The road issue:

We discussed the road issue at length. The road from Marten Falls to McFauld's is roughly between 150-200km depending on how they go about it. He says there are a few options and the best road to take will depend on consulting work that should be getting done in 2009, maybe by the end of the summer...this bit is fuzzy so forgive me if not accurate. He said the cost estimate put forward of 250k per km is a guess. His guess is closer to 1M dollars. They do not have the info to make good estimates at this time.

The do have 2 bulldozers up there right now who have built trails from the camp to the various drill sites. The drillers are now jumping on skidoos and hauling fuel in this manner (as opposed to helicopters everywhere) and are being very productive. They are currently pulling 150M of core per drill per day!!! The geos at the camp cannot keep up. So for now, they are stacking everything and even if it ends up being June by the time everything gets split, packed and shipped, he is okay with this. The big thing is they are getting a huge amound of drilling done at a very cheap price. The helicopter cost was $1400 per hour. In the past, everything needed helicopters. Huge money was being spent. Now, they average 3-4 hour of helicopter usage down form 200 hours or so...you do the math, this is huge savings!! The drillers are now drilling 15 hours per day.

He also mentionned that if/when they built the road, everyone in the RoF using it will be paying a toll to Noront.

End of Part 2,

Glorieux