AND don't forget..we have just scratched the surface of this deposit...a couple of hundred feet down and conjure up 2-3 million ounces of gold..And an open pit mine can be a kilometer or more deep..Bingham Canyon Mine, located near Salt Lake City, is the world's deepest man-made open pit excavation. The mine is 2.75 miles (4,5km) across and 0.75 mile (1,2km) deep.

Portee, I was just catching up on my reading here and came across your post - written, no doubt, in the thrill of the moment with the release of the excellent PEA update. Maybe a dram of ripple to boot. No doubt there is a lot of room for further value here, most especially with deeper drilling and regional exploration on the parallel structures.

That being said, the open pit as described goes further than a couple of hundred feet down. It seems to me to be closer to 900 feet. And while we can make a hole in the ground as deep as we want, the deeper we go, the wider we also have to go. With the optimized pit slope, we currently have a strip ratio better than 2.1 - 1, which is actually quite good. To go after the deeper deposit open pit, the strip ratio would increase so much that it would not be worthwhile. That is why the deeper ore would be mined underground. Still a good value for us, as it is higher grade.

The Bingham Canyon Mine has widely dispersed mineralization to surface, and so a low strip ratio, which makes that monster economical to mine. They are actually planning on increasing the size of that hole to the South, another 1000 feet, in order to continue their operations for at least another 20 years. Amazing!

I hope everyone survived their Christmas Feast, and was able to connect with loved ones in some way. All the gold in the world is only so much dust if we have not the basic joy of love in our lives. Here's to more loving in 2012!