Thanks for all your great messages, people!

Without question KXL released this new release at the cusp of a long weekend just so that we'd have to chew on it for a while before the next block of trading days. There are a couple of really great results in it that would have sent the stock to $5 immediately last Fall, plus a whole bunch more so-so up to ok results. It's perfectly on line with what you'd expect on the way to a blockbuster reserve delineation. We are working entirely shallow, preliminary - we haven't gone deep at all.

It's good that the market also got a crack at it before the close on Friday. The 3 cent drop means nothing. It was up 26 cents and down 29. Could just as well have been up 26 and down 23 - then we'd be talking about "only" 3 cents up. None of it means anything. At the end of the day on Friday some large traders batted the ball around in the doldrums of Summer. More baseball this week. Says nothing about the KXL story over the next, say, 9 months.

tau - there are no rules about how much or little gold can be in a certain area, so long as there has been volcanism and there is e.g. quartz. The statistical nature of the distribution of minerals means that there will be some pockets of very high grade, and they could be anywhere in suitable host rock - which we have an enormous amount of. That is why Maher is going about this so methodically, covering a wide area instead of guesstimating where to drill deep.

Reality check - KXL has barely scratched the surface. In this round there is perhaps 35,000 m of drilling yet to be done, and given the huge area to cover it's very likely that another round of finance and drilling will happen after that.

It is indeed probable that there are better grades at depth - more gold is likely to have come out of solution earlier on its travels up to the surface. It is deeper down that the critical-point transitions of pressure and temperature were crossed at the time of deposition.

The solubility of gold in water is very low, and it is successfully carried by water only at very high temperatures and pressures. As soon as these drop off, and we're talking superheated steam temperatures and very high pressures, the gold comes out of solution and you have a deposit. The critical transition of temperature and pressure is generally quite deep. We tend to find surface or near-surface deposits only because the gold and/or the source rock has been moved after deposition. In the Geraldton-Beardmore area, the gold is accessible only because after the volcanism shot the area through with deep gold, the ice age glaciers chewed the tops of the land off.

Comparable big mines have their main deposits e.g. 0.5 to 1.5 km down. KXL hasn't even gotten close to drilling that deep. We are completely blind to the regions having the greatest probability of gold! Think about that. Completely blind so far.

Of course, Maher and Co. have to do all this "preliminary" work to figure out where best to drill deep. It's the old story of the engineer, the steam locomotive and the hammer.

That said, even in the current NR there is a fantastic section of the Golden Mile that has high grades, gets fatter as it goes down, and likely increases in grade down at 0.5 to 1 km depth. Just that section is a likely mineable deposit, justifying the SP on its own.

Here I am fleshing out some of what coach had to say. Most of the potential is yet to be tested. The SP as it is, is well justified based on showings in the drill results to date - enough gold has been shown to suggest 1 to 2 m ounces so far, with the vast majority of prospects not yet sampled nor drilled. Plus lots of cash in the bank (a rare commodity these days!).

I have made my plan for August 2008 after reading all the (much appreciated) posts over the weekend, and that is to hold tight and just let the market do whatever it wants for a while. I am worried about the continuing subprime debacle, and Cheney's plans to dress up US Navy Seals like Iranians and then fire on them, a lot more than about KXL.

Things will calm down after a few days and we'll be back to getting excited about the next NR, which I'll bet will be right on time for Ganalane's original prediction of Sept. 15 (yes, I'm back to that!!). 42 days to go! Not very long really.

Time to get back to real life and the longer-term KXL story - another NR at the end of summer! Exciting!

I, for one, can't wait to hear of drill results in the newer Hercules structures, first drilling from new areas, possibly a bonus of some Golden Mile at depth, and surface sampling in the most newly stripped areas. Lots of excitement to come soon!

Everyone has done a lot of due diligence on KXL. We know it's a very solid company with great mineral claims and exploration operations. Let's hold some faith in it.

The next week should be left to take care of itself. When someone like Coach, who has seen a vast number of mines and mining exploration companies over many years, says this is his favourite prospect, that means the most to me.

Sunny August to you all / cedar