I wrote to Alto asking a number of questions.

The main points I brought up and the reply from Mike Koziol are as follows:

1) Destiny

Next Gen Metals terminated their option with Alto in June 2012 citing market conditions and their ability to raise funds and their ability to raise funds to advance the project.

2) Next Gen has no interest in the Destiny project. Alto owns 100% and is seeking a JV partner to continue with work. The next stage requires drilling and large sums of cash. All financial requirements to maintain project have been met and no work is planned until the markets improve.

3) In the current market conditions, the only work being done is that which is required to maintain our portfolio of properties in good standing. The work requires small amounts of money.

4) The technical results from Oxford Lake are very encouraging and require follow up drilling. The project is located in a more remote part of Manitoba and drilling is expensive. The market conditions and our share price do not do not allow us to raise sufficient funds to drill at this time. The properties are protected and we will resume work in a better investment climate.

5)The Company is in a cash conservation mode awaiting a better investment climate .To raise money (1$million) at the current $0.05 share price would be very dilutive. Since we have no large obligations to maintain our property portfolio, the board has chosen to wait for a while and see what happens with investor sentiment early in 2013 before raising larger amounts of funds.

6) The financial results for 4Q 2012 are on the web site. 1Q 2013 (sept 2012) results will be posted at the end of this week

My comments:

No surprise! The future of Alto seems to depend on a fairly rapid change in investment sentiment. The gold price is key of course. The optimistic outlook for the gold price according to many well respected analysts in the Gold community is compelling.

IMO the main obstacle to gold taking off is the dark cloud of suppression of the gold price by "authorities". The fundamentals for a jump in the gold price are QE3, QE4 in waiting, demand for Gold overwhelming supply, and Chinese and Central bank buying etc. etc.

Lets hope Gold can very soon push through any obstacle and create a change in sentiment for explorers in general and Alto in particular.

BTW I cleared with Mike Koziol first before posting his comments