OF asked for thoughtful opinions, I posted some, for what it was worth. I received snide comments from some others as a result.

My response to them is simple:

I didn't lose a cent on GNH. I made a fat bundle of money. Even after getting in at 60 cents.

News release is imminent re: funding, apparently.

Gold miners are actually facing a very dangerous headwind, unlike last year.

Gold production has expensive cost inputs: energy, steel, and unionized labour. All these may be about to skyrocket in price if we're entering a period of high inflation, which is entirely likely with all the money-printing going on in the Western world combined with the high growth in China and India. Once those cost inputs start to increase, cash costs will therefore also increase, and all of a sudden gold miner fundamentals don't look as good as before.

I've been told that in a high-inflation environment, gold the metal will grossly underperform other metals like silver and copper; in that case, there may be better mining sectors to be involved in than gold. But then, even base miner fundamentals will get hurt.

A funny thing we might be seeing again is the beginning of worldwide revolution. The high inflation already attested to in the 3rd world is hitting the peasants where it hurts: food and energy prices, which make up almost all of their living costs. Worldwide revolution also hit in the 1970s: the Shah of Iran was deposed, as well as other leaders we never hear of. It even spread to western Europe - Baader Meinhof, Red Brigade, and so on. If we see that happen again today, that might be one catalyst for a strong gold price increase (as gold is great insurance against political risk, as the presidents of Tunisia and Egypt show us - if you believe the stories of them loading bullion onto their private jets before fleeing).

A collapse may come in China in the next 2 years, as well, as inflation (or revolution) stresses build. If Chinese GDP collapses, it may drop hard, maybe over 50%, and that'll also destroy miners and metal prices.

Perhaps the best places to invest, in a high-inflation environment, are the "knowledge" and "service" sectors, as they have fewer inflation-sensitive cost inputs.

The end game of the coming high-inflation environment probably isn't the "hyperinflation" of the tinfoil-hatters, but rather wage and price controls, like those of Trudeau and Nixon. That can also clobber miners. A commodity guru like Jim Rogers will predict that by about 2015-2016, we'll see most stocks trading at a P/E of 6 or less, and only hard commodities will be perceived as having any value. (Rogers says that's when we should all get out of commodities and buy stocks.)

Anyway, all just opinion. But I'd trust the analysis of someone who invested through the 70s instead of any young whipper-snapper. If you believe in long cycle economic theories, it makes perfect sense to listen to the old people, as they've been though all this before. Best never to believe any one person, but to synthesize the few statements that you feel make sense, and never let the big picture theorizing distract you from the job of making money.

In any case, it seems to me we've left the happy days of 2009-2010, and are approaching a high-speed high-volatility end-game. It's better to be a guerrilla in this environment: stay agile, read the terrain, never believe what you're told, always know where your exits are, exploit opportunities with lightning speed, and never be a stationary target. The coming few years will make us all either heroes or zeroes.

The primary distribution of values in the mineralized zones of the Bellechasse-Timmins gold deposit is erratic within the gold-hosting quartz and the distribution of quartz within the fractured diorite tends to be chaotic.

This seems to suggest that these aren't normal veins that you can follow underground. The gold is randomly located within the quartz, and the quartz is randomly located within the diorite. Really suggests that unless your geo really knows this type of deposit, hitting sufficient mineralization to support underground mining will be all down to luck.

So a good test would be underground bulk sampling. If despite all this randomness Tilsley can stick a dart in a 3D map and tell you exactly where to grab an underground bulk sample, and if that bulk sample then returns a decent mineable grade, then GNH becomes a mine (assuming the tonnage is sufficient and the economics look good to a company that would buy them out). Or at least that seems to be Cook's opinion.

a series of cross-sections that suggest a tendency for drilling results to give grade estimators lower than obtained from larger (e.g. bulk) samples.

I never understood this part. I would think that the average density of gold, averaged out over a large enough cross-section, should stay the same no matter what sampling method is used and no matter how chaotic the distribution. That's why I'm looking at the longer intervals and averaging out: we might miss that speck of gold at 155m, but we should have hit others in other locations within the mineralized envelope.

Now if they're only trying to hit small mineralized envelopes of say 5m width, then yes, most of them should turn up barren results on the drill, right? But I truly think such narrow envelopes aren't mineable. You don't open-pit low-grade narrow veins. Open-pit is for massive deposits like what EVG was trying to prove up in Nevada.

And underground mining requires a certain grade. Underground also requires a certain total deposit tonnage to be able to carry the CapEx costs of the mill, adits, etc.

There does appear to be an increase in background values in those locations where 'good' gold values can be expected. Rarely do gold values over 1g/tonne occur in the absence of an 'envelope' or 'background' of ~50 to 150+ ppb Au.

I guess this is meant to suggest that any intervals we have that assay .05-.15 g/t count as the "mineralized envelope" they're shooting for. In that case, any of those .05-.15 intervals can be counted as being places where the drill "just missed" hitting a higher gold concentration. Maybe it's instructive, then, to review the drill holes to see what size these >.05g/t intervals' lengths are?

Brent Cook didn't offer an opinion. It's true. They've been punching hole after hole in an already well-defined deposit.

Has James West sold half his SFF for $5 yet?

I'm getting some t-shirts made up for PDAC. They're going to read "I bought Seafield on James West's recommendation, and now all I have to show for it is this stupid t-shirt".

Both the trenching data and the holes posted here seem to suggest that there are only narrow veins showing gold. If the poor intervals in the boreholes are due to cutting across strike, that seems to confirm it.

So basically, this isn't a massive disseminated deposit: rather it's a series of veinlets. Again, they'd have to be mined underground. The grades aren't particularly dreamy for underground mining. And cherry-picking 1 or 2 good-showing intervals doesn't make it so.

BTW, you can easily mine a 0.4g/t (I've even seen 0.3 taken seriously) deposit if it's a massive deposit and can be mined open-pit. GNH can't be mined open-pit if it's all narrow veins like this.

Again, where's the "tonnage"?