[quote=“Wizard, post:125, topic:2961”] AURYN Mining Corp on Twitter: ……Looking forward to what we uncover next week.
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“Next week”, really?? they used those words-
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A little Google Earth and map fun for the weekend as we wait for “next week”. (“ugh” - collective sigh of anguish)
There are no images newer than May 2021. So no new images. But a little attempt at some new annotation for perspective on recent efforts.
First a traditional overview image of the mountain with all the targets of interest in purple. North at the top. LDM on the left. Caren at the top. Fortuna on the right. Ignore the white rectangle. It has no meaning for this commentary.
Next a combination of maps and Google Earth made some time ago when the focus was on the Caren area. But these encompass the Caren - Fortuna area. Ignore some of the old Nuoco etc. commentary taken from so so long ago.
This is the area in the upper right quadrant of the first image.
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Fortuna 2021. Next a previous image also focusing in farther on the Fortuna area comparing pre 2021 to May 2021. You can see the new area of activity where Auryn created the entrance to their new Antonino tunnel.
This image of Antonino construction taken from the Auryn gallery is basically looking in the direction of the arrow in the new May 2021 activity area as Auryn started the tunnel to “intersect the Don Luis” vein which is the old main Fortuna vein.
One thing to note is that the new tunnel entrance is somewhat lower in elevation than the Old Fortuna Mine entrance also marked on the May 2021 image. It is something like 100 feet lower. You can sort of see that in the construction image below, how looking that direction the landscape rises up. This elevation is important for the following perspective.
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cabezon,
“ Next week ”, really?? they used those words-
Well, some spokesperson with the company posted it!
Not just optimistic, but also clearly excited at what they are uncovering as they keep progressing.
Q1/Annual report should have a lot to reveal and summarize for shareholders.
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In this image we have backed out a bit again. I have made a rough “sheet of plywood” gold colored “sheet” to represent the Don Luis vein. Bear with me, it is hard to represent 3D data in 2D with any accuracy.
You can see the trench marks to the left of the gold colored polygon. The polygon could go over to there but it would obscure the trenching. But that trenching is basically following the surface expression of the old Fortuna vein / Don Luis. Some of this trenching was done a long time ago but Auryn did a lot of it when they started working on the mountain. The polygon represents the vein, the sheet of plywood, at a tilted angle going down into the mountain.
The old Fortuna property report (Howe 1999) states that the veins here “strike between 300 deg and 340 deg and dip 40 deg to 50 deg to the northeast”. So you can imagine the “edge” of the plywood on the left as representing the first part. The “dip” means that sheet of plywood “tilts” 40 to 50 degrees compared to surface for some unknown distance. So you can see
1. The sheet dips over toward the new tunnel entrance bringing it closer to that new entrance as it continues down.
2. Since the Antonino entrance is around 100 feet lower than the original Fortuna entrance it means it is a logical spot to be much nearer to areas some 100 to 150 feet lower in the vein than the original Fortuna tunnel and workings…
Now combine this with the suspected improving higher grades of the vein with greater depth and that makes the new tunnel entrance a very logical place to start and it was logical to expect that they would not have to go too far to intersect the vein.
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And finally, in the April 2021 Update they stated:
AURYN began constructing the new Fortuna tunnel. This tunnel, 3 meters x 3 meters in size, is critical to achieving production goals. Construction images are available on AURYN’s gallery. AURYN removed 25 meters of the mountainside to reach a competent rock structure for the tunnel opening, and then advanced an additional 27.5 meters underground. Intersection with the Don Luis vein body is expected to take another 10-15 meters and is likely to be accomplished within a week.
But in the Jan 2022 Update they stated they they have gone 250m + and had not intersected the vein. Why? They stated:
The Don Luis vein has a much more vertical orientation than initially forecast.
You can see from the image that if that plywood was not at the orientation that the Howe report suggested and was much more vertical instead, that they would have to make the new tunnel longer in order to meet the Don Luis. This is because the intersection point, 100 feet below the original Fortuna tunnel, was not as far east as the original vein orientation suggested.
It should be noted that while tunneling that distance, the area between the Antonino tunnel entrance and the Don Luis has quite a few “sub parallel veins and veinlets” as the Howe report would call them. In other words, there are other, probably smaller, sheets of plywood that lie parallel to the Don Luis in roughly the same orientation (in addition to other smaller structures at possibly other orientations."
Nothing earth shattering, just some 3D perspective.
BTW, that gold polygon is traced over about 800m in the Howe report. It is possible it extends to the north but it is interrupted so no one knows for sure. It could go farther south as well but that is about as far as it has been traced. The Caren/Merlin 1 vein was traced for almost 2km as shown in the earlier image.
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On page 7 of this paper, you can see a mesothermal vein from the famous “Motherlode Deposit” in California. This shows a good representation of the relationship between these “splays/ramifications” that Auryn is working their way through prior to intersecting the DL1 Vein/parent structure.
The parent vein is probably going to be wider than the “splays” and usually of a higher grade. Since this is a 2-dimensional representation of a 3-dimensional entity, you need to keep in mind that the parent vein here is really more of a planar sheet of plywood that, in the case of the DL1 Vein, extends for about 1.7 Km or a little over a mile at surface.
Mesothermal veins, like the one pictured and the DL1 Vein, are most famous for extending downwards to depths of from 1,000 to 1,500 meters while increasing in width and grade with depth. What’s important to realize is that the material being shown in this vast array of “gallery” photos is likely to be enormous in its volume. The location of this adit is not coincident with some type of geological hot spot seen on some geophysical survey. Management simply wanted to intersect the DL1 Vein down lower in its structure and see what’s going on in between the adit portal and the intersection point. The primary goals would have been to access fresh air in Shaft #4 of the old workings in order to allow the proper ventilation needed to produce from as many working faces as is feasible. Simultaneously producing from 6 to 8 working faces is going to produce a lot of dust, blast residue, noxious gases from the rocks themselves and exhaust from the mining equipment. The various mineralized intersections that the adit drifting process revealed would be catalogued and ranked as to their worthiness of being exploited early on.
The article cited above is all about these things called “ore shoots”. These are distinct areas within a vein, breccia or shear zone that carry extremely high-grade gold. They’re often described as being “ribbon-like” or “pipe-like”. The analogy might be that of a “super high-grade vein within a normal vein”.
Eleven new photos just got posted. If you look at #30 of 41 on the Q-1, 2022 section of the Auryn website “gallery”, you’ll notice a structure that appears like a yellow upright rectangle. It appears to be an inch or 2 wide and it is HEAVILY mineralized with what appears to be gold. It has its own gray borders between it and the surrounding rock.
If you look carefully to the left of this structure, you can make out a vertical line about 5-inches or so to the left of this yellow upright rectangle. It looks like you have about a 5-inch wide “splay/veinlet” that houses an inch or so wide “ore shoot” with its own gray “selvage” that marks the outer limits of the shoot.
To the left of the possible “ore shoot” you can see quartz that doesn’t show very good crystallization i.e. “milky quartz” or “chalcedonic quartz”. This is HIGHLY SUGGESTIVE of this area being part of a “boiling zone” where the highest-grade gold tends to be deposited. Some of the gold-looking material invaded the quartz.
Above the golden rectangle you see more evidence of what appears to be very high-grade gold deposition. It almost looks “nuggety”. In photo #31 of 41, you see the wall rock “granodiorite” with its classic “salt and pepper” presentation like a granite countertop. This is one of the few times I’ve seen a mineralized gold veinlet within the host rock granodiorite in this adit.
There is a variety of veins called “high sulfidation veins”. The hydrothermal fluids in this variety of veins was very acidic. The acids leach out mineralization in the wall rock and allow ore-bearing hydrothermal fluids to penetrate the host rock. This is just opposite of “low sulphidation veins” which are more PH neutral and the ore tends to stay within the confines of the vein. Photos 33-35 show a similar appearance. Photo 32 shows more of what we’ve come to expect which is what appears to be gold in more of a disseminated circular fashion and not showing any linearity associated with veinlets.
In photo #36 we see what appears to be blue bornite in a somewhat vertical/linear presentation with what appears to be gold to the right of it also in a vertical/linear fashion. In photo #37 you’ve got horizontal/linear gold going right through the bornite. I posted an article within the last 48 hours delineating how gold associated with the copper-iron-sulfide known as “bornite” tends to collect in about 10-fold the concentration of gold hanging out with the much more common copper-iron-sulfide known as “chalcopyrite”. Blue is a very good thing.
Photo 38 shows what appears to be islands of blue bornite amongst extremely yellow “YELLOW SHINY STUFF” (the best kind) with some associated “milk quartz” that takes on the look of a cumulus cloud. Photos #39 and 40 show more of the same. On the left side of Photo 41, we’re again looking at that diffuse/disseminated appearance to the “SHINY YELLOW STUFF”.
I see plenty of evidence of silver sulfides like acanthite (argentite) but I don’t get too excited because based on the current price differential between gold and silver, you need to divide the silver grade by a factor of 80 to convert it into “gold equivalent” grades. I’m pretty sure the big money here is firstly in the gold and then in the supergene enriched copper.
If you look at the 3rd of those 4 new twitter photos that Kevin posted, notice up top how that shiny stuff is squarer in its presentation and not too yellow. Pyrite presents as a cube. The flat surfaces reflect light in an “in your face” manner when a miner’s headlamp is aimed straight at it.
Towards the bottom of the photo, you see some SHINY YELLOW STUFF that is much more yellow. Its color is warmer. Gold is rounder and not so cubic. The saying is that gold “shines or glows” while pyrite “glistens”. Gold doesn’t have large flat square crystalline faces. Pyrite has a bronzish color to it. Pyrite readily tarnishes. It’s brittle, it breaks it doesn’t bend like gold does if you poke it with a nail, not that this helps you when viewing a photo.
Anything shiny and somewhat yellow is a good thing. Pyrite is an “indicator mineral” for gold. Gold can even hang out within the crystalline lattice of pyrite. Pyrite plus hematite gives you the high-octane form of copper known as BORNITE. BORNITE, in turn, when associated with gold, presents in concentrations of 10-times that of the more common copper-iron-sulfur form known as chalcopyrite.
Recall that gold can be deposited in very high concentrations in areas where gold-bearing hydrothermal fluids are allowed to “boil”. Dissolved gold tends to travel with sulfur in what are called “thiosulphate complexes”. The energy associated with boiling will break the bond between the gold and the sulfur forcing the gold to become a solid and be deposited on the spot. An iron oxide known as “magnetite” loves to scavenge the sulfur that just got separated from the gold. This tends to form the iron sulfide known as pyrite/”fool’s gold”. In searching for gold deposits, one geophysical test that is common is called an “electromagnetic survey”. This magnetite stuff that hangs out with gold is the most magnetic material on the planet.
So, with all of this going on, what do you end up with? You end up with high-grade gold coexisting with pyrite. The presence of pyrite is a good thing. The other SHINY YELLOW STUFF (SYS) known as “chalcopyrite” is an amalgamation of copper, iron and sulfur. It is 34% copper and is the most common form of copper that is mined. When you review the photos in the gallery, remember that SHINY YELLOW STUFF is a good thing but it’s not all gold.
Pyrite gets a bad rap because in the old days some prospectors mistook it for gold and overpaid for mining claims. When dealing with photos, one of the best ways to differentiate the two, if the lighting isn’t real good, is to see what’s hanging out next door to the SHINY YELLOW STUFF on the photo.
If the sample looks very impressive and the SYS is surrounded by “milk quartz”, bornite or salmon/tannish colored potassium feldspar, then the chances of it being gold improves. If the SYS is in a vein structure and it’s sitting near the edge/selvage of the vein or within the selvage of the vein especially near the “hanging wall” then the chances of it being gold improve. If the SYS is sitting next to some “sooty” looking grayish/blackish silver sulphide like acanthite, then the chances of it being gold improve. The 16 samples from the intersection of Shaft A and Level 2 taught us this. Recall that the off the chart 1,220 gpt gold sample (11 pounds worth) came in with off the chart silver grades. What’s the message here? The super high-grade gold seems to be hanging out with super high-grade silver.
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Here is the link to that paper, the article is entitled, “Controls on high grade ore shoots…”
The picture of the mesothermal vein is on page 23 on the right hand side.
Kevin made a comment yesterday saying: “It’s a game changer/binary event”. I e-mailed him to clarify this comment. The “binary event” is kind of like a “metamorphosis”. Not that long ago, Auryn/Medinah was a speculation driven by an angel investor (Maurizio) with a ton of persistence. It has since morphed into a corporation that is in a position to make a whole lot of money in the very near term.
I think that the “game changer” aspect refers to a combination of intersecting the DL1 Vein proper which will provide the catalyst/transmission mechanism needed to cash in as well as the cumulative body of evidence represented by all of the data acquired to date as well as the photo gallery evidence to corroborate that information.
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@Cornhuskergold, thank you so much for your illustrations! Gives a great perspective on what’s happening underground.
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CHG,
Your series of posts is an excellent explanation of how the new exploration relates to the historical.
Thanks for helping visualize how everything is oriented. I appreciate the time you put into your posts for the benefit of all shareholder. Seeing the progress and planning by management shows how all things have progressed over time.The “Looking forward to what we uncover next week” statement may be a hint as to when to expect the next update.
EZ
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I’ve begun rebuilding a (swing trade) position in MDMN. I wasn’t sure I would ever buy back after selling last year, though I still hold a token position in MDMN and AUMC in a retirement account.
The most recent company update, and especially the pictures of visible mineralization, leads me to believe that the company is close to intersecting the DL vein. I agree with Kevin that this is a binary event and I’d like to be holding some shares for whatever that outcome brings. And even if they’re not close, it looks like they’re hitting some nice offshoot veins/veinlets along the way which imply that it’s not an all-or-nothing undertaking.
On top of that, having a silent benefactor finance the exploration/extraction efforts reduces the risk of shareholder dilution, making this a particularly attractive swing trade. I don’t mean to be exploitative in that regard, but like every MDMN/CDCH/AUMC shareholder in this forum, I’ve more than paid my dues as a bagholder.
Good luck to all of us!
PS - Doc, do you have Cliff Notes’ versions of your posts?
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An analyst within the last minute came on Fox Business and predicted $3,000 gold by the end of the year. I didn’t hear what his reasons were just his prediction. Marie Bartiromo usually has pretty well
credentialed analysts on her show. Anyway, this is just a “fyi” on what looks to be a pretty slow news
day. 
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New tweeted pic
Wow
Now if we can just get those AUMC shares
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Now if we can only get those AUMC shares!!
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Just as a security backup, I’ve been hanging on to my wedding ring from my first Ex. We paid $40 for it in 1971. 
Anyone have the 1999 Howe/Cintis report handy?
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Not a geologist but picture 2 and 3 looks like melted rock going down that face.