Madmen,
Really! 
So when are you writing the book of âThe Never Ending Storyâ and Medina, the untold story?
EZ
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Thank you Doc! Like to see those numbers too! Gold at $1865 as I am typing this
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Iâve been in since 2010-11. Thankfully acquired a lot more over the past 5 years at much lower pps. Seems like itâs been longer than 10 years, sheesh.
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Been here since 1999, wandering through Silicon Investor and Raging Bull along the way.
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Over 20 years⌠call me stupid! Or hopefull at best.
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20 years for me too!
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I canât even remember it has been so long, getting older sucks,
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I hear you bro !!!
This was the first Medinah bus many of us started onâŚ
We wore the wheels off that one. But where moving up the food chain with great expectations.
âŚWas looking good there for some years. Just getting bigger and better.
We all had heads full of dreamsâŚ
(upload://s201Ze4Ireys3HkLPZWCxCLhMVv.jpeg
Then we hit a bump in the roadâŚand could have used this busâŚ
⌠But now things are a whole âlotâ better and weâll be needing a couple of these for the new passengersâŚ
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Fall of 2000 Bart got me into thisâŚgeez 21 years
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23 years here. I rode my dinosaur to my first Medinah Annual General Meeting.
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And look where we ended up!
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Well, letâs not forget the bus we found ourselves on in 2016! 
Forgetting all those things that are behind . . .
And moving forward with the lessons learned . . .
I look forward to AUMC recovering all my losses and then some.
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Definitely moving on to a bright future! 
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That second gold picture looks like the gold fillings Doc put in for his dinosaur. (Vegetarian- wouldnât catch him riding a carnivore)
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Those are some insane numbers per ton.
Here is a picture of 1 ton of gravel on a car haul trailer for comparison.
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Iâm also looking forward to recovering losses and hopefully some additional financial relief at the end of the road. This time itâs real and with eyes open.
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Itâs going to be a long weekend waiting for Auryn to announce that they have broken through the DL1 âfault zoneâ and got a good look at how wide the DL1 Vein is at this intersection with the Antonino Adit. I found a pretty good article that explains what we saw in the recent series of videos showing Maurizio using his hand gestures to explain things to one of the miners. Hereâs the link:
A fault is basically a large crack in the earthâs crust where opposite sides of the fault have moved relative to each other. The DL1 Vein sits in a fault structure. The crack is often caused by underlying tectonic forces involving huge âTectonicâ plates of rock that have moved relative to adjacent Tectonic plates. When the eastward migrating Nazca Oceanic Plate under the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Chile slides under (âsubducts underâ) the western migrating South American Plate you can imagine the stresses generated on brittle rocks in the area when the two plates donât slide smoothly. Once a fault occurs the rock bordering the new âfault zoneâ loses the protection afforded to it by the rock that used to abut it. This rock bordering the gap then starts fracturing usually at right angles to the long axis/strike of the fault. Pretty soon the entire area looks a lot like a war zone or âfault damage zoneâ with fracture lines all over the place. The ore-bearing hydrothermal fluids and gases that percolate upwards out of recently exploded magma chambers fills up these voids and cool and solidify. The fault itself gets transformed into a âveinâ and the mini-fractures bordering the vein also fill up and become what some geos call âramificationsâ, mini-veins or âstockworksâ.
Since a vein is âplanarâ, like a sheet of plywood, these smaller âramificationsâ might be thought of as planar âplaying cardsâ (as opposed to sheets of plywood) that abut the vein proper usually at right angles. From a helicopter view, the top edge of the DL1 Vein âsheet of plywoodâ runs from NNW to SSE for about 1.7 Km. Picture these much smaller âplaying cardsâ as being glued to the sheet of plywood at right angles to the sheet of plywood. Thus, they would run roughly from SW to NE from a helicopter view. I hate to complicate matters but this gigantic sheet of plywood known as the DL1 Vein isnât upright. It âtracksâ from NNW to SSE but it âdipsâ to the NE at about a 45-degree angle. For now, just keep in mind the helicopter view and the fact that the skinny playing cards are oriented at right angles to the long axis of the giant sheet of plywood.
Now letâs head inside the adit to the most recent additions to the Auryn websiteâs âgalleryâ. In the new âQ4â section, you can see Maurizio in front of the working face of the Antonino Adit. You can see how the white quartz and sericite âbandsâ extend from upper left to lower right. You can roughly see that these side views of the playing cards are about 1 meter thick. This isnât the DL1 Vein, itâs on the other side of the working face still. It is going to dip from upper right to lower left when exposed. This is that 90-degree orientation between the relatively tiny playing cards (transverse fractures filled with vein material) and the sheet of plywood. If you think of the vein/sheet of plywood as half of a roof of a barn with a pitched roof that slopes downwards at a 45-degree angle, from a helicopter view, the very apex of the roof is going to track NNW to SSE. The one side of the roof/sheet of plywood that is about to be mined is sloping downwards at a 45-degree angle. Glued to this roof are a bunch of playing cards in rows that are oriented at 90-degrees to the track of the apex of the roof and 90-degrees from the slope of the roof. The adit needs to get through the layer of playing cards before it gets to the plywood itself. What we donât know is how many âblast cyclesâ have been completed before those pictures were taken. When they punch through, theyâll certainly know it. In retrospect, in order to keep a semblance of scale, I probably should have portrayed the playing cards as perhaps 10 individual cards glued together or perhaps as planar âpopsicle sticksâ.
While closing in on intersecting the DL1 Vein, the Auryn geos ran into several of these âplaying cards/ramificationsâ. One was cited as being over 1-meter thick and including the surrounding mineralization amounted to well over 2 meters in thickness. The ADL is composed of somewhat brittle rock that is susceptible to a lot of fracturing. Our area is referred to as a âtectonic brecciaâ or âfault brecciaâ. This is good because the cracks provide a wonderful âplumbing systemâ for the ore-bearing hydrothermal fluids to rise up and become entrapped so that they can cool in place and solidify. The grades will typically run higher in the vein proper/old fault than in the âplaying cards/ramificationsâ. Gold likes to precipitate out of solution in larger voids where the fluids and gases can depressurize which allows the fluids to cool and then to boil. This provides the energy to break the bond between the gold and the sulfur atoms it typically travels with in âthiosulfate complexesâ. One of the ideal locations for high-grade gold is where faults and âramifications/mini-faultsâ intersect with each other.
After commenting âWowzaâ about the series of new videos and photos showing the ore located in the intersection zone between the Antonino Adit and the âplaying cardsâ, Kevin made a comment, and I agree, that whatâs striking here is that even the smaller upright âplaying cardsâ/mini sheets of plywood surrounding the vein proper are over 1-meter in width and that the total width of mineralization is well over 2-meters. So how the heck thick is the DL1 Vein (previously a fault) itself if the surrounding microfractures are over 1-meter in width? Ask me in a couple of days. If the DL1 Vein width comes in at north of 2-meters then Iâve got a lot of rejigging to do with my previous projections. If the vein has a thickness of âXâ at this level (about 188 meters below the plateau surface), then how wide might it be another 100 meters deeper being that it is of the mesothermal variety which tend to widen with depth? Recall that the DL1 Vein was only about 0.4-meters wide near the surface at the âOld Fortuna Mineâ. Soon we might be in a position to calculate an average âangle of divergenceâ for the vein from the surface downwards. Remember also that one of these mesothermal veins (possibly the DL1 Vein) outcrops a full 1,000 meters below the plateau level on the southern downslope off of the plateau. It is not uncommon for âmesoâsâ to extend 1,500 meters vertically. I donât know if weâre going to get a width on that particular vein because it is in an area that is extremely steep.
What the miners do next is to blast through the entire âfault damage zoneâ (2 layers of popsicle sticks/playing cards plus the sheet of plywood). This includes the âplaying cardsâ prior to the vein itself, then the vein proper and then the playing cards on the other side of the vein. Then the miners put in whatâs referred to as a âTâ if the adit hits the vein at a right angle. In our case, since the vein tracks from NNW to SSE and the Antonino Adit tracks from NNE to SSW, it will be more of a âYâ. At the intersection, when the miners head up the vein structure towards the NNW, theyâll be making a hairpin turn. When they head SSW, it will be a very gradual turn of about 135-degrees. I have a strong feeling that this intersection will probably provide 2 new working faces to produce from.
Once theyâve blasted all of the way through the fault damage zone, theyâll have a nice cross-sectional view of the DL1 Vein itself and the surrounding mini-veins occupying the âramificationsâ/transverse fractures. It will probably resemble a cross-section through the trunk of a tree with branches coming off of the âtrunkâ. You need to keep in mind that the trunk and branches of a tree are circular in reality and not planar. That cross-sectional trunk of the tree might extend a mile along its length. Theyâve already made the confirmation that they are in the DL1 Vein damage zone. Once they start mining the vein and its surroundings, the plan is to put in a âraiseâ upwards and intersect shaft 4 of the âOld Fortuna Mineâ workings. This will help out the ventilation situation. They will be in ore the whole time so theyâll be mining and getting paid for that which they excavate. As far as Maurizioâs hand gestures on one of the videos, he was either performing the worst Macarena dance ever or he was trying to explain that the âplaying cardsâ they intercepted were standing upright while we already know that the DL1 Vein âdipsâ to the NE at about a 45-degree angle. In a production adit measuring 3.5 meters by 3.5 meters, a vein tilted at a 45-degree angle is nice because it occupies 1.4 times as much of the âworking faceâ as a vein that is perfectly upright. Itâs basically the difference between the hypotenuse of a right triangle and one of the sides. In this type of situation, the âblast rubbleâ will be constituted of more of the high-grade ore than otherwise.
In a scenario like this, the math gets kind of interesting. A âworking faceâ in a production adit that measures 3.5 meters by 3.5 meters has a square meterage of 12.25 square meters. Each blast cycle with a 2-meter blast hole depth will release 24.5 cubic meters of âblast rubbleâ. Based on a density/specific gravity of 3.25 tonnes per cubic meter, this represents right at 80 metric Tonnes of blast rubble per blast. If the blast rubble ore were to average 1 ounce per tonne (31 gpt) then that would represent 80 ounces of gold per blast. If it averages half of that then it would represent 40 ounces of gold per blast. WAIT FOR CONFIRMATION OF THE NUMBERS. My recommendation would be to set up the equation NOW and fill in the blanks later. If there is anything a long-suffering Medinah shareholder deserves is to be seated first at the buffet line when and if the time comes. If the all-in sustaining cost (AISC) to produce an ounce of gold comes in at, letâs say, $800 per ounce and the POG is $1,860 per ounce, then this would represent well over $80,000 profit per blast AT EACH WORKING FACE BEING SIMULTANEOUSLY MINED. Round that down to $40,000 if you feel better. You can do the math if management can get, letâs say, 6 working faces being simultaneously mined on a 1 shift per day basis. I have no idea how long it might take to get to that level of production. You can also do the math if management can implement 2 shifts per day at each of 6 working faces.
Itâs kind of nice if the math works out to each ounce being produced yielding about an even $1,000 in profit and also if the average grade mined is 1 ounce per tonne (31 gpt), then likewise each tonne of ore mined yields the same $1,000 in profit. I also like the metric of each blast cycle, BASED ON THE ABOVE ASSUMPTIONS AND PLEASE WAIT FOR THESE TO BE VALIDATED, yielding about $80,000 in profits. Calculating the number of blast cycles would involve multiplying the number of working faces being simultaneously mined by the number of shifts per day.
PLAYING WITH THE NUMBERS
- If each adit were 4 meters by 4 meters (Iâm not sure if this is feasible) then youâd have to adjust those numbers up by 30%.
- Working 7 days per week versus 5 days per week represents a 40% differential.
- Mining 2 ounce per tonne (62 gpt) ore versus 1 OPT represents a 100% differential.
WHAT WOULD A 2-METER WIDTH OF THE DL1 VEIN AT THE ANTONINO ADIT LEVEL (ABOUT 188-METERS BELOW THE PLATEAU) REPRESENT?
-First of all, it would mean that the width of the DL1 Vein increased 5-fold from up near the surface. Until proven otherwise, could we assume that the other various veins already discovered might widen at a similar pace? We need to keep a sense of CONTEXT. The DL1 Vein is one of a bunch of similar looking veins within this mesothermal vein system. Itâs not necessarily special in comparison to the others, it just happens to be the one we know the most about. We also need to keep in mind that no matter how exciting this vein system is, the elephant in the room from a value point of view is still probably the porphyries, skarns, breccias, mantos, shear zones, etc.
-A 2-meter-wide vein extending diagonally from the upper right corner of an adit to the lower left corner would represent 80% of the square surface of the working face of the adit. To that you would need to add the mineralization surrounding the vein proper within the âplaying cardsâ/popsicle sticks.
-Up near surface where the vein was only 0.4-meters in width, the prior miners still averaged 64 gpt over 30 years of production. This is despite the fact that the square meterage of the 0.4-meter-wide diagonal only represented 21% of the working face of the adit. THIS DOESNâT MEAN THAT YOU SHOULD EXPECT GRADES OF 4-TIMES THAT WHICH THE OTHER MINERS GOT UP NEAR SURFACE. What it does mean is donât be totally alarmed if the grades are comparatively robust. With a 7 gpt worldwide gold mine average grade who cares? The one thing that jumps out at you in regards to this vein deposit is GRADE CONTINUITY.
-If the DL1 Vein does come in with strong widths (over 1-1.5 meters or so) and grades of anywhere around 1 ounce per tonne (31 gpt), donât be surprised if management attacked this same vein from a variety of levels stacked upon each other. The various other production targets might be relegated to playing a lesser role at least for many years. Recall how at the El Penon Mine, which weâve been told to use as a template, Meridian Gold and Yamana cherry-picked the widest veins and highest-grade veins for 24 years before recently announcing that theyâre now going after the skinny veins.
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Great read on this Hot Sunday morning here in San Diego Doc! Thank you!