A year ago as global uranium spot prices began their steep rise to a peak of nearly $140 US a pound, picking a Canadian junior uranium company whose stock was on the rise was as easy as throwing darts at a dart board.

But when the uranium price retreated below $100 by fall, the values of most junior companies with prospective uranium deposits in Saskatchewan fell back dramatically, and most have yet to recover.

However, there is an exception to every rule, the biggest so far this year being Hathor Exploration Ltd., a Vancouver-based junior that has been reporting high-grade uranium finds in its drill cores since March. It now has a stock price graph that spikes upward.

The Hathor discovery is located about 10 kilometres away from Areva's recently refurbished McClean Lake mill.

Among the most recent core results that Hathor has pulled out of its drill holes is a 15-metre length of core that averaged 10 per cent uranium content (U3O8), including a two-metre section that was 43.85 per cent uranium. The company states core samples were analyzed independently by the geoanalytical laboratories of the Saskatchewan Research Council.

Stephen Stanley, president and CEO of Hathor, says those who follow the uranium industry are paying a lot more attention these days to grade and not just "pounds in the ground" estimates of the ultimate size of any given resource.

Stanley says the market now cares more about whether a deposit is close to the surface -- Hathor estimates the Roughrider mineral zone to start at about 200 metres below surface -- so that it can be mined open pit.

"The tables have turned completely the opposite," Stanley said in a phone interview Monday. "Pounds in the ground doesn't excite the market now, but this discovery does excite the market."

Nobody was excited about Hathor in the early part of 2008 when shares were trading around 45 cents. That all changed in March when the company first reported drill results from its winter program. The latest news release issued last week about more high-grade cores has only continued the upward trend, with the stock closing Monday at $3.55, an all-time high.

The news out of the Roughrider project is particularly exciting for veteran Saskatchewan prospector Dale Wallster, who made the land claims for the discovery when he was leading privately owned Roughrider Uranium Corp., a company named after the football team that plays its games more than 1,000 kilometres to the south.

When Hathor, already on the TSX, took over Roughrider Uranium and its one million acres worth of mineral claims in March 2006, the Roughrider zone was not front and centre, both Wallster and Stanley admit.

"This (Roughrider) was our smallest project," Wallster said. "Most people considered our Russell Lake and Russell South to be our best projects, simply because they sit between McArthur River and Key Lake."

This month, Hathor expects to close a $15-million deal to raise new share capital, giving Hathor $31 million to work with. Drilling is expected to continue during the next 12 months on the Roughrider project to expand what is now only a 45-metre-long zone of mineralization, with Hathor expected to spend $10 million in the next year, Stanley said.

Meanwhile, Wallster says Hathor is doing its part to build relationships with northern communities, having struck a deal to send work to Team Drilling, a new company spun off the Athabasca Basin Ltd. Partnership, owned by seven Athabasca basin communities.

http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarp...