.
We can incline that and
look more to
the west.
If you could just basically
keep doing that for the surface.
So this area
of Wisconsin has a
significant amount of
overburden. So there's
roughly kind of 100 to 120 feet
vertical of unconsolidated
glacial material.
So this surface right here
represents the Precambrian
bedrock surface, which is
overlaid by that 100 feet of
sand and gravel.
So would we compare this to the
UP, where native peoples
found copper coming to the surface?
Was that just different levels of
uplift that creates that contrast,
where they could have surface mines?
Well, it's really just the the
glaciology of the area, so the,
you know, I mean, if you think of
kind of the Canadian Shield,
you go up there, there's very little
overburden, because that was kind of
area, you know,
down here in Wisconsin, we're kind
of reaching the end of the
glaciation. So all that material
that was ground up way up north
was pushed down
to the south.
And that's what,
you
material so you get up into the UP.
There's, you know, it's variable.
It's very variable up there.
I mean, you can go up there and, you
know you've got big, you,
know giant outcrops, you and
kind of knobs and whatnot
mixed in with, you now, sand plains
and areas where there was glacial
deposition.
You get down here into Wisconsin and
you know that glacial overburden
is significant.
And actually I was We
had a group from
UW Eau Claire.
And we were out at site and we're
talking about the overburden.
And it's like, if that overburdon
wasn't here,
northern Wisconsin would probably
have been built on mining.
Because they would have discovered
those back in the early
1900s. Thank you.
The copper mines up in
Michigan.
So is it just?
Process was different of how it was
created. I guess I said similar to
like gold veins or something.
You can say that.
Versus it being distributed.
Yep it was more magmatic oriented
if you will that that
copper whereas this is
volcanic you know so it's
a little little different you
know origin to the metal.
Soft science instead of hard science
or political science.
But all right, so here we're
looking again at
the plan. This is a geologic map.
These kind of lighter gray holes are
the historic drilling.
These darker, more bold holes are
the holes that we just drilled
this year.
Kind of these red intercepts
here represent the mineralization
that was encountered in all of
those holes.
So basically, the two holes, the
six holes that we drilled were
drilled kind of roughly.
On two separate sections about 50
meters apart.
And that's kind of how,
when you're kind of methodically
trying to define
a deposit,
you know, you're pretty much trying
to hit it at a kind of regular
spacing.
A long strike and down-dip of
it to really be able to map out
where it is and what it looks
like.
So these represent the
two cross-sections.
This blue line here,
got a vertical slice in this blue
line here, vertical slice through
the earth.
Mineralized zone is
represented by this red
unit.
This is B2504
here, so this is the hole that
we have laid out here.
And then also over
there we have B2506, which
was the deepest hole that we
drilled.
And, you know, I guess...
Kind of what we're seeing.
This is kind of the nature of
exploration.
This drill program, we'd
actually intended to drill.
Three other holes kind
of higher up in the,
you know, higher up dip.
But these first two holes that we
drilled, mineralization was very
kind of marginal and weak.
We drilled this undercut.
We could tell that the mineralized
section is improving.
You know, the alteration, the grade,
the thickness of the mineralization,
was improving.
So we ended up kind of refocusing
our efforts
and decided that deeper.
Deeper and off to the east was
better.
Yeah, so these these different
colors on these cross sections
represent different different
lithologies and we
have you know typical
in kind of
Or You know deposit
type geology.
We have what is called a hanging
wall and a foot wall And
those are kind of old terms really
for just what's above you and what's
what's below you and this
is a strategy stratigraphic
deposit, so
the ore mineralization
is this red here, as well
as the purple, and we
get kind of pervasive mineralization
through this lighter purple as well.
So this is kind of what we call the
mineralized series.
Everything out of there, outside of
that, both above and below it,
within the hanging wall up here, the
footwall here, is kind benign,
just host rock, just
a series of
volcanic, volcanic-clastic
rocks that were overlaying
on the deposit.
Completely unrelated to the
mineralizing event.
The first one.
And so this is just, this is a
plan map, so we're looking straight
down.
Looking at the historic
drill holes here, in kind of this
lighter gray, more bold holes,
are the holes that we drilled
this past summer,
and these red intervals represent
mineralized
intervals within all of those drill
holes.
So, and then back to those
cross-sections, these blue lines
represent those vertical slices,
you know, this one being this one
here, and
this one being this, one here.
And again, just kind of showing that
through the drilling that
we did this summer,
you know we just kind, of identified
a thickening of
mineralization at
depth and going off to
the east, which I actually...
This long section.
So now a long section here,
this is kind of a pseudo vertical
look, but like head-on to
the deposit. So looking at that
deposit is just a flat plane,
and all these points on here
represent the pierce points where
those drill holes intercepted
that mineralized
horizon.
These, this orange here represents
kind of the historic extents of kind
of the core deposit area.
This orange outline
here represents a few
kind of far-spaced holes where they
had intercepted mineralization
kind of
down plunge to
the east of the core deposit and
these labeled holds here are
the six holds that we drilled this
past summer.
Trying to figure out the continuity
between that
core historic deposit and
these step-out holes that were
drilled previously.
These contours here show the
thickness, kind
of the true thickness of that
mineralized section.
So you can see that some
of the, you know, the thickest area
in the core deposit is roughly 22
meters,
and I can't remember exactly what
hole that was,
but B25.
04 also represents
one of the thickest intercepts that
have been recorded on the
deposit to date.
And by creating these plots,
we can figure
out where we think that
main mineralized section
of the deposit is
going. So our future drilling will
be stepping out on
the holes that we drilled here to
really define the trend
of that mineralization and
see how far it goes.
Then we can probably look at some
core.
So I've kind of discussed the
hanging wall, kind of
relatively unrelated volcanic
rocks that were just piled
on top of that mineralized section,
so that's kind of what we're looking
at.
Looking at here, you know,
it's kind variable textures,
and we're going from, you know,
volcanic plastic to
volcanic plastic sediments,
tufts.
A few kind of coarser green lapilli
tufts.
And this is what most people just
refer to as bedrock.
Yeah, well I mean bedrock can be
anything.
But up here it's a, if someone's
dredging a well or if
they hit bedrock, they're hitting
this.
In this area, anyways, throughout
this volcanic belt, you're going to
see some
fashion of volcanic-lastic
rocks and or volcanically-related
intrusive rocks.
So this in here,
the series of finely bedded
argyllates and
maturity sediments,
this really represents
the very last
phase of the mineralized
section of
rocks.
So you're getting this buildup
of sulfide mineralization on the
seafloor.
As that system starts shutting down,
you just start getting regular
sedimentation fine-brained.
Sediments and kind of some
chemical, chemical, exhalative
rocks.
But yeah, this, this pretty much
represents the the top of the
mineralized section and as
you move down, you know,
obviously there's a very stark
contrast between the unmineralized
rock and the heavy sulfide
content within the massive to
semi-massive sulfide section.
And in here,
you know a lot of this is dominated
by pyrite
You kind of have to have a bit of an
eye for it, but this is some pretty
gaudy mineralization.
You can kind of tell the difference
between...
You know, the color of those two
sulfides, this being pyrite,
pyrate dominant here,
whereas this is pretty much pure
kelgopyrite.
Kelgopyrate would be the copper
sulfide that hosts
the copper within the
deposit.
So, growing up,
everyone told me that Pyrite was
called fool's gold, because it was
worthless, it looked like gold, is
it still that today,
or does it have any value?
The pirate in itself
does host
some of the gold mineralization,
so I mean there is gold associated
with that.
It's also the host,
in
these types of deposits you have
a lot of sulfur within
those hydrothermal fluids.
And those, that solver
can either, you know, will
attach to...
And it'll attach to copper, it'll
attached to zinc.
So I mean, all these deposits are
pyrite-hosted with
variable quantities of whatever
the ore mineral is, whether it's
calcopyrite, copper, sphalerite,
zinc, galenol, lead.
Would you point out the difference
between the two pieces?
So this is
pyrite dominant, there is
some fine-grained calcopyrite kind
of interstitially throughout there,
but this more gold-looking
mineral is the calcopyrate,
which is the copper sulfide.
That's what I was mentioning.
So this is a thick section,
I think it was 22,
23 meters of massive
sulfide mineralization.
You can see that there's kind of
variable sulfide
quantities throughout there.
But it was also,
had significant gold mineralization
in it, and if you kind of
take a close look, you'd already
looked at this.
But the visible gold.
Within, I think, was about
roughly two meters,
probably averaging about
a third of an ounce per
ton, which is extremely high-grade
material.
I don't know if you can see
that gold in there.
So within those red circles,
let's just...
Tilt it towards me and just keep it
there for a sec.
So that's the exciting stuff to
see.
Well, it's exciting to see, and it's
very rare even in most gold
deposits.
You're not going to actually see the
gold. It's pretty rare for it to be
in quantities great
enough where it's what we call
visible gold usually.
It's just identified
based on the
host mineralization or alteration.
You're not going to know it's there
until you get the analysis back.
So it's always as an exploration
geologist, it's always exciting,
exciting to see it in the core.
So in, like,
old-fashioned terms, you'd say it's
struggled.
Yeah.
See you then.
That's going to be the lead quote
for the story.
Gold Rush and Taylor Company.
Yeah, well I think when we were
working on the reef deposit
back in 2010, I think
the local paper had
an article and the title was,
There's gold up in
them there hills
So how far down
is, how many feet down is that
section we were just looking at,
where'd it go?
Yeah, so I guess I could just kind
of explain.
So the way that you read these core
boxes, you really read them
like a book if they're flipped
this way.
So this represents the top of the
hole. This represents the bottom
hole, you know, reading it
left, left to right.
These core blocks are placed in
here by the drillers.
So drillers drill in 10 foot
intervals. They have 10 foot
tooling.
So they'll drill down 10 feet, pull
up the rock.
After each time they pull it up,
they put a block.
So that you know where you are in
the hole.
So these are all the depths
in meters going
down.
So this section right here
was roughly.
I don't know.
Roughly 275 to 290
meters down hole.
And so these holes are drilled at an
angle. So that doesn't represent
your vertical depth.
That's just your down hole depth.
I would assume vertically we're
probably too.
Maybe 200 to 225
meters vertically below
the surface.
So about 700 feet down,
yeah, because meter is roughly
three feet.
Yeah. So no one's getting a shovel
out. Yeah, right, no.
No,
you're not even going to get down to
bedrock with a shovel, because it's
ways down there.
Yeah, so this represents the bottom
of that massive sulfide, kind of
the main mineralization
underlying that.
You have what we call the quartz
crystal tough unit,
which kind of shows just kind
of classic, classic alteration
associated with these deposits.
You'll kind of notice that this has
kind of a dark,
almost kind of blueish tint
to it that's caused by chlorate,
which is typical for
the footwall immediately underlying
your... Your mass of sulfide
mineralization and
as you move down
it becomes
more gray,
you know, getting out of that kind
of chloride alteration into your
quartz serosite
alteration which really just kind of
means you're moving further away
from that main kind
of mineralized Horizon.
So when you're looking at this
stretch in here, obviously the
color alone when you know what
you're looking for will tell you
this is the area to focus on.
After that is it all analysis
at the lab that's going to tell you
the specifics?
Well, so I
guess the
order of operations,
the flow of work.
So the core comes from the rig.
The drillers bring it at the end of
each shift.
We lay it out here.
We have a number of geotechs that
do different measurements.
They'll convert the blocks.
The drillors are drilling in feet.
We're logging everything in meters.
They'll covert the blocks, they'll
with the meter marks on the core.
They'll do some structural rock
quality measurements, which
we call RQD.
Then the geologist comes
in and we
log it in pretty
finite detail
through the hanging wall into
the mineralized section.
And obviously,
the water horizon is kind of based
on mineralogy, the minerals
that we're seeing, the appearance
of minerals
of economic interest, you know,
sulfide. Sulfide minerals, et
cetera.
So we take all those notes
based on what we're seeing.
We decide what needs to be sampled,
which has what we want to see,
what the metal content of
that rock is.
So I mean, if you noticed up at
the top of what I showed you here,
that core was not even cut in half.
So it's uninteresting rock.
We didn't even send it out for
analysis.
But everything that we're
interested in, We mark out
for sampling, we
take photos of every
box of core, and it goes
to the core cutters who cut it in
half, and then they sample
it. We send those off to the lab for
analysis.
Mike, I don't know if you want to
get some...
Thank you very much.
There you are, just for a minute.
Well, they're good-looking rocks.
Are you just videoing or recording
voice too?
All of the above.
If the audio's there, we probably
won't need it.
What's this right there?
Yeah, so you can kind of see.
I mean, it's probably dominated by
pyrite, but you can definitely see
there's that patch in there and
through there, there's a nice little
wisp of kind of calcopyrite-rich
mineral volcanic, a volcanic
fragment, so it was.
The way that these things form is
actually like a,
if you look at some of the modern
day analogies, I mean, those
chimneys can be like
30, 40 feet, 50 feet tall,
but they're constantly being built,
but they are also kind of breaking
and slumping and sloughing.
Meanwhile, you've got adjacent
volcanic activity.
So you've gotta. Right there.
Hold that for a bit, a second
please, could you
bring it up a little higher like you
had it?
Tilt it more towards you.
Well, for the mineralized rock, it
would be, I mean, we refer
to it as massive to semi-massive
sulfide. And that's all
pretty much just based on the
sulfide content,
roughly, you know,
35 to 60 percent,
35 to 65 percent
sulfide is typically semi-massive.
Anything above that you would refer
to as massive sulfide.
You sit underneath those cords.
Yeah, and this is the quartz crystal
tuff, which is kind of a classic
rock to be that
hosts these deposits.
And then what would you call the
second time?
And the stuff on top is really
just kind of volcanic,
volcanic sediments and volcanic
plastic rocks.
So if someone wanted to make a nice
kitchen countertop with this, it
would be good material.
Probably not.
I think just just based
on the fractures within there
for those quarry,
for those types
of quarries, they're looking for
rock that has, you know, very few
fractures in it, which is actually
kind of a rare thing to find.
You can make some rolling pins out
of that.
Ha, ha, ha.
It gets you to say and spell your
name and give your title just so we
have it correct on tape.
Eric Quigley, it's
E-R-I-C-Q-U-I G-L-E-Y
and I'm the Director of Exploration
for Greenlight.
Great, thank you.
3D software makes it kind of
easier, but you don't
get anything more out of it
than they used to get back in the
old days.
But, so these represent the first
two holes that we had drilled and
I kind of made a
point that we kind of adjusted our,
we drilled this undercut
immediately after that,
still kind of underwhelming,
but definitely you can see a
thickening.
A thickening of that crystal-tuff
unit underlying it, two
lenses of massive
sulfide that were very, very
small and kind of insignificant,
but kind of based on seafloor
topography this mineralization
probably forms in little
depressions and
kind a little kind of miniature
basins.
So there can be a lot of variability
to that.
At some point in
the
understanding of every deposit,
you go out and you start
drilling to miss,
really just confirming that
we get deeper and deeper.
Does it keep getting bigger
or is it going to kind of
pinch out at depth, and it will at
some point. So.
That'll be our MO for
the next round.
So, in January,
are we here, or
are we?
We're down here, we'll
find out where it isn't,
but right now it's to use
the information that we have
available to
try to follow this as far as
we can.
I don't know how long does it take to
do a whole...
Um...
Yeah, these deeper
holes took two, maybe
three rigs out there to
just get it done.
It's a good chunk of time to hope
the weather holds.
Hopefully it's been caught.
Yeah, okay.
Inch and a half, two inches of rain.
I think we're done with what we need
to bother you for, so thank
you for giving
us a tour that was actually really,
really helpful.
So I didn't know
that much about it, it was
fascinating.
And there's always stuff like, oh,
we'd love to hear that.
So that happens.
And it's like, yeah, well, I'd love
to share it, but my boss is
more loud than me.
Since drilling a hole in
January could be
nearly a two week project,
when would be the
ideal window for us to come up with?
But as we get closer
to the date, I'll just reach out to
you.
And I'm thinking, you know, once we
get about two weeks in
foot and everything's up and running
and smoothed out, then we can
get you back up there.
But we'll try to give you enough
advance notice.
Yeah.
You have to try to
visualize things.
So I'm assuming you're trying to
make machines.
You can see a pipe, and then you see
something come up.
Yeah.
And then you see something come up, hopefully
it's a section that's...
Yeah, you're going to see like a
trailer out there with a big, like,
drill mass sticking up at an angle.
I know I'm going to be in close
because it's going to get cold.
You'll see some...
Vehicles with pipe on it.
That type of stuff and drilling
products for
mixing mud that night.
And then you'll see a hole in the
ground that's lined where it's the
same as a water well.
Just that the tower
is at an angle.
But the drilling materials and stuff
like that are all basically
the same.
With the exception of what you use
to core the rock, that stuff.
Which is the process of saving.
The core is right in there,
right in half.
The way that I'm doing it, with Sam,
I'm just going to do it in half
and core, and then bring it up.
So is that going to be?
We're trying to make it a
continuous process.
I mean, I would say those holes
take about a week to drill.
Target is to probably get them all
logged, cut,
sampled, and shipped out
within 10
days of completing the hole.
Thank you very much.
And then you're also going to do
another town hall type
event before in
January? Probably, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. You know, from the poor boxes,
these were like kids on a train.
I'm sure. They wanted to see the
rocks.
But it was good.
You know people were,
you know, us here
in Wisconsin, like for
Crandall, you now,
that was a hot place.
And you'd go to the town meeting
or a public event.
Alright, so I
guess give me a sense of what
we're looking at here and how
it looks today versus what it might
have looked like a couple months
ago.
Sure, so this is the location
of our drill program from
that we completed between
July and the end of August this
past year, so 2025.
And what we're standing on right
here is the access
road that comes into the
first drill site.
You see those orange stakes sticking
up out of the ground?
That's where we completed the first
two drill holes.
And the site's been reclaimed,
It's been revegetated.
Behind those stakes is
where the sump was
excavated to contain the
drill cuttings.
And when we're done with that,
done with the entire drill program,
those drill cutting are mixed with
cement and then it's buried.
All of the activities that we
conducted in here were done
under the permits and
authorization from the Wisconsin
DNR and the U.S.
Forest Service.
And they regulated the
access road.
They regulated how we manage the
drill cuttings, the types
of materials that we used in
the drill program, and then
they regulate how we have to
reclaim the site.
So all of our work that we've done
in here is financially assured,
meaning it's bonded with the
Wisconsin Department of Natural
Resources so
that we're held accountable
for the reclamation and the
abandonment of the holes.
The DNR will be back out here
over the course of the next year to
confirm that the vegetation has
taken root.
It's healthy, it's stable, and
they'll have to do that before we
get our financial assurance back.
So I know one of the, I mean, there
are people that are opposed to
mining, period, but there are
other people just have concerns that
all these exploratory drillings that
going deep in the earth's surface,
what are you pumping in there?
The exposure, what does this prove
to them or what would you want them
to be able to see here?
Well, a couple things.
First of all, the type of
drilling that we're doing is really
no different than
what's done for
domestic residences when
they're drilling a water well.
The only thing that's really
different is that we are going
deeper and when we get into the
bedrock, we're coring that.
But the drill materials and the
types of technology that we use
are very similar to what's
been done. In the water well
industry or other engineering
applications all across the
state. So it's a very safe process
and it's highly regulated.
The other thing that I think is
important for the public is
the amount of land that we disturb
here is actually quite small.
The road that we came in
on, we didn't take out any big
trees.
Any tree that we did take out
had to be authorized by the U.S.
Forest Service, so we're talking
small diameter.
Type trees.
In the area, disturbance is pretty
small. We're talking about a drill
area here that's maybe 50
by 75 feet
wide and a 10 foot
wide, 15 foot
wide access trail coming in here.
So it's pretty limited
disturbance for doing the drilling.
And so future
exploratory holes will be
off in that direction.
Well, in our future holes will be,
some will be off in that direction.
We'll probably have some on the
other side of the road as well.
So what we're looking to do is
place those holes in
areas to confirm either past
drilling data or
in areas where the deposit
hasn't been fully explored.
We're talking how far down
are we standing over what
you're hoping is there.
So the bedrock here is
covered by about 100 to maybe 125,
150 feet of glacial
overburden. So that's a lot of sand
and gravel and silts and stuff like
that.
And the mineralization is
within that bedrock.
And that mineralization could go
down maybe 1,500 feet from
the bed rock surface.
We don't exactly know the
extent of all that.
Could be a little shallower.
Could be little deeper.
But that's the type of depths that
we're talking about.
I mean, it's interesting to think
that most people could walk out here
and just go for a walk in the woods
and never realize what's underneath
the feet.
That's right. It's kind of
interesting.
And the other thing too, is people
could walk through this area and,
but for the stakes that we have
sticking up out of the ground, they
probably wouldn't know that there
was drilling that was conducted
here.
Just on the other side of the road,
we can take you to a drill site
that was drilled probably
20 years ago or so.
And so it's been reclaimed and stuff
like that. And if you didn't know
that there was a drill hole that was
done there, You wouldn't know that
any... Anybody was there.
Is the concern that like these holes
like stuff could come get
in or stuff comes out
or what what is the environmental
concern that I mean you guys
obviously have to take care of but
what are the larger issues with
that?
Well, I think some of the concerns
that we've heard from the public are
the types of drilling materials that
we're using and what we've always
told the public is any kind of
drilling material that we use like
bentonite or anything like that to
mix the mud, to flush the cuttings
up out of the hole.
All of those products that we used
are on an approved DNR
list of products that can be used
for any kind of drilling in the
state, not just for exploration
drilling, it could be for
construction purposes.
If someone's doing a scientific
study, they would be
regulated to use the
same types of products.
The other thing that people tend to
be concerned about is what
happens to the hole once you're done
with it.
And again, what we are obligated
to do under the permits is
if we've got a 1,500-foot drill
hole, we have to abandon
that, and that means we have stick
a pipe down to
the bottom of the hole.
And pump cement grout
from the bottom of the hole all the
way up to the top, and then
pull that drill casing out so the
whole thing is cemented up.
And that's the same type of
procedure that's required for
anybody that's doing any kind of
drilling, again, for exploration
purposes or scientific research,
et cetera.
It's a lot of concrete.
It's lot of of concrete, but it's
very standard in the industry.
So that's, the way
the practice works today.
Just from the computer graphing
that we saw, there's
holes all over it right here, right?
It's not just right here.
That's correct.
Yeah, so the site that we're
drilling has previously been
explored going back to the mid
1980s.
And so as we saw
earlier in the core shed, we've
got all that exploration
core from those previous drill
programs. So you're right.
If you walk through the area,
there's literally been 50
to 75 drill holes
that have been drilled through this
area already.
And again, if you didn't know
about it, you wouldn't know that any
of that was done in this area.
And there's no evidence that that's
caused any environmental damage
or something like that.
There's no evidence that it's
caused any damage.
I've been in the industry for 35
years, and understandably,
people have concerns about
impacts to water during a mining
operation, and that's
a different ballgame.
But for exploration purposes,
I'm not aware of any exploration
program that's ever caused
any harm to either groundwater
or surface water.
So when you're doing the community
outreach, is there,
do you draw a distinction between
exploration and mining?
Because obviously one hopefully
leads to the other, but
if people's concerns are about what
a mine looks like versus
exploration, are you trying to
like separate those out?
Yeah, that's a very good question.
You're exactly right.
That's that's exactly how we talk
to the public about it is,
you know, we're in the
exploration stage now.
So at this site, obviously,
we would hope that the
drilling data shows that there
could be a mine here someday, but we
don't have an answer to that
question. That that's
going to require more drilling.
So there's
certain set of regulations that
we operate under for exploration.
Just because we do exploration
at a site doesn't mean there's
necessarily going to be a mine
there.
And if there does end up
being a mine, that doesn't means
there's going to a mine here next
year.
We've got to do a lot of exploration
work and then we've got to do
lot of engineering analysis and
environmental studies to come up
with what we think is a
viable, permittable
mine plan.
And then we would start the
permitting process.
So that's probably four
to five years down the road.
How do you respond to people who
say, well, I will oppose a mind, so
why should I be okay with
you? Like, I'd rather not know
whether it's worth looking for
or not.
Well, there's certainly going to be,
there certainly, as we've met with
the public,
we've seen kind of people in
kind of three different camps,
if you will.
One, there is obviously going to
a group that's very supportive.
There's going to some folks that
are kind of in the middle, wanting
to learn more information.
And then there's a small group that
I would say that just
are, you know, I don't want it in my
backyard.
Uh... We recognize that there's
those different public perceptions
out there what
we've told people is that uh...
In our public meetings is we
want to hear from everybody and
uh... Uh...we want to know what
their questions are whether they're
four or they've got concerns we
will attempt to answer their
questions as best we can based
on the information that we have now
and as we continue doing
exploration We continue
doing these.
Engineering studies and looking at
alternatives, we want to take
all that public input into account
and share the results of
that with the public as we
progressively go through this
process.
Anything else you want to add just
immediately on the area or anything
around here?
Think that's good.
Okay. Yeah.
So we're able to walk her through
here, right?
Yep. Helps people like Eric
then plan drill programs.
Do I have to be in there?
You don't have to be now.
You're on your own, Pete.
Okay, go ahead.
So this is one of our
exploration boreholes.
This yellow steel pipe that you
see sticking up out of the
ground is the casing that goes down
through the overburden into
the bedrock.
And this one has not yet
been completely abandoned by us.
We have a steel
plate on the top of it
that's welded so that nobody can
get into it.
And we haven't abandoned this
one yet because we want to use it
for doing.
What's called down-hole borehole
geophysics, where we run
equipment down into the borehole.
It's basically, think of it as like
a radar beam that goes out
into the rock, and it gives you
a map of the mineralization around
the bore hole, so it helps
the geologists interpret
the exploration data from the
core and plan
future boreholes in this
area to help delineate the ore body.
This is three
and four.
Is it two holes here, or why
am I not seeing a second?
Three has been abandoned.
Okay,
so that back orange stake
represents four that hasn't been
abandoned, is the yellow still
there? Right.
So this one goes with
this steak, and the other one that's
been abandoned.
That was right there.
Do you ever think of coming up with
a better term than abandoned?
Sounds so...
That's right in the code.
That's the minute. Yeah,
so yeah, it's called borehole
abandonment.
Abandoned in the woods.
Yeah
So you do the same thing like,
you know,
if an industrial site, say
a landfill or something like that,
has monitoring wells and they expand
the landfill, then they have to
abandon those monitoring wells,
and same type of process except
they're shallower.
So we're going through the same
process here, except it's
deeper.
I mean I showed you that
3D model so
I mean basically I'm looking at that
plane and I'm finding
points along that plane that I
I want to test and then
then you draw a line up to the
surface and say okay this is the
drill site but then you come out
into the woods and that's what Jill
is doing out here right now you
know I've made all those drill sites
that we want to utilize so
she's out there staking them we'll
come in and we'll take a and be
like, well.
We're not going to put it right
there in the middle of those big
trees there. We can move it over to
kind of avoid disturbances.
We'll be looking at access.
So you can use evidence on the
ground too.
They can bend quite a bit,
especially when they're targeting
stuff deep.
It becomes kind of problematic to
try to account the rock.
In the
pipe or...
There's kind of a natural
deviation with
just the direction that the
rods are spinning.
They tend to flatten out when you
head off to the right.
But then that can also be affected
by
the geology that's encountered.
Installed out here.
One was this one where they put in
the empty...
It was a few years ago by
the Wisconsin
Geologic Natural History Survey,
yep.
And then the USGS has a
gaging station on the river right
up by the bridge there, so
they've already started doing
some data collection at
the request of,
I think it was Cliffwick maybe.
So it's a good question.
We had a
delegation of.
Native Americans come out to the
site probably two weeks into the
drilling program.
And they were from the Menominee
Indian Tribe of Wisconsin,
the Lakuta Ray.
And I thought there was maybe one
person from the
Lactoflammo.
And I recognize we're in
ceded territories here.
So we would like to learn more about
their concerns.
And we'd like to have the
opportunity to
show them what we're doing to
protect things as we
do the drilling programs.
We view them
as an important community
for us to talk to.
It's probably been
an area that's been
a little lacking in
the industry historically,
because normally companies won't
start talking to the tribes until
they get to the permitting process
for the mine.
So what we told them is,
looking at what their needs are
and seeing if
we can work with them to help
address some of those.
We also recognize what
their initial position is going
to be, but
we
do share some things in common which
is, you know, we all live in this
great country on this great land.
We do have local
issues that we need to address,
environment, you know, we need to be
talking more, so that's
what we're hoping to do.
One of the issues with Ataconite
9 was that
was on reservation land and
directly in other waters and
the Bad River especially.
It doesn't seem to be as applicable
here or am I overlooking it?
Well, yeah, so the
Taconite Project, you
know, was upstream of the
Bad River Reservation, but
all of that water that drained
through it went right
through the reservation.
Obviously, that was going to be a
hot-button issue.
Here, we don't have
any Native American
reservations immediately
downstream or downstream at
any point.
But that doesn't mean there aren't
cultural interests
And their
interests pop up just about
everywhere.
Yeah, yeah.
And one of our newer reporters
is Erika
Aisi.
Yeah, I'm not sure I would either.
I know there's something you can do
to count the leaves.
Uh, yeah.
Yeah.
There's a local kind
of environmental group called
Friends of the Yellow River that's
formed.
And, you know, they were out
here quite a bit.
They've been to our town hall
meetings. We've also done just
one-on-one meetings with them.
But they have.
In February then we did a meeting
with the county mining
committee and they
were both open to the public when we
met with the County Mining
Committee. There were some public
people sitting in there and one of
their members came up introduced
themselves said they're from friends
of the Yellow River and
said, okay, let's talk.
Is there any organized
opposition?
Because everything I've heard is
just like random.
Yeah, it's not...
Thank you.
Of course, it's never the locals.
It's...
Haven't seen um kind of
organized opposition like
i'm used to seeing on other
projects so
it's mainly been i
would call them local interest
groups concerned citizen groups
there's obviously the bigger
kind of statewide
focused on flambeau
you know and that goes
back to the 1980s, but
they're still there.
Some of them might be just
kind of aging out,
you know, because people get older
like me.
Yeah, it was interesting when the
mining bill came up.
Covered that start. His group was
like, his job's tomorrow, and the
other mine's immediately.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Happened.
There was not much in this industry
that passed.
It's a long process.
That's why this is
fascinating timing for me just to
pay attention to the good material.
Yeah. Yeah.
To that guy.
Tiffany, I'm going to interview him
in early December.
I'm gonna have him come in and I'll
probably throw a question in here
just to get in for the hell of it.
I don't know if they did even.
It doesn't actually mean anything to
me.
Are there Wisconsin companies able
to do this? Or are you able to be on
a stage?
I don't think there's any...
And real exploration-focused
drilling companies out there.
I'm sure there's a lot of
geotechnical type
drilling companies out here.
So as far as exploration, kind of on
a regional basis,
we only really just have TAPNITE,
who is the weed used in
the timber line that we're faced
with.
And that's it.
Close shot.
This is not enough work.
And it was elsewhere, so they
all kind of moved elsewhere.
The skills to run that don't
translate to anything else they
could do in between those.
They're just too specific.
Uh... You know they could i think if
you can do it
going deeper.
It does take some experience.
And I think just a
lot of that geotechnical drilling
is kind of five
days a week.
There's exploration drillers
that are around the
We have guys down here in
a few weeks.
The exploration,
even though it's Wisconsin,
the exploration industry,
it's got its ups and downs.
One of the things they told us was
that the mines closed, but now,
not that one, but a different one
was going to reopen because they'd
found cobalt or chromium.
Another precious metal that they
didn't realize was underground.
But they said that was going be a...
All of a sudden these went from like
a crappy tourist attraction to
like, you know, a huge industry.
Had not heard that.
And it's horrific conditions they
work in. And that's where a lot,
like what Eric was saying before,
it's where lot of this stuff comes
from. And we can do it.
I always say, if we can design
a satellite with a
an exotic telescope on
it, to put it out in orbit beyond
the moon, to look into the
farthest reaches of space.
It's just applying good engineering
practice.
That's what we got to do.
And then we don't need to be, you
know, getting our medals from
these.
Operations that use child labor.
And that's real.
Talking about comparisons, like the
blood diamond thing.
Yeah.
Yep.
Yeah, that's what we're doing.
Oh, OK. That's what the drill said.
It looked like after we pulled all
the equipment off of it.
And greeting.
Certified weed seed from
the DNR, it's self-proofed.
Special for forest.
We call this the
U.S. Forest Service Boutique
Seed Mix.
There's a bunch of stuff in there.
Milkweed,
Black Eyed Seasons.
It's almost a prairie next door
anyway.
Yeah, and then obviously
cover crops.
So there's actually a little bridge
going across the river.