oriented a little bit.
So this is the 3D modeling software that we use
for the drilling, kind of plotting up our
drill holes after we've drilled them. So 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 screen.
What does this one of those mean? 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
and I can add the drilling that we just completed.
So that's these holes over here.
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, you know, 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 in drill density. A lot of drilling has been done in kind
of the core area of the deposit.
This is looking kind of incline view, looking north.
Much less drilling has been done kind of heading off
to the east and that depth, as well as off to the west,
kind of sparse drilling. So our kind of objectives,
kind of going forward are to kind of infill
kind of between these holes and what we've drilled just so that we can better
define the deposit and then 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 is, I mean that's pretty much
that's pretty much the objective, is to, you know, define the extents.
Not only the extents of the mineralization, but kind of the quality of the grade
of that mineralization. So point to which one on the screen is the one that
we'll be looking at over on the table.
Yep. 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, looking to the west.
And we will be taking a look at this hole here,
which is P-2504, which had one of the, you know, one of the thickest
and the 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.
I'm going to ask you to do that.
Do it one more time, please.
Thank you. And so some of these other, those are
historical ones, not ones that you've done.
O4 is a hole that we had drilled.
Okay. So, but some of the other holes, those,
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 the area? Yep. So we only drilled six holes
on this program. I think there's been a total of, you know, roughly 60
holes drilled on the deposit to date.
So this is, this is showing the compilation of all,
all of the drill holes. And so I guess in that,
in that context, so this was hole B7, I think this is drilled,
probably back in 80, 87. And, you know,
intercepted, you know, roughly two meters of kind of
ore-grade mineralization. So these holes, B2503 and O4,
we're kind of testing that same, you know,
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's also kind of thickening off to the east.
And I've got some maps that I can show you to kind of better,
better explain that.
Yeah, so this was a very, this was an impressive hole.
I think it was about just over 22, 22 meters.
So, you know, you're looking at 75, 80 feet of, you know, significant
or, or grade mineralization.
So originally when this deposit formed, was on an ocean floor,
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, kind of looks like piece of baloney
in a baloney sandwich. That's what that tabular red thing is.
Yeah. And that's, you know, and Steve is, Steve is right.
I mean, these things do form, and they are currently forming right now
on the ocean floor in different kind of geologic.
Geologic settings, how you've probably seen
on like 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, through the crust, and they make their way up,
shoot out those, those vents and their mineral laden fluids,
as they hit that cold water, those minerals fall out.
So you get this kind of downfall of sulfide, 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, 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 looking for that paleo sea floor horizon.
And that's where the mineralization is.
Cool.
And so then from there, you can see the floor.
This is, this is a plan view, so looking, 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, you know, roughly 80 degrees
to the south.
Which you take your left hand and just kind of
point out a few things on the screen again, please.
All right, so these are showing, you know, the historic,
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, looking more to the west.
Okay, if you could just basically keep doing that for a surface.
So the, this area of Wisconsin has a significant amount of overburden.
So there's roughly 100 to 120 feet vertical of unconsolidated glacial material.
So this surface right here represents, you know, the pre-kamery and, you know,
bedrock surface, which is overlaying by that 100 feet of sand, sand and gravel.
So when we compare this to like, you know, the UP where native people
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 areas of 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 the 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 know, we're seeing here is that those deposits of glacial material,
so you get up into the UP, there's, you know, it's, 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 know, and kind of knobs and whatnot mixed in with, you know, sand planes 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 kind of talking, we had a group from UW-Eau-Clayer
here, and we're out at site, and we're talking about the overburden, and it's like, if that
overburden wasn't here, northern Wisconsin would probably have been built on mining,
because they would have, they would have discovered those back in the, you know, early 1900s.
So that's a good example of how we see this happening.
The copper mines up in Michigan.
So was it just the process? Was different of how it was created? I guess it said somewhere like
date goals, veins or something? You could say that would have followed versus it being distributed.
It was more magnetic oriented, if you will, that copper,
whereas this is volcanic.
So it's a little different origin to the metal.
Yeah, it was more of a soft science instead of carbon science
and political science instead of.
But all right, so here we're looking, again, plan.
This is a geologic map.
These lighter gray holes are the historic drilling.
These darker, more bold holes are the whole drill holes
that we just drilled.
This year, these red intercepts here
represent the mineralization that
was encountered in all of those holes.
So basically, the six holes that we drilled
were drilled 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're
pretty much trying to hit it at a kind of regular spacing,
along strike and down dip of it to really map,
be able to map out where it is and what it looks like.
So these represent the two cross sections.
So this blue line here, kind of vertical slice.
And this blue line here, vertical slice
through the earth, mineralized zone
is represented by this red unit.
This is B-2504 here.
So this is the hole that we have laid out here.
And then also over there, we have B-2506,
which was the deepest hole that we drilled.
And I guess, kind of what we're seeing.
And this is kind of the nature of exploration.
We had actually, this drill program,
we had actually intended to drill three other holes
kind of higher up in the higher up dip.
But these first two holes that we drilled,
mineralization was very marginal and weak.
We drilled this undercut.
We could tell that the mineralized section is improving,
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 than off to the east was better.
So these different colors on these cross sections
represent different lithologies.
And we have typical in kind of or 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 below you.
I mean, this is a 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 outside of that, both above and below it,
within the hanging wall up here, the foot wall here,
is kind of benign, just host rock,
just a series of volcanic, volcanic-clastic rocks
that were overlaying on the deposit,
completely unrelated to the mineralizing event.
Yeah.
And so this is a plan map.
So we're looking straight down, looking
at the historic drill holes here in kind of this lighter gray.
The more bold holes are the holes
that we drilled this past summer.
These red intervals represent mineralized intervals
within all of those drills.
So then back to those cross sections.
These blue lines represent those vertical slices,
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, we just kind of identified
a thickening of mineralization at depth and going off
to the east, which actually on this long section.
So no 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 pierced points
where those drill holes intercepted
that mineralized horizon.
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 holes here for six holes
that we drilled this past summer,
really 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 thickest area
in the core deposit is roughly 22 meters.
And I can't remember exactly what hole that was.
But B-25-04 also represents one of the thickest intercepts
that have been recorded on the deposit today.
And by creating these plots,
we can kind of figure out where we think
that kind of kind of 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 kind of the trend of that mineralization.
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.
So that's sort of the kind of
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 of very,
variable textures.
And we're going from, you know, volcanic plastic,
to volcanic plastic sediments.
Tuffs.
A few kind of coarse or green, lapel-y 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, with the head bedrock, they're getting this.
In this area, anyways, kind of throughout this volcanic belt,
you're going to see some fashion of volcanic plastic rocks
and or volcanically related intrusive rocks.
So this, in here, this series of finely bedded,
argyllates and kind of true de-sediments.
This really represents the very last phase
of the mineralized, you know, section of rocks.
So you're getting this build-up of sulfide mineralization
on the seafloor, as that system starts shutting down,
you just start getting regular kind of sedimentation
of fine-grained sediments and kind of some chemical exhalative rocks.
But yeah, this pretty much represents 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-mass of 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, pretty gaudy mineralization.
You kind of tell the difference between, you know,
the color of those two sulfides, this being pyrite,
pyrite dominant here, whereas this is pretty much pure
kelgo pyrite, kelgo pyrite would be the copper sulfide
that hosts the copper within the deposit.
So growing up, everyone told me that pyrite was called full-scale.
Is it was worthless, it would look like gold?
Is it still that today, or does it have any value?
The pyrite in itself does host some of the gold mineralization.
So, I mean, there is gold associated with that.
It's also, you know, the host, you know, in these types of deposits,
you have, you know, you have a lot of sulfur
within those hydrothermal fluids, and that sulfur can either,
you know, will attach to iron, and it'll attach to copper,
it'll attach to zinc.
So, I mean, all these deposits are pyrite hosted with, you know,
variable quantities of whatever the ore mineral is,
whether it's kelgo pyrite, copper, spallerite, zinc, galenol, lead.
Would you point out the difference between the two pieces?
Yeah, so this, so this is pyrite dominant.
There is some fine-grained kelgo pyrite, kind of interstitial throughout there,
but this more gold-looking mineral is the kelgo pyrite,
which is the copper sulfide.
So, now you mentioned...
So, this is a thick section, and I think it was 22, 23 meters of mass
of 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, is about roughly two meters,
probably averaging about a third, a third of an ounce per tonne,
which is extremely, extremely high-grade material.
I don't know if you can see that gold in there,
but so within those red circles, that's just...
The tool detours me, and just keep it there for a second.
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, and quantities great enough
where it's what we call visible gold usually.
It's just identified based on the host mineralization or alteration,
and you're not going to know it's there until you get the analysis back.
It's always an exploration geologist, it's always exciting to see it in the core.
So, in like, whole-fashioned terms, you can structure gold?
Yeah. See you there.
That's going to be the leap to the story.
Yeah.
Gold, Russian, Taylor, come to me.
Yeah, well, I think we are working on the reef deposit back in 2010,
I think that a local paper had an article on the title.
There's gold up in them, and there are hills.
So, how far down is, how many feet down is that section we were just looking at?
Where to 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 of the hole, you know, reading it left to right.
These core blocks are placed in here by the drillers, so the drillers drill in 10-foot intervals,
they have 10-foot tooling, still 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, so this section right here was roughly,
roughly 275 to 290 meters down, 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 to, maybe 200 to 225 meters vertically below the surface.
So, about 700 feet down, yeah, because meters roughly three feet.
So, I know it's getting a shovel up, right?
You're not even going to get down to bedrock with a shovel, because it's weighs down there.
Yeah, so this represents the bottom of that mass of 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 alteration associated with these deposits.
You'll kind of notice that this has kind of a dark, almost kind of a bluish tint to it that's caused by chlorate,
which is, you know, typical for your, the football immediately underlying your, your mass of sulfide mineralization.
And as you move, as you move down, it comes more gray, you know, getting out of that kind of chlorite alteration
into your quartz cerocyte 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,
we'll 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 we, so I guess, I mean, 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 geotexts that do different measurements. They'll mark, you know, they'll convert the blocks.
The block, the drillers are drilling in, in feet. We're logging everything in meters.
They'll convert the blocks. They'll put the meter marks on the core. They'll do some structural, you know, rock quality measurements, which we call our QD.
Then the geologist comes in and we, you know, we log it in pretty finite detail, you know, through the hanging wall into the mineralized section.
And obviously, you know, the word horizon is kind of based on mineralogy, the minerals that we're seeing, you know, the appearance of minerals of economic interest, you know, sulfide minerals, et cetera.
So we take, we take all those notes based on what we're seeing. We decided what needs to be sampled, which has, you know, what we want to see, you know, whether, you know, what the metal content of that rock is.
So, I mean, you noticed up at the, the top of what I showed you here, that core was not even cut in half.
So, it's an interesting 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, 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.
Cool.
Mike, I don't know if you want to get some, a shot.
I have a buddy of y'all on this for today.
Well, good looking rocks.
Are you just videoing or recording voice too?
All of the above, you know, he was there and he probably won't need it.
So what's, what's this right there?
Yeah.
So you can kind of see, I mean, it's probably dominated by pyrate.
But you can definitely see there's that patch in there.
Yeah.
And through there, nice little wisp of, kind of, calculate pyrate, which, I mean, a volcanic, a volcanic fragment.
So as, I mean, the way that these things form is actually, like a, if you look at some of the modern day analogies,
I mean, these, those chimneys can be like, can be like 30, 40 feet, 50 feet tall.
Yeah.
But they're constantly being built, but they're also kind of breaking and slumping and sluffing.
Meanwhile, you've got adjacent volcanic activity.
That's what you've got right there.
Yeah.
Hold that for a bit of a second, please.
Could you bring it up a little higher like you had it?
Tilt it more towards you.
Yeah, please.
Alright.
Well, for the mineralized rock, it would be, I mean, we refer to it as massive, to semi-massive sulfide.
Okay.
And that's all pretty much just based on sulfide content.
And roughly, you know, 35 to 60%, 35 to 65% sulfide is typically semi-massive.
Anything above that would refer to as massive sulfide.
You said underneath those quartz.
Yeah.
And this is a quartz crystal tough, which is kind of a classic rock to be, that hosts these deposits.
And then what would you call the stuff on top?
And the stuff on top is really just kind of volcanic sediments and volcanic plastic rocks.
Okay.
So if someone wanted to make a nice kitchen countertop with this, would it be good material?
Probably not.
I think just based on the fractures within there for those quarry, for those types of quarries
that are looking for rock that has, you know, very few fractures and that, which is actually
kind of a rare thing to find.
You can make some rolling pins out of that.
I get you to say and spell your name and give your title just so we have a crap down tape.
Alright.
Eric Quigley, it's E-R-I-C-Q-U-I-G-L-E-Y.
I'm the Director of Exploration for Green Light.
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.
So kind of underwhelming, but definitely you can see a thickening, a thickening of that
crystal tough unit underlying it to lenses of massive sulfide that were very, very small
and kind of insignificant, but kind of based on sea floor topography along this mineralization
probably forms and little depressions and got a little kind of miniature basins.
So there can be a lot of variability to that.
So, you know, at some point in every, you know, the understanding of every deposit you go
out and you start drilling, drilling to miss, you know, really just confirming that we get
deeper and deeper, you know, does it keep getting bigger or is it going to pinch out at depth
and it will at some point?
So, that'll be our MO for the next round.
So, drilling.
Okay, Jay, where are we?
Over here?
Over here.
Well, we're down here.
I mean, we'll find out where it doesn't, but right now it's to use the information that we have available
to try to follow this far as we can.
And how long does it take to do a hole?
Oh.
Yeah, let's see.
It used deeper, these deeper holes took maybe two, maybe three, three weeks out there to just get it done.
It's a good chunk of time for the weather to hold.
Yep.
Hopefully it's been cold.
No, it keeps.
That's the radiation that is here.
Each and a half, two inches of rain.
I think we're done with what we need to bother you for.
So, we can take that back.
Thank you for giving us a tour that was actually really, really helpful.
So, I don't know if I want to bother this fascinating.
I think we're right here to do this.
No.
Man, there's always stuff.
Oh, we'll be good.
Some of that.
And I love the shaker button.
My glasses won't bother.
So, since drilling a hole in January could be a two-week project, when would be the ideal way for us to come out and be able to sort of drive that?
Well, as we get closer to the day, I'll just reach out to you.
And I'm thinking, you know, once we get about two weeks into it, and everything's up and running,
some of the doubt that we can get you back up there.
Okay.
But we'll try to give you enough of that and all this.
Yeah.
So, try to visualize.
So, I'm assuming we can pick machines.
You can see how to pipe, and then you see something come up.
Yeah.
Hopefully, it's a section that's...
Yeah.
You can see, like, a trailer out there with a big, like, drill mass sticking up at an angle.
I don't know if you can close, but it's going to be cold.
You'll see some vehicles with pipe on it.
That type of stuff and drill in the products, you know, for a mixing blood that night.
And then you'll see a hole in the ground that's lying where the same as a water belt.
You know, 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 used a cord rock that's going on.
So...
Thank you.
Yeah.
So, they won't call the crowd.
We can sell a third check.
We can process.
And say,
keep this right.
That's...
...
You're also going to do another common-home type event before in January, I think?
Probably.
It was good, you know, people were, you know, I was here in Wisconsin, but, you know,
that was a hot question, and you're going to be on the other hand, yeah.
Thank you.
All right, 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 re-vegetated.
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 cuttings are mixed with cement, and then it's varied.
All of the activities that we conducted in here were done under the permits and authorization from the Wisconsin DNR and the US 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.
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,
healthy, it's stable, and they'll have to do that before we get our financial assurance back.
So, I know there are people that are opposed to mining, period, but there are other people who just have concerns
that all of these exploratory drilling that go deep in the Earth's surface, what are you pumping in there at the exposure?
What is this proof 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're 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 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 US 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, 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.
So, 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 silt and stuff like that.
And the mineralization is within that bedrock.
And that mineralization could go down maybe 1500 feet from the bedrock surface.
We don't exactly know the extent of all that.
Could be a little shallower, could be a little deeper.
But that's 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.
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 anybody was there.
So, it's the concern that like these holes that stuff could get in or stuff comes out or 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 or 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 1500-foot drill hole,
we have to abandon that and that means we have to 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, but it's very standard in the industry, so that's the way the practice works today.
And just from the computer graphing that we saw, there's holes all over it right here, right?
Like this, 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 50-75 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 somebody needs.
Yeah, there's no evidence that has 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 ball game.
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, 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 separate those out?
Yeah, that's a very good question.
You're exactly right.
That's exactly how we talk to the public about it is 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 yet.
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 there, that doesn't mean there's going to be a mine here next year.
We've got to do a lot of exploration work, and then we've got to do a lot of engineering analysis and environmental studies to come up with what we think is a viable, permitable 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 mine, so why should I be okay with you?
Like, I'd rather not know whether there's where it's worth looking for or not.
Well, there's 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's obviously going to be a group that's very supportive.
There's going to be 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.
We recognize that there's those different public perceptions out there.
What we've told people is that in our public meetings is we want to hear from everybody, and we want to know what their questions are, whether they're for 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?
I think that's good.
Okay.
Yeah.
So we're able to walk with you here, right?
Yeah.
It helps people like Eric then plan drill programs.
Do I have to be in there?
You don't have to be now.
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 borehole.
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?
So three has been abandoned.
So that back orange stake represents four that hasn't been abandoned as the yellow steel there.
So this one goes with this stake 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?
That's right in the code.
So borehole abandonment.
Abandoned in the woods.
So you do the same thing like 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 their shallower.
So we're going through the same process here except it's deeper.
I mean I showed you that a 3D model.
So I mean basically I'm looking at that plane and I'm finding points along that plane that I want to test.
And 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.
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 look and be like well I'm not going to put it right there in the middle of those big trees there.
We can move it over to kind of when disturbances will be looking at access.
So you can't even get around.
They can bend quite a bit.
Especially when you're targeting stuff deep.
It comes kind of problematic to do the trying to account the rock and the pipe.
This is kind of a natural deviation with just the direction that the rods are spinning.
So they tend to flatten them and head off to the right.
But then that can also be affected by the geology.
Installed up here.
When was this? When were they put in?
It was a few years ago by the Wisconsin Geologic Natural History Survey.
Then the USGS has a gauging 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 Cliffwood 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 LaCuda Ray.
And I thought there was maybe one person from the Lactoflamo.
And recognized we're in in seated territories here.
So we'd 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.
And we also recognize what their initial position is going to be.
But we do share some things in common which is we all live in this great country on this great land.
We do have local issues that we need to address environment.
We need to be talking more.
So that's what we're hoping to do.
One of the issues with the Tackenite Nine was that was on reservation land directly into their waters and the Bad River especially.
Does it seem to be as applicable here?
Well, yeah, so the Tackenite project was upstream of the Bad River reservation.
But all of that water, that drain 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 any point.
But that doesn't mean there aren't cultural interests in the area or many of those interests.
They're interests pop up.
Yeah.
One of our new reporters is Erika Heitze.
I'm not sure I would either.
There's a local kind of environmental group called Friends of the Yellow River that's formed.
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.
They introduced themselves from Friends of the Yellow River and said, okay, let's talk.
Is there any organized opposition?
Is everything hyper?
It's just like random.
Yeah, it's not.
Of course, it's never the local.
Yeah.
Haven't seen 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 Gaston 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, people get older like me.
That was interesting when the mining bill came up.
Mm-hmm.
Covered that start.
His group was like, his job's tomorrow.
Right.
The mines immediately.
Yeah.
Nothing happened.
It was not much.
This industry was fast.
Yeah.
It's a long process.
Yeah.
That's why this is fascinating timing for me to pay attention to the good and terrific action.
Yeah.
That guy.
Tiffany, I'm going to interview him in the early December.
I'm going to have him come in and I'll probably throw a question in here.
Sure.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Keep doing that.
Yeah.
Okay.
Let's do it.
What?
Yeah.
Close shop.
Is that going to work?
Yeah.
And it was elsewhere, so they all kind of moved elsewhere, yeah.
So the skills to run that don't translate to anything else they could do in between those.
There's too specific.
You know, they could, I think if you can do it.
Going deeper, those takes experience, kind of doing that.
And I think just a lot of that geotechnical drilling is kind of
easy.
Yeah.
One of the things they told us was that the line closed, but now
not that one, but a different one was going to reopen because they found cobalt or chromium.
Another precious metal that they didn't realize was under.
They said that was going to be, all of a sudden these went from crappy tourist attractions
to a huge industry that was open anyway.
It had not hurt that.
And it's horrific conditions they work in.
And that's where a lot, like what Eric was saying before.
So where a lot of this stuff comes from, and we can do it, if we can, I always say,
if we can design a satellite with an exotic telescope on it to put it out in orbit beyond the moon,
to look into the farthest reaches of space, we can do it.
It's just applying good engineering practice.
That's what we got to do.
And then we don't need to be getting our metals from these kind of pretty operations that use child labor.
And that's real.
This is like the blood diamond thing.
Yeah.
Yep.
Yeah.
Okay.
So it looks like that people though, all the equipment out of it.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, the U.S. Forest Service boutique seed mix,
so, there's a bunch of stuff in there,
milkweed, and that guy's seed weave.
Oh.
Oh, very maximum, right?
And then obviously, cover crops, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Okay.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
Okay.