That's what I expected initially. I admit, I don't know a lot about setting up winter roads. As there are no mountain passes or canyons in Ontario, this will make it easier to set up.

However, unless NOT management is currently lining up contracts with heavy equipment to get in there, it will still take a while to get these roads setup to roll the mining equipment to the site, do the ramp (for underground) or remove the overlaying terrain (for open pit). This means nothing much of the 450k tons of ore will be coming out until winter 09/10, although much of it could probably be mined during the summer of 09, and just a shipping operation would be necessary for the winter.

The advantage of a fixed, permanent road would be the accompanying infrastructure route for hydro, which will be required for mining. They could use generators, but at $1.50 a litre for gas in a civilized area, that would be a very expensive way of doing things.