On May 9th there was a question about changing the Phase 1 drilling plan to a single hole program, or at least very substantially decreasing the scope of Phase 1. Valuepro’s response was very good. He pointed out that drilling one hole is not cost effective given the initial cost of getting equipment and staff out to the ground and then back to their point of origin (mobe and de-mobe) – think in the range of $10,000 or more. CEO/Chief Geologist Jim Briscoe had a few thoughts on the question of a single hole program as well:

“The geological reality is that large copper porphyries are not uniform nor homogeneous. You could drill a hole in the middle of a porphyry and completely miss mineralization, which I have experienced. I worked closely with Kenyon Richard (Chief Geologist at ASARCO at the time) and his partner James Courtright, discoverers of the large Mission porphyry, now the Mission Mine, south of Tucson, that has now been operating for 52 years. It took them 27 holes to find the first ore grade intercept and then hundreds of holes to define a minable ore body in what in retrospect appeared to be a small target zone.

Today we have deep reaching geochemistry and ZTEM geophysics, but even these tools do not guarantee a one hole wonder. Spacing between samples occurs over an area of 200m x 400m (about 219 yds. x 437 yds.) for each sample and ZTEM is flown with 200m spacing to as large as 400 m line spacing. This leaves a lot of room for irregularities even though there is an increase in drilling precision using those tools. We will be increasing the geochem sample density as time and budget allows, to increase the precision of our knowledge. This has always been the plan, that the current sample grid was a first pass effort. Regardless, we feel that we are ready for Phase 1 drilling.

A hole is 3 inches in diameter, so that a driller could be very close, but miss—in fact, near misses remain very common. Proximity to ore grade is frequently revealed by geochemistry on the core, alteration patterns and down hole geophysics we plan on using. We have a good handle on where we want to drill on target one, but it is just too risky to depend on a single hole, no matter how extensive a database of valid information.

A one hole program, or the staking of all of our resources on too few holes is an example of gambler’s ruin. We have developed a highly efficient drilling program for Phase 1 at Hay Mountain that includes multiple holes over Target 1, one of many of what I believe may be a world class deposit. We must get Phase 1 right because it is essential to proving my ideas about the Hay Mountain Project area.” Jim Briscoe 5/15/2015