Portee,

I had looked at Fire River previously, especially after their last PR. Very nice grades and intercepts. There surely is gold there, but I was a bit hesitant about the logistics. It's a fairly small camp that needs to bring in everything, including fuel for the generators. I assume the previous operators shut down when gold prices bottomed out. They should be able to get to production pretty easily. Nice to have the tailings available, but how are they going to get more out of them if they are using the same equipment that left the gold behind in the first place? Definitely on my watch list, but I'm not in yet.

BTW, one of my previous picks has started production. SFMI is now milling ore left behind in the 1800s when anything without visible gold (> ~2 oz/t) was left at the mine sites rather than haul it down by mule. The ore laying around the mountain is evidently pretty high grade (.75 and 2.45 oz/t Au eq) in the two batches they are working on now. They paid their first lease payment two weeks early. So far they have announced production rates, but not total production or revenue or the grades of the material they are processing. The stock price has languished waiting for these numbers. If the numbers are as spectacular as everyone expects, the sp should head back up pretty quickly (it hit .48 briefly, but has decayed back down to ~.16). The numbers should be out soon, but no later than mid August when the quarterly report is due.

spiny