Tectonic Metals Inc. (TETOF) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking time out of your schedule to attend the Tectonic Metals 2025 Phase II Virtual Drill Core Shack. Hopefully, everyone knows who I am, but my name is Tony Reda. I am the CEO and Co-Founder of Tectonic Metals. Here with me today is Peter Kleespies, our Vice President of Exploration. Peter you can show off hand, just in case everyone can't see it, great. We have Trent Newkirk, Director of Exploration. Matthew Cannon, Senior Exploration Geologists. We also have Sunny, Senior exploration Geologists, who is unfortunately not on the slide, but he's here with us today. Joining us is our 3 technical advisers, Dr. Richard Goldfarb. We also have Dr. Ian Basson and Michael McCall. Last but not least, another person that was very instrumental in organizing this. We have Yolanda Lohi, our Tectonic's newest employee, Investor Relations. Okay. So before we get started, I do want to draw your attention to our forward-looking disclaimer slide. And I've taken the time here to highlight something that is critical and definitely noteworthy. So this presentation contains core photographs, detailed geological notes and descriptive observations, such as alteration styles, mineralogy and visible gold. These observations are preliminary. I stress preliminary in nature. They may not be representative of the entire interval or system and should not be relied upon as a guarantee of mineralized assay results or as the basis for any investment decision. Investors and readers are cautioned that visual estimates, core photographs and geological descriptions are not substitutes for accredited laboratory assay results and do not demonstrate the economic viability of any mineral deposit. I think that's important to highlight because we are going to be giving our thoughts and geological insights on what we're seeing in the drill core. That being said, you may notice passion, excitement. We love what we're seeing. But no matter how many years in the field or how many degrees you have, mother nature will always make you look like a fool. That's what she does. And I wanted to highlight because there are certain instances in our industry where people get carried away with visuals. Again, they're super important. They obviously -- it's necessary to interpret what you see, but we want to highlight that this is definitely preliminary in nature. Okay. So I do want to also acknowledge the entire team that made this happle -- sorry, happened. This was a phenomenal year, a very transformative year. We were able to raise $33 million this year. As you may know, that's the fuel for our vehicle. Without capital, we can't move forward. And I do want to give a special nod to our shareholders, big and small, that made that a reality from Crescat to VanEck to Franklin Templeton to all the individual retail shareholders, which play a pivotal role in giving us the capital to execute. And I just got in the mail my another -- another tomb stone as we call it, special thanks to 3L Capital for supporting us in this endeavor. That's $21 million with very high-quality sophisticated funds, respective funds that gave us the ability to make this year a reality and to really flush out what we're seeing and what we believe is truly a Tier 1 opportunity at our Flat Gold Project. The other thing in regards to the team, last year, if you said Tony, you're going to raise $34 million and drill 20,000 meters, I would say, yes, that's our goal or objective. It's not a guarantee that, that was going to happen, but that would have been again last year at this time. And for our team to get that capital and execute a program in fairly short order is nothing short of phenomenal. And to do so with this ops and safety highlight here, 0 lost time injuries. When you have heavy machinery, drills, aircraft, all these things coming together in a remote location, for us safety is definitely of the utmost importance, more important than actually drilling mineralization. And to do that with 0 LTIs is phenomenal. No environmental spills or anything on that side of the equation. So I wanted to give a quick shout out on that front to the team for making that happen in a safe and efficient manner. And then last but not least, I never thought I would get this excited about seeing a greater. But in the bottom right, that is a purchase that Tectonic made, that will allow us to build roads to clear our -- to clear snow off our runway or the airstrip at site and the various roads and trails to keep them in operating capacity. And in short, what does that mean? Well, that gives us the ability to operate or gets us 1 step closer to being operational all year round. Okay. I wanted to also highlight that this isn't just -- today, we're going to talk about Phase 2 primarily, which was focused on Chicken Mountain. I also wanted to highlight that Chicken Mountain is 1 of 6 potential intrusive centers at the property. And all these intrusive centers have a few different things in common. One of the common themes is that through the 1900s up until now, there has been classic Gold mined from drainages in and around these intrusive targets. So over 1.4 million ounces of recorded classic gold production. And that you can see those vessels pink streams highlighted on the left, I'm going to let Pete say a quick few words about the geology map and the one to the right, the geophysical map. Over to you, Pete.

Thanks, Tony. I guess the central panel is basic geology of the project area. And essentially, it's a volcano intrusive complex and basically characterized by monzonite plugs and intrusions, associated volcanic rocks, which are a little bit problematic, they may actually be fine-grained hybrid basalt early phase in intrusive rocks and then obviously, there's hornfels surrounding the intrusive centers. And geophysically, these things are characterized as sort of low magnetic and very low resistivity. And on the right-hand side, you can see 7,200 hertz EM map, where the intrusive areas are shown as sort of a deep blue color, which are highly resistive. Back to you, Tony.

Great. Thanks, Pete. I did also want to mention that this -- we've had a lot of interest in the virtual drill core Shack and we did record the last one. So I just want to mention that this will be recorded. And if anyone is uncomfortable with the recording, please feel free to step off or to watch the recording instead. Okay. 18,000 meters drilled this year. These were the targets that were drill tested this season. Today, we're probably going to be focusing on Chicken Mountain. We did announce some Phase 1 results from Chicken Mountain. There was approximately 10 holes, which we'll speak to in the subsequent slides here. But there is, as you see there, over 150 drill holes that were drilled this year, and we have assay results or assays pending, I should say, from a plethora of holes. So we're just getting started on the assay front. I think there's been to date about 12 holes released to the market. We are waiting for assays. There has been lengthy delays with the labs. There is a rigorous QA/QC protocol that we have to do. When we put out an assay result, we want to stand behind it and ensure that the quality assurance, quality control has been vetted by all by our QPs and more specifically also by our VPX before they release to market. So we will have assay results between now right through till the end of the year and then also into January. And possibly even February, depending how the turnarounds are with the labs here. The progression from when we -- actually, basically, progression from when this project was initially discovered again, for those that don't know, this property was initially drilled in the 1980 -- 1985 actually, and that was done by Fairbanks Gold, which was a Robert Friedland company. Fairbanks Gold is also well known for the advancement of the Fort Knox deposit, and that's also in Alaska, which is now owned and operated by Kinross. We see the progression of soils so that when you're looking at the left is the -- so anomaly and the drill holes highlighted there. And then last -- sorry, 2023 to 2024, our drill campaign. And then this year, on the right, we're looking at the long section primarily at Chicken Mountain. On the far left is Alpha Bowl in this blue section, if you can see my cursor. And you can see just the amount of drilling that's been done over the subsequent years and also the assay holes pending highlighted in white on the bottom image. So we're going to get some really good geological data assays coming this entire intrusive body here. Also to note is that 3 kilometers is still just a portion of the entire intrusive target. Chicken Mountain stands at 6.5 kilometers by 6 kilometers in size, and we're still just starting to scratch the surface. If we put our drilling into context with some of our peers, what you'll note here on this slide is the amount of drilling that it takes to get to something north of 5 million ounces. We've highlighted the -- Great Bear -- these are -- sorry, maybe I'll take a step back and just say these are well-known deposits in Canada, some also in the United States, the Great Bear project, which was bought by Kinross 850,000 meters of drilling to delineate something that was north of 7 million ounces where it currently stands. Yes, I am adding M&I and Inferred together, but I wanted to draw your attention just how many meters it can take to delineate these things. The Banyan AurMac deposit 160,000 meters to delineate something north of -- close to 8 million ounces, then we have Springpole 200,000 meters to delayed something north of 5 million ounces. The Coffee project, which was the old Kaminak, deposit, 280,000 to delay something north of 3.8 million ounces. Now that is minable ounces. The global resources there is over 5 million ounces. And then we get into Skeena; 220,000 meters of drilling to get delineate something 5.6. And Snowline, the very high grade, fantastic deposit, 53,000 meters to delineate something that was over 8 million ounces. And what we wanted to highlight is like those are obviously a lot more meterage than Tectonic, but the size of the actual intrusion or the target that they were drilling. So we're looking at these resource envelope at Snowline that deposit sits at about 700 meters wide -- sorry, 700 meters in length by 500 meters in width, if I'm not mistaken. And we've outlined that those dimensions here. So 50,000 -- 53,000 meters of drilling focused in the 700-meter area. Same with Skeena first mining. And then if you look at Chicken Mountain, we have 17,000 meters that we've drilled. So this literally is the first inning. We are in the first period, first quarter, we're just getting started. And whether it was these deposits or something like Detour or Malartic, it takes drilling to really flush out. And once you start gaining steam and momentum, we can see the ounce count exponentially increase with more meters. And that's kind of what the game plan that we're targeting. Okay. Over to you, Pete.

Great. Thanks, Tony. So here's a basic drill plan map of our 2025 program, which is essentially focused on Alpha Bowl which is the northern extension of Chicken Mountain. And Phase 2 was essentially focused on the beginning of resource delineation drilling at Chicken Mountain, which is a center panel. We've sort of ad lib'ed a bit of a mineralized envelope currently understood in red on Chicken Mountain there. I think one of the key points from this year's drilling, as you can see from these maps as it was sectionally based, so we're drilling the same orientation on section lines, which really, really helps in putting together the geological picture as we sort of progress the interpretations.

Yes. I also would add, there's different context when we say resource delineation drilling. Sometimes to get to a resource, you have to drill on 25 or 50-meter spacing. So that's the section lines here, if you can see my cursor. But this drilling wasn't just resource delineation drilling. Yes, it's a step towards that, but it's also areas such as this drill hole here. If you can see my cursor, the gap between here and here, and if you look at your scale is 200 meters. So these were areas within the intrusive body that we were geologically curious about, but also were necessary to fill in to eventually move the pegs closer to the end zone, which would be a mineral resource estimate. That red shape there represents the mineralized envelope, which may or may not represent potentially the resource that is to come in the future. But essentially, we want to highlight that red represents mineralization and the extent of it being 1.8 kilometers in length currently. So that's what could potentially feed into a potential resource and then the width varies from 100 to 400, 500, 600 meters. And all these holes are still pending here. Okay. Back to you, Pete.

Okay. So essentially, what we're chasing here is ostensibly like an intrusion hosted or related gold system. We're currently sort of utilizing the reduced intrusion-related model as a basic guide for exploration. And some of the key points of this model are the elemental associations of gold, bismuth, tellurium associated with the, I guess, proposed causative like intrusions and the zonation of these -- of various elements and vein types as you move away from a proximal to a distal environment. And so we see all of these sort of associations at flat, and they're not necessarily lateral zone as this diagram would suggest. And we sort of believe that we're probably dealing with multiple pulses of mineralization, which are telescoping through each other. So multiple episodes, which is a favorable environment to be in that you're sort of double dipping on the gold sometimes in this system.

I want to take a pause there and ask Ian or Rich, if there's any comments you want to add on the geological model or anything up to this point, no pressure gentlemen?

It's -- there's still even questions on Fort Knox in the model. The one thing that is a little different, Fort Knox and that giant Golden Summit property more are an extensional regime. So they have a lot of sheeted veins because you open fractures. Here, you have more of a strike slip regime. So structurally, there will probably be some differences. The gold-Arsenic signature is the same at least as Golden Summit. But I think it's a complicated issue. And even in Fairbanks at Fort Knox and Golden Summit, there's a lot of questions.

And I would highlight that we use this model to maybe influence us, but it's not the Bible, let's just say. If there's anyone else have any comments on my team on what Rich's communicated on the model?

Yes. I think we can comment. The area or the zone you're drilling out is really quite easy to see on the geophysical inversion of the available data. And what it shows is a very good correlation with the low magnetic susceptibility also shown. So where you had quite severe demagnetization that turns out almost exactly one-to-one [Technical Difficulty] The configuration of that, as Richard said, sort of [indiscernible] But what the low susceptibility [indiscernible] to our mind, there's still huge upside to the system, especially to the south and especially at depth. And I think that as we get high-res drone mag, which I believe is incoming, we will be able to fine-tune that [ diversion ]

Yes. And for the audience sake here, we -- last year, we -- through with Ian and Michael's help, we completed an inversion, we did this high mag drone -- drone mag survey. We utilized the state flown geophysics, and we did an inversion on that. And what we found was the low mag susceptibility, and we've released this was -- showed a very high correlation to drilled mineralization and that it can be an effective tool for targeting mineralization or these intrusive bodies. And so we've taken that now one step further. And this year, we flew a very detailed drone mag survey at a very high resolution, and that data is now being processed and inverted. And we are eagerly awaiting like kids on Christmas to see what that -- how that unfolds. And does it continue to be a very effective tool for targeting. That tool has been utilized already for targeting some of the mineralization this year. Okay. Let's keep motoring here. So currently, what we're looking at is, again, the Chicken Mountain plan map up top, the soils, the drilling to date. These are the Phase 1 drill results, there is some highlight boxes. These were announced last week. And if you go from A to A prime, you can see all of the drilling on long section. The remarkable -- well, there's a lot of remarkable things about this gold system, but the fact that every hole continues to intersect gold mineralization. There's 96 holes that you're looking at specifically on this image. Every hole has hit gold. And also a very important fact is that more than half of those holes have ended in mineralization, including several 300-meter long. I think our deepest hole to date is about 425 meters in length, all ending in mineralization. So we are hitting the -- we're not going to be hitting the extent of the system from a depth or from a lateral perspective. And once all these assays come in, we're going to have a very good solid understanding on geometry, geochemical indicators, potentially even more high-grade loads or higher margin -- potential higher-margin starter pit. So it's all starting to unravel and keen to see the results from those -- from this year's drill campaign. And so we're going to go now from some of the sections, just like 2 or 3 sections here, where we're going to look at the assay results, what it looks like in drill core and also looks like in section and an assay table format. So this was hole CMD25-008. What I'll highlight here is that there are -- you can see here, 72 meters of 0.65 -- this material on the right, even though it doesn't appear to the naked eye to look oxidized, this is the same material that was used in our heap leach column testing, where we were able to obtain 96% and 91% gold recovery. You can see the blue section there, the holes that are pending. And also, that is a window that is in excess of 600 meters there. So we always talk about 3 kilometers in strike extent. The other very compelling fact is that the width of the system, 600 meters wide, 500 meters wide and still open. Recall that I mentioned earlier that the Snowline deposit was 700 meters in width, 700 by 500 meters. So this -- a lot of strike extent and a lot of lateral extent. Pete, do you want to talk a bit about the mineralization that we're seeing in drill core?

Yes. Sure, Tony. So obviously, on the right-hand side is a drill core. The host rock is predominantly a biotite-quartz monzonite in the core of Chicken Mountain. Obviously, the mineralization is associated with sheeted veins. For the most part, they're actually quite hard to see in these photographs just for the fact that they're not necessarily very wide. They can be at the millimeter scale, but also be quite productive in terms of their gold content. I think what's really interesting in this photograph, if you look at this core, there's essentially no visible difference between the stuff that's running like 2.5 grams and the stuff that's running 0.65. So it just shows you the sort of natural variability of the system as we sort of drill through it. So it kind of goes back to Tony's slide with all the drilling, you really need to drill this stuff out to really delineate where things are going and how it sort of stacks up.

Okay. Pete, just continue a few more words on these next 2 slides, if you will.

So it's another interval from the same hole. Again, you can see the sort of high grade looks the same as sort of moderate grade. I mean, typically, Chicken Mountain, like the core of it, the quartz monzonite in the central will basically run 0.2, 0.3 all the way through very, very consistently and it dispersed with higher grade kicks within the system.

Okay. And we're going to just zoom in on that section. Again, they're scaled on the bottom right. These are 300-meter blocks. We're looking at something that's potentially in excess of 600 meters in width and even these deepest holes here ending in mineralization. Pete, do you want to add anything else before I continue?

Yes. Well, obviously, on the right-hand side, it's most densely drilled and fairly consistently mineralized, which is essentially the kind of the core quartz monzonite within the system. As we go to the left, we sort of transitioned into more biotite-monzonite into dioxide biotite-monzonites. And the mineralization manifests itself differently in terms of like within those biotite-monzonites, it tends to be more sort of discrete vein sections. You can see mineralization kind of breaks up. And it's -- we believe that's simply like rheology, how the rocks react to being broken with the quartz-monzonites essentially shattering and being sort of a preferential host to mineralization.

Great. Thank you. So the next section is now we're going to look at core photos that we do not have assays for. And then we're going to get into some hand-drawn sections that Matt created and then also some structural observations and then key takeaways. So that's kind of the format for the next portion of the presentation here. So over to you, Pete, to talk about Alpha Bowl and Chicken Mountain rocks.

All right. So these are like photographs of our dominant rock types that we're seeing really quite different in my mind. Chicken Mountain is these fairly fine-grained quartz biotite monzonites showing quite a bit of alteration, fairly consistent in their nature. And then you get into Alpha Bowl and the rock type changes quite significantly and becoming essentially a fairly coarse grained intrusive rock, the bit of petrography we've done on this kind of it's coming back as more cyanotic in composition, being a bit more alkaline. We do see within the coarser grain alpha bow rock types, a lot of diking and xenoliths which is post and sort of ingested material. It appears as though some of the diking that we're seeing in Alpha Bowl is essentially Chicken Mountain-type intrusive rocks. The relationship between these 2 rock types is currently unknown, although we do know that the dividing line is somewhere on the north part of Chicken Mountain. And we suspect that the Alpha Bowl rock type is actually an earlier rock type or earlier phase of the intrusion, which is subsequently cut with the sort of Chicken Mountain dikes and hypotheses. And we suspect that the sort of causative or more productive phase is essentially the Chicken Mountain rock type. And some of our preliminary observations sort of show mineralization within Alpha Bowl being associated with those later Chicken Mountain type rocks. If we look at some of the mineralization types, it's all essentially vein control. There is some disseminated, but it's all related to the sheeted vein arrays. They show a fairly wide range of textures and styles. We see like brecciated veins, we see syntaxial veins. We also observe like later stage, more epithermal-looking veins that are associated with antimony, which we suspect are far later, quite disparate temperature conditions of their formation. But essentially, the takeaway is mineralization is strongly associated with quartz-dominant sheeted veins.

Okay. So we're moving on to this next section here. We're going to start with Section Line 1 and then continue our way through the kind of the core, if you will, of the Chicken Mountain drilled area here.

So these section lines are diamond drilling. We put 3 or 4 holes on each one of these sections and drill sort of a coherent pattern. So we're going to kind of walk through some of the features. So here's typical oxidized host rock. This particular example is an oxidized vein and basically showing some fairly strong lineations, which are kind of post mineral features on the plane of the fracture. Here's essentially a quartz dominant vein. It shows brecciated sort of textures. And obviously, you can see the carbonate forming like salvages to the vein and being quite strongly oxidized along certain portions. Interestingly, if you look at the -- on the right-hand side of the core, the nature of the oxidation, which is actually quite deep in a lot of the system will go down -- we've seen as deep as 300 or 400 meters. I find it super interesting that the oxidation actually occludes on very, very fine vein that's giving you a very, very sharp boundaries on it. And obviously, it's a fairly long-lived oxidation system. We see a lot of sort of repeat Liesegan-type textures within those oxidation zones.

Rich, Ian or anyone else from my team, any comment on any of the drill core so far?

The one thing that I just want to bring up is that when we look at our drill patterns in conjunction with Tect, our structural geologist, we aligned the drilling. So we favor these northeast down to like the Northwest vein systems. And so when we're going through these, we're cutting these at an optimal angle, and that was a planned -- that was all planned out so we could have optimal intersections. And then as you're looking across these sections as well, like we drilled out the core of this through these sections in as much diamond as we could. And then we also flank these a lot on like the margins of it with RCs to see the continual mineralization either into like the out of off section and then to look at potential zones for other kind of flaggy mineralization for future targeting. That was just one thing that I just wanted to highlight as we're going through this.

Thank you, Trent.

This is another example of the sheet of veins that we're intersecting. You can see that like the angles of those are, as Trent was saying, are fairly reasonable. The one of the tops that significantly shallower dip, but you can see the orientation line in red. It's basically hitting the bottom of the vein. So it's hitting its square, although the dip on that is a little bit off. This example sort of shows a bit more intensely vein zone and some of the, I guess, variety in textures and vein cells that we're seeing, which is, again, suggestive of repeated pulses of mineralization. It's not a one-trick pony. It's opening and closing and successive pulses of mineralization coming through. Further example, it's a little coarser grained rock up on Chicken Mountain, which is peripheral to the main quartz monzonite body. But again, mineralization being essentially discrete sheeted veins within there. Again, the veins are -- appear to be preferential vectors for the oxidation. And obviously, the alteration, which is essentially sericite throughout the system is localized around the veins once you sort of get out of the vein Chicken Mountain quartz monzonite, which tends to be pervasively altered. This is an interesting one. There are certain zones that we're starting to see that we're starting to see chalcopyrite mineralization, copper. And so it really sort of diverges from the reduced intrusion-related gold model. So we're seeing like diversity in sort of metal assemblages associated with the veining. The chalcopyrite or copper tends to occur within fairly discrete corridors that we -- like to date, it's not widely dispersed. It is localized, and it does appear to be a separate pulse of mineralization and crosscutting the more classic gold, bismuth, tellurium, arsenic assemblage. Again, in this photograph, you can see the yellow lines on the core, which are basically veinlets or veins and relatively high density, although they're not large veins. They're fairly discrete. And again, you can see the orientation line in red and the basically fairly normal angle of the orientation line to the veins, which is indicating we are hitting the sheeted vein range square.

And Pete, we also saw some chalcopyrite in some of the Alpha Bowl holes, correct?

Absolutely, yes. In Alpha Bowl, there are really, really distinct zones of chalcopyrite bearing veins, which appear to be like discrete or separate from the arsenic bearing assemblages. Bismuth, tellurium is actually in fairly low absolute abundance, even though it shows high correlation with gold. We typically do not see bismuth or tellurium minerals. We see them in the assay or the XRF.

We don't visually see them, but they're actually very much there in the assay.

Yes, they are present, yes.

Okay.

Another sort of Chicken Mountain vein. This one showing interestingly kind of big chunky arsenopyrites and chalcopyrite and some galena within it. And again, just showing that the variability in metal assemblages of the veining.

Okay. All right. We've gone old school with a bit of new school. New school being some of the leapfrog holes and old school being the handdrawn sections here. Pete, do you want to say any words before we -- I'm going to get Matthew, one of our senior exploration geologists created this section. But Pete, did you want to add anything?

No, I'm just going to pass it over to Matt. He put a lot of effort into putting these sections together and creating a fairly coherent picture of what we're seeing on these sections. So over to you, Matt.

Thanks, Pete. Yes, I think just for everyone's context, this is essentially the handdrawn section overlaid into Leapfrog and then we've scaled it into Leapfrog. And then I think the key things with this section from the left of your screen being the west side and the right of the screen being east, near the top kind of on most of the sections from what we've noticed is like you have a lot more intense oxidation. And then as you kind of -- and that's kind of that dotted orange, very faint orange called [ fest ] in the legend. And then there is zones as you -- as Pete talked about earlier that as you go down, it does seem like that same orientation that we're targeting the veining, you'll see some zones of intense oxidation even at depth that even the first hole CMD25 goes down to -- we intersected a large zone of intense oxidation down to 200 meters. And then usually, after that, you'll get into a lot more of that planar sheeted veins with a lot, call it, like cleaner looking rock with intense sericite alteration. And then there are some zones where we've been able to, at least as of right now, like characterize like similar faulting near the bottom and at least of this section kind of tracing them together. And that was just mainly from the characterization. It's a little bit harder to get the orientation line when the rock is more broken up like that. But -- and I think the other key thing is that those family or call it, like family of veins that are more attributed to like a lower temperature higher level like thermal like conditions with Breccia and some of the needle like quartz carbonate veining, they do seem to align in a slightly shallower orientation than the other veins, probably a little bit more planar with the regular intense sericite alteration that we see across. And then you can see two of the interesting thing is as we kind of go west to east across the section, the vein density on the east side kind of increased and the oxidation was a little bit less intense as you kind of ended in that -- got out of that first 50 to 100 meters.

I like to add like some of the structures you're seeing that obviously, there's some structures that are appearing like on sections being vertical. We interpret those as being sort of northwest trending what we call the Chicken Mountain structure. Interesting on this section that you see the shallow line sort of fault zone, which is obviously just apparent dip in the plain section. It's probably a lot steeper than that, but it has more of a sort of east-west or Northeast orientation. I find it really interesting that you're seeing I find it really interesting that you're seeing juxtaposition of coarser grain rocks and sort of volcanics along that structure.

If there's any comments from any of my team members feel free to jump in.

One thing I also like kind of going through this, we do talk about the oxidation and so right at the upper surface. But it is a good indication that we are seeing oxidation at depth, and that's only as deep as we tested it where we see it. But there is -- with that indication that there is like a vertical gradient within the oxidizing or the oxidation and oxidizing system. So it helps us with -- when we're talking about mineralization and metallurgy when we're talking about the potential for deeper oxidation through these systems. So that helps with the mineralizing system for a heap leach type system, see that a lot in Carlin-type systems where you have really deep vertical gradients of those oxidizing fluids coming down, which makes systems a little more economic at depth. And the other thing is that we are looking at like these damage zones and fractures and joint systems. So we're looking at damage zones in a lot of this upper part of it. So these damage zones will coalesce into a more coherent or package up system, and we are still identifying some of these larger structures or faults. But right now, these damage zones associated with these and like again, the apparent dips that we're looking at across this section because it doesn't necessarily cut it at a perfect perpendicular to the structure. So that's what we're looking at here as well.

Excellent. Thank you, Trent. Good observations, good feedback. Okay. We'll move to the next section line. And Pete?

I'll just kind of step through it again, sort of sheeted veins, pervasive sericite alteration and a vein on the left-hand side, showing fairly strong sericite alteration as salvages to the vein, which is hosted within pervasive sericite alteration. This example is -- appears to be slightly porphyritic, which we see at times at Chicken Mountain. Again, typical Chicken Mountain we call leucocratic quartz monzonite, like there's -- likely biotite has been completely obliterated through alteration -- sericitic alteration. And again, the really distinct nature of the oxidation with a very, very sharp boundaries. And on the left-hand side, you can see the faint yellow line, which is just showing a vein at that contact. And so these oxidizing fluids are basically being occluded along these very, very fine quartz veining. So another section, relatively strong sericitic alteration. I think there's a highlight of it like a really, really strong sericite altered section. The red lines in this particular example are basically the veining logged by the geos. Obviously, the orientation looks a little different sort of orientation that's probably just the way the core sort of lined up in there. And then on the right-hand side, a bit more sort of intense veining examples. Just another example. This one is almost pervasively oxide, a small section of non-oxide material. But again, it's pretty subtle in terms of the vein, you can see some of the yellow lines where geologists have marked the veins on this. Some of these veins will -- I suspect are pretty high-grade little things. Typically, you'll see 1 or 2 veins in a section and when you get the assays back, they're carrying all the gold and if it's running at gram per tonne, these veins are obviously likely multi-ounce in terms of their metal contents.

Okay. Another section that Matthew created for us. Matthew, do you want to take the wheel here.

Yes. Just another section, same view. We're kind of stepping through Chicken Mountain and kind of going down a little bit south. You can see the alignment of the veining as we kind of go across and then that's really strong pervasive oxidation, a little bit closer to the top or shallower depth in this section, but some of it does [ pervase ] along down as well as you can see there's a little section here, the bottom with little bit stronger oxidation and veining kind of coming through. And then I think what's key with this section, which wasn't highlighted from the last section, which is a little bit more prominent on this one, just difference of geos and how they like to draw their sections, you can see a lot more of the vertical faulting kind of that like chopped off Chicken Mountain intrusion area that Pete was talking about where we get all these kind of damaged zones across, which is highlighted very nicely on this interpreted section.

Anyone else on my team, any comments? Okay. Next section in line.

More of the same [indiscernible] system. Again, sheeted veins. This example is a bit more biotite and a little less intense sericitic alteration, but typically what we see in Chicken Mountain. Here's an example of a antimony stibnite-bearing vein, which is very, very different than the sort of the typical quartz phase that we see these things. We suspect are -- a later pulse of mineralization either vertically cooling of the system and vertical telescoping or representative of another pulse mineralization that's deeper down or more distal to what we're seeing. But it does appear to overprint. These appear to overprint the more proximal higher temperature mineralization. Another example strongly sericitically altered, rock it starts getting that sort of pale buff to greenish color when everything gets replaced by sericite eventually and a sort of strong quartz carbonate vein cutting it. Again, you can see that peculiar nature of the oxidation being very, very discrete zones in part. There's an example of a little quartz vein and a shear zone in sort of interaction again, showing that placement of mineralization, it's not static. It's -- there's things happening, things are moving. But we didn't really mention our sort of proximity to the Nixon Fork Iditarod fault, which is a major structural entity in the Kuskokwim. And we believe that this fault was active during placement intrusion syn-mineral and post mineral and it's still active today, it's still moving today. So there's a lot of structural opportunities in there.

In the bottom right here, you can see that picture, the drill core that we were just -- that Pete was just speaking to. And Matt, would you like to say a few words on this section that you created?

Yes. Another section so you can see the vertical, call it, like faulting nature across and then even like a lot deeper like we're looking at closer to 300-meter depth of that oxidation kind of as we kind of followed a hole to hole kind of interpreted in between and then those stibnite-rich veins kind of -- we're near the bottom of that oxidized zone in these sections, and then you can see the same oxidation closer to surface as well on those kind of just veining spurs all throughout closer to that 60-degree dip northwest trending veins across the section.

All right. Now we're going to move to an Alpha Bowl section like Chicken Mountain was the primary target in the next phase of drilling, but there were -- we did go back into Alpha Bowl to follow up some that exciting hole that we announced, and we also did additional drilling to the North in Alpha Bowl, super excited about what that could potentially yield. And so we'll talk a bit about some of the rock there.

All right. So there is the Alpha Bowl rock type, as we mentioned earlier, it's distinct -- very distinct from what we see at Chicken Mountain being quite coarse grained. It also commonly has [indiscernible] and Alpha Bowl within it. And here's an example of a quartz vein, they tend to be quite discrete and it's carrying fairly coarse graining arsenopyrite mineralization in this particular case. We do see different zones of mineralization within these rocks, some being more chalcopyrite rich, others being arsenopyrite dominated and from the geochemistry from 2024 it was sort of multi -- sort of associations with gold on being the typical arsenic, bismuth, tellurium, but we also see our arsenic, antimony, tungsten signature often with mercury as well.

And on the top part of that hole?

Again, a bunch of sheeted veins here is an example of some chalcopyrite. But again, the sheeted nature of those veins, I mean, their orientation is pretty solid throughout there, sort of just being 70, 80 degrees to the core axis.

Okay. Another section. Any word, Matt, on this one?

Yes. So this action showing some of the Phase 1 Alpha Bowl holes and some -- from the first virtual core shack and then on the right or the west side is the new hole that we drilled CMD25-26 with the new veining and that follow-up from that first release RC hole. And then you can see there some of the chalcopyrite mineralization the quartz veining kind of adjacent to some of the early results that we have released and some of the, call it, textures across and then VG section at the bottom from the Phase 1 hole as well. And I think what's interesting about this section is that you won't see the same -- like as much at least we haven't yet oxidation comparison comparatively to Chicken Mountain and the veins are like as Trent will talk about probably in a little bit rotated in the Alpha Bowl section as well. Still a good angle for our drilling, but you'll see -- you can see in the stereo that it's kind of pretty cool as you're logging like it's almost like a, I think a 90-degree like shift of the vein you're like, okay, cool. It's different.

Yes. Thank you again. Any other comments from anyone? Okay. So stay tuned on these drill results here.

Sorry, just one thing.

Yes, go ahead, Trent.

It leads right into that next one anyways. Is that if we look at where we're drilling on this section line, and based -- if we don't really have into the next one is that there is this larger North, Northwest Chicken Mountain structure or a big crack as that we talk about or the tech or structural geologists talk about, is that, that North, Northwest big crack. When we get into Alpha Bowl, and we're in the footwall of that big crack or on the footwall side of it. So it'd be the -- I mean, if we're talking about something that's North Northwest, that would be down to the West. Is that when we get into that northern Alpha Bowl area, we crossed over and this one interpretation is that we are drilling into slightly different -- or we're drilling into different rocks would be footwall of that structure. And so we're outside of that damage zone, and we're still looking for the transition between those zones from what we see at Chicken Mountain with those Northeast down to the Northwest dominated sheeted vein sets. And then we step over into that -- into the footwall to the north, and we see that kind of rotation. With that being said, if Ian or Michael want to do it, have a quick comment on that. I saw you guys discussing something a little bit ago.

They're a little webcast.

There's a problem with having a different orientation of mineralized vein, I mean there is a strong possibility that, that part of the intrusion, which is offset and across the other side of the added structure has been rotated around an access which is -- so yes, absolutely, you can have sheeted veins which are coming at the same time, which are now in a different [indiscernible] 3 or 4 different types of [indiscernible] so it's technically it's perfectly easy to imagine how they could have happened. The fact is though that we've got really good oriented core and keep track of. So I think that's the key.

Okay. And just to sum up before we move to the next sort of section of the presentation. The key takeaways, Pete, do you want to like in lithology, I think we've gone through each one of these here. But like veining, it can definitely be an indication of mineralization, not always a guarantee, but can be the weathering of the oxidization is very pervasive for those that can't recall or not aware, the heap leach column testing that we did which was 2 columns composited from 6 various drill holes throughout the Chicken Mountain intrusive. It was a combination. It was a blend of oxide and non-oxidized material and both yielded extremely well recoveries and again, 96%, 91% were recorded on a 3.25-inch crush. And the deepest sample that went into those metallurgical testing was from about 185 meters deep. And so this year, we've gone ahead and collected more material at -- throughout the various intrusive center at Chicken Mountain, again, using oxide and non-oxide and also, we will be doing 2-inch crush to work our way towards potentially something that could be run of mine. So I just wanted to highlight the weathering profile. Deep has and others on my team have commented about multiple phases of the intrusion or multiple pulses. I'd love for anyone to jump in. But for the layman on the call, you have a pathway that's been juiced up several times. And overprinting and multiple phases can, not always the case, but can lead to more intense alteration. And for us, the oriented diamond drilling is extremely important to get that structural data so we can be more effective in our targeting of the higher-grade portions or just mineralized portions. Anyone else want to just talk about quickly on -- just very quickly on the takeaway so far on Phase 2 Chicken Mountain drilling. I've covered everything. Okay. Okay. So we're going to just talk about structure, which is funny, again, Ian, Rich, Mike or anyone from our team. When you talk about this "reduced intrusion-related gold system," you don't typically hear a lot about structure. And oddly enough, we're talking a lot about structure. So as Pete mentioned, we are close to Nixon Iditarod fault. This is more -- I don't know if I call it more structurally active or structurally complex. Structures are key pathed are basically super critical to any gold deposit. And so we think it's extremely important to understand the structural regime here. You can see the logging of structures that has taken place on site, and just Trent, we're going to get you speak to these slides. And again, anyone else want to jump, Rich, Ian, feel free. And just maybe explain what stereonets are in case there isn't a geologist on the line here.

Yes. So one of the big things that we've -- I mean, what we're looking right here are the stereonets are just our veins. And the stereonet is just if you think about as a bowl and we're looking at how those foliations or those planes project onto a surface. So the dash lines on the one on the left is where that plane would intersect that like bowl, if you were holding it. And all those little dots are planes to the bowl. So if you were to take that -- where that plane intersects that bowl and then you were to put up a dot perpendicular, that's where plots up. And it's just a different way to visualize the data that we're looking at. It tends to show clustering, you comfort a lot easier relative to like if you just saw a bunch of lines that are lining up. So what we're seeing is that within in the system at Chicken Mountain, the vein orientation, is fairly consistent. It's that Northeast trending down to the Northwest and those cluster in that kind of that's Southeast Quadrant for the poles. And what that's showing is that our main mineralization in this area is consistent and it's somewhat goes back to like on the formation of the mineralizing system is that those cracks were opening and those veins were being mineralized or those openings are being mineralized during that event. The one thing when we talk about structure as a whole is that not only are we just talking about the mineralizing system, is that a lot of the structural orientation that we're trying to figure out is that when these formed back in the -- around 70 and slightly younger, that happened at depth. Now where we're doing exploration, it's at surface. So a lot has happened to those rocks in that time, during that time. And so we use all these other interpretations with our geophysicists and the structural guys will talk about different types of right lateral offset. We see different areas where depending on when things were active, faults, we'd see active links, restricted links, ramps are kind of like where these things can get offset. So we use structure and these interpretations as a hole to help with our both localized targeting within the main Chicken Mountain to see how these veins and mineralizations manifesting itself in these areas. And then when we transition the Alpha Bowl, we see a slightly different thing. We have to use these -- we use this data to help us constrain what's going on between these different areas. So we're starting to be able to domain out the different areas between Chicken Mountain, Alpha Bowl, and then as we come up along these larger structural zones, we can have to -- have they been offset through time. And these are these kind of our evolving knowledge of the area as we drill more areas. We could see these different domains. And then we can see slight offsets or maybe large offsets. But this is the part when we take these structural measurements in the field. And then what we see between veins, damaged joint faults or joint faults, fractures and even different orientations of dikes. So this all goes into our knowledge database and then we come up with these interpretations from there. Again, like what these are showing us here is that our main mineralization is fairly consistent at Chicken Mountain. And as we kind of move forward and look at step in Alpha Bowl, we'd see that change right here is that it shifted these 90 degrees. Now that's not necessarily saying that those rocks like those all kind of got twisted or rotated into a different orientation is that it actually works out quite well when you think of when things are opening. Not every extensional regime is going to be consistent across a large area. So, again, we still have to look at the transition zone and see how this works. But it helps us unravel the picture was like if it was some big monotonous thing, it would go against what we are thinking about our large structural areas and domains and how do we think this thing has been maybe dismembered and offset through time. Ian or Michael, do you want to make any comments on anything like that on any of that?

Thanks. I think you covered it. Maybe just a comment on hats off to [indiscernible] for doing this oriented drilling and looking at it in this way because a lot of companies don't. And what that results in is sporadic drilling directions and not really fully understanding the system, but what we're seeing here is very systematic ban orientations which really improved to targeting and putting together the story and the story is really starting to unravel at this moment.

Maybe I'll throw one out to Rich. So talk about what are your thoughts on structure and reduced intrusion-related gold systems. But if I can use that term, and how relevant or irrelevant is it in those types of systems?

I think every system is different. This is a very favorable Kuskokwim-type system where you have several kilometer long intrusive complex, just like you have the Sil-Deit complex down at Donlin you have your several kilometer long intrusive complex here with Hornfels that are very competent, very favorable, especially where they intersect with structures. They're different from the classic reduced intrusion systems of, say, Fairbanks and Fort Knox, where you have more rounded intrusives that are not along major structures. These just resemble one of the more favorable physical traps in Southwest Alaska. They are different than the classic stuff in Fairbanks, Fort Knox may have been formed at 5, 6 kilometers. Everything our geology team is talking about here is talking about 2, 3 kilometers. Peter mentioned some colloform-type veining. You have the antimony, mercury anomalies, at the deeper systems like Fort Knox, you have more secondary biotite and K-feldspar. Here, dominated by sericite. So I think you're looking at a very favorable physical trap for a lot of fluid to get into in Southwest Alaska but it has its difference from the models such as Fort Knox and Rogue, I think everywhere is different, and it's just places like Donlin Creek and the flat area Chicken Mount here are just lengthy intrusions in very favorable structural areas that are some of the best places to find large tonnages in Southwest Alaska.

Thank you. Very well said. I appreciate the insight. Anyone else have any comments? Did Rich just do a mic drop? Is that what that's called nowadays? Okay. That's great.

Yes. Given the fact that you have the intrusions as Peter call them hypabyssal and you have sort of kind of tells you that this is a shallower system. So in the Kuskokwim of Southwest Alaska you have to develop your own models. Everywhere is different.

Yes. Yes. Okay. So there is the opportunity to ask questions, and so feel free to jump in. I will just quickly -- so what's next. Before we get to the QA component, I want to highlight that this is conceptual in nature. So if you have come to learn anything about Tectonic, our word is our bond and operating with integrity, transparency and honesty is trumps everything. Trumps even more than sort of market stuff. And so to that point, we do have a strategy, we do have a plan, and it is fluid. It will change. So in the next little while here, there are going to be a plethora of drill holes that will be -- that we'll receive assays from the laboratories that will go through our QA/QC and they'll be released to market. So you can see Phase 1 drill holes. From Phase 1, there was 48 holes drilled and I think currently, we've issued about 11 or 12 holes. And so the remaining holes from Phase 1, remaining holes from Phase 2 will be released as they come in and validated between now and, say, the end of January, possibly even in February, we are at the mercy of the labs to a large extent. But we are pressured. We do have things that are rush that we're waiting for assay results. We will then continue -- sorry, there has been rock that's been sent to KCA. So that's Cassidy & Associates. They are the world's foremost heap leach laboratory facility, and they will be doing our heap leach column test, again, a 2-inch crush, we're also doing column test at a lower crush and a whole slew of other metallurgical testing. Extremely important to understand the mineralogy, the gold recoveries and the economic impact that they have. We do intend to go back into the field and we're targeting late April to mobilize into field, it could be sooner, whether does play a factor, and it's not just whether it's the cost of operating and when is the right time to safely get in there. In addition, we are the phase -- sorry, next year's program, although we haven't -- we don't have a formal board approval, but we will be currently working towards that maiden mineral resource estimate whenever that may occur. We do have a target there of 2027. There's some rationale behind that. The drill results from this year from Alpha Bowl also influence things, but we're going to get in a very wholesome picture on the nature of the system. The more you drill, consider it the same analogy such as dating someone or working with someone, the more time you spend with them, the better you get to know them. And we are, again, at the sort of the inning stages of hopefully a very fruitful relationship. We will be targeting -- if a mineral resource estimate does go out, then note that there will be a PEA that follows, for me or for us, I should say, the Tectonic team, an ounce of gold in the ground is only as important as the economics of it. We're here to mine gold, not just fine gold, and then there's the various other steps that would follow the PEA such as the feasibility study and permitting. So with that being said, we would open the floor to any questions.

And I do see a question here. I'm just going to take the time to read it here. Okay. so the question is, are we -- okay, I think Tony mentioned this in the beginning, but the results from the latest 10 holes are from Chicken Mountain. That is correct. Prior to that was the first hole from Alpha Bowl. So we announced the first hole from Alpha Bowl initially. I think that was in September. And then we announced the first hole from Chicken Mountain along with 9 other holes. Are we getting results from Alpha Bowl next or one of the other targets? It's literally dependent on how they are received from the lab. The lab doesn't sequentially necessarily doesn't sequentially as we send our sample bags to the laboratory facilities, they don't -- they just pick the bag so to speak. That's the way it's been unfolding. It's not like we get one -- our goal is to get one complete hole or a series of complete holes from top to bottom. We do not issue partial assays. So what's been transparent is that we are getting assays back from various different spots, but not complete holes. And so as we get that complete hole and our intention is to release asset results in a contextual and meaningful manner. What does that mean? Well, we want contact. We don't sometimes want to put -- okay, like even it can be 1 hole, but what's the context around that. It says here also, yes, we did drill Black Creek, Gold and Apex and another target called Jam, and we are eager to see those asset results as well. Those are all north of Chicken Mountain, other possible intrusion centers. And so keen to get in there and see not only what the gold content is, but what the multi-element tells us because that also is super revealing. The next question is, structurally, is Black Creek and Gold and Apex, the same, then Chicken Mountain or Alpha similar, different rock types, can someone from my team address that question, I can answer it, but give the mic to someone else here?

Do you have a map that we could quickly look at one of the earlier ones.

Yes, definitely. Thank you. I'm just reading the questions and trying to do both here at the same time. So let's just back pedal to this slide here. Yes. I think this is a good one as Pete?

So, our early interpretations of like Golden Apex those areas that there is a -- we interpret these Northeast structural, I guess, right lateral or oblique slip faults. So one that kind of runs on the northern edge of Alpha Bowl and now what we call like the Golden Apex structure. And then as you step one up to like the North Northwest, there's what we call the Black Creek fault. And we believe that those are roughly like the same orientation, similar structures. One was active during a certain period of time. And then the more recent one would have more of the strained partition across to that, so you have more of the movement on that Black Creek fault. Black Creek was what we're looking at this year, like we've just got on to it. It's a quartz monzonite. Biotite quartz monzonite. We don't have any -- the results back yet from any of the multi element, but we believe that they're all part of the same system. And they have just been offset post-mineral offset along those. And so the structural kind of corridors that early Golden Apex fault had movement on it and then something happened where it just relayed over to the Golden Apex structure and then we had more like post-mineral offset into that like North Northeast direction. Early indication that's kind of what our working model is currently. Of course, if we drill, we get orientation or do some more structural work across those corridors or do get additional data with diamond drilling. These models will evolve from there. The early indications from like what we did at some of the Golden Apex is that there is a structural zone through there. Based on some of the things that we're seeing is that, yes, there is a structural corridor through there. And then once we get across that into the Black Creek structure, there's more movement. And so that stuff is more locked up on the Golden Apex side, and so more probably a coherent block. Since we haven't really drilled deep enough into that area, there's definitely potential at depth and some of the early indications from our most susceptibility inversion modeling suggested that there is kind of targets in that area they just need to be followed up on.

Well, thank you, Trent, for addressing that question. Again, if any -- there's any other questions, please feel free to put them forward. We're going to -- we're kind of getting towards the end here. And I think it's time we loosen our ties. For some of us, Rich and myself, we have no ties on and others. But let's maybe our team, let's do -- let's have some geological banter and I'm going to throw a few questions to that. I want to see -- I don't think I've ever made Rich sweat so that's my goal right now see a beat of sweat come down as his forehead. Not going to happen. So let's -- I'm going to ask our technical advisers Ian and Michael and Rich and then we're going to go to our team. But Christmas is upon us, let's just say, Christmas wish list, what should we -- what do you want to see us do or execute next year that we're not doing? And what are your -- anything else you want to throw at that. Pete, you can jump into?

Maybe not something that you're not doing. But I think a critical next step is to make sure that whoever undertakes the MRE, the future MRE really incorporates the understanding that we've gathered along with journey in terms of the structural characteristics and that DNA is in part into the MRE because so often in our game, technically going for 25 years, we've seen many good projects destroyed. After much good work by those before it, when it comes to the MRE. It tends to be -- it can be this black box approach where MRE geologist just throw a bunch of numbers on a table at the end of the day. But the structural DNA, meteorological DNA isn't worked into that MRE. So I would really stress that's a critical point for the next set.

Yes. We have done so much work to understand the system that we're dealing with and the structural controls that would be -- it would be a pity just to try [indiscernible]. But there's a number of overlapping stories within the grade and including structural measures that need to come out in any model that is used for the company. So as [indiscernible] said, we've seen cases where a lot of the structural work is done but once it gets to the MRE, it gets kind of like bulky [indiscernible] in the 3D model that is used for the MRE. So that's how...

Yes, I like it. And Rich, anything on your end?

You got 5 kilometers that have been juiced up with all sorts of gold anomalies. Understanding the structure is key. Where do you have the tonnages, where are things economic and even in doing the structural one thing we talked about before is, remember, there's been 70 million years of movement around on these fault systems. What did this look like 70 million years ago, can that help you target the areas that are most economic in this complex.

Yes. That is on our wish list, and we started it. We haven't completed it, but recreating a geological map from 70 million years ago plus is extremely critical then to see the before and the after, and I'm with you on that. Anyone from my team, Sunny, Trent, Matt, you've got -- I'm literally blessed to be working with such talented individuals alike team on the board, technical advisers. And I always tell my team that use these opportunities to learn. I just ask for those that don't know, I just asked Rich where his recent travels took him. Every time I get on the phone with Rich, it's literally like 4 continents in 2 months, but it's great. So where were you recently? I don't know if you can disclose that to the general public...

Where was I? Chile then China and then Finland.

Yes. Yes.

So I'm trying to avoid places with guns and with malaria these days. I made it this long. Hopefully, I'll make it a few more.

That's a good approach, me too, if you will. With the benefit of -- you can learn geology, obviously, through textbooks and schooling and things of that nature. But the intention of this virtual drill core shack is to mimic if everyone here had the opportunity to come to site. So this is what we would do literally in a drill core Shack. And where I'm going with this with -- in regards to Rich and everyone on my team, and I will say, what could rival Rich is Michael and Ian, they're currently calling in from South Africa, but they've touched more rocks and mines than and probably more than their collective team. So seeing rocks and different deposit styles, different mineralized settings is so critical. And mine is this big and yours is so vast. So I always encourage my team to tap into that talent and experience that you get. And so with that being said, I'm asking my team to step up and fire some questions to anyone here, including myself, if you want to talk about economics or our geology, but feel free to lob a few in there.

I could kick off with one thing is that I remember -- so when we're looking at -- I guess, when we're looking at like these 40 reconstructions through time is that one of the big things that we are starting to gain insight on is that if we draw along context, none of the data that we're coming across is just getting like pushed to the back. Every time we drill an intersection with different lithology types, dikes or silts, that's going into our knowledge base. But one of the things you have to take under consideration when you're looking at exhumation from maybe 2 to 3 kilometers depth, is that, that amount of material had to be exhumed and has been eroded off. And so within the Kuskokwim when you're on the outside of it, like right now, when all of our drilling is based in the main part of Chicken Mountain. And we're looking at when this thing was in place is like this big back arc, full trust belt and then these melts get kind of squeezed into this Kuskokwim during this period of contraction. And then they solidified and they were mineralized at that depth. There's a lot of stuff that happened from then to where it is now. But when you're just looking at maybe these like nebulous blobs, it's difficult. So we branch off going into the Kuskokwim, looking for what the deformation in those units and try to pull it back into that. So we haven't drilled into the -- like many of the horn cells yet. But as we're kind of going forward, we'll start to get those data points and we can start building that into a 4D reconstruction. Likewise, when we step across going into these structural zones or after we get more multi-element geochem, we can say, "Oh, this unit is this." So we can say, maybe this shows us the offset -- and this all gets built up through time as in like what we did this year by systematically drilling it is that we're starting to see those damaged zones and how those damage ones coalesced into a structural kind of maybe corridor. And if we go into Alpha Bowl, we drill into the footwall, we're starting to see that likewise with Golden Apex, building up this knowledge base so we can actually -- when we go into and talk to our -- to Ian and Michael and Rich, we can say, like, this is kind of what we're observing and this is how we think it's manifesting. And one of the biggest things that will help us out is that different groups have come out if it's like the USGS or something like that. More advanced getting dates or more uranium lead ages or things like that to start to see maybe different timing of events. And then also if I -- if this where it's being in place. And this is all building out into a 4D reconstruction through time because that will help us better target like what Rich was saying is that it's an iterative process. We don't have all the answers right now, but we are seeing indications of different types of events. And this is something that we're just going to build through time. Right now, I think we have a fairly good hypothesis of what's going on. But again, we need to -- with this more recent IR resolution MEG survey that we're going. It's -- once we get it out, we can start to see some other of these detailed structural zones or maybe some of the -- help us kind of balance out or figure out some of these offsets or some of these little finer details that were what we're currently seeing in the drilling and maybe just outside of the areas that we know. So again, we're on top of it. We're kind of building through it. But yes, this is just the process that we're going through and learning right now.

Take one of the challenges really that we do have is lack of any markers like to date, we're working at trying to fingerprint like more subtle phases of the intrusion so we can actually understand like the offsets and sense of movement across these structural zones. Unfortunately, the structural zones are not sort of knife edge sort of like brakes. I mean they are broad corridors with multiple displays and destruction zone. So it takes like a fair granularity of data to understand what's happening there. And I think with our sectional base drilling and getting some nice sections across things and all the sort of high-quality for acid geochemistry and our ability to fingerprint subtle phases of intrusion and dikes and sort of understanding the timing of those different phases and how they are structurally offset is going to pay dividends and putting that sort of picture together. I do like Trent's comment on 4D because I guess the fourth dimension is time. Correct?

Yes. Yes. I also like what you mentioned, Pete, the sectional drilling that we're doing this year. And if we look at Alpha Bowl, you can see the sections and hopefully, I keep saying if you can see my cursor, but some -- but this hole here, the furthest one is where we hit the 2 grams over 40, which included grams per tonne gold over 20 meters. That's -- I wanted to highlight Alpha Bowl is a 1.5 by kilometer. Massive target, and this is the hole on the periphery. So what we -- what you have to do with any deposit style is know where gold is and isn't. And sometimes knowing where gold isn't is just as important so we haven't even tested the limits of this laterally here. And so that's where the sectional drilling is important because you can get "continuity" between various sections, and you want to get that into the footwall and outside. And at Chicken Mountain, it's a blessing and a curse because this is a massive target. And what the benefit is, is a massive target can yield potentially a massive prize. But you just need more drilling to get there. And I would say, with that being said, the amount of drilling that we've done to date and yes, there was some historical drilling that we have as well that we've been able to take that data and to squeeze every ounce of geological data and insight from those holes that was -- and then there's still obviously a bit more to do, but we've been -- our team has done a great job extrapolating what we can with that data. And I would say, if we accomplish this in 18,000 meters what can we accomplish with 30,000, 50,000 meters of one drill campaign. That's the art of what is possible from a geological understanding perspective, but also from a potential ounce perspective.

And something to add to Tony's point is just for everyone on the call, I was with Snowline Gold for a year before I joined Tectonic. And I see a lot of similarities between these 2 projects. And one thing that's really spectacular about Tectonic is the scale. I think we see that over and over again. It's continuous along strike. It's already 3x as large as what Rogue has. But also the gold is mineralized near surface. And when we plot the gold versus elevation, we can see that it's right on surface and it's continuous at depth, and it's quite consistent all the way down to depth as well. So I think that's a really important aspect of this deposit.

Yes. I would second that as well. If we look at the Fort Knox pit right now, it's 2 kilometers of strike down to almost 500 meters, 400 meters plus and the reason they've been able to go so deep is because yes, the topography, the strip ratio, the economics, but it's that lateral strike that gives you the ability to vector down and capture in a true sense that bulk tonnage material. And anyone else, any comments here?

I think I just keep thinking about your wish list, Tony, and my wish list, I have a long list. I think just to even from Michael, Ian, like I think the work that we're doing for as we're advancing towards that meeting resource and then teasing out all the different domains and structural demand. It will be fun just to keep teasing out like call it section line by section line and like planning thing where those structural domains are and then starting to merge the story with -- like I made an MRE and being able to also to like have a relationship, call it, like back and forth with geologists and stuff and then being able to be like hey, this is what we see, and then this is what our interpretations are, right, because I find a lot of times in other projects like it's you don't necessarily have the team that's able to do those things where it just ends up being that black box, here's a stat and we need an MRE and then you get what you get. But touchwood, I guess, building the foundation and kind of I think some of the work that we're doing with those section lines and building out the story.

Yes. So I want to -- for me, when I acquired this project, the first drill program, I asked Pete -- and I'm like, okay, what do you think is controlling high-grade mineralization. So what does that mean? Basically, where can we find the best parts of the system or the highest grade. So we have a theory. It still holds true to some extent, but year 2, Pete, what's controlling the high grade. Where do we find more of it. And then in Alpha Bowl, we hit 67 grams per ton gold, 4 grams per ton gold. Chicken Mountain has up to 200 grams per ton gold in drilling, but we see a lot of the 0.5 to 0.6, 0.7 to 0.4. And so at the end of the season, for Christmas, I'm going to ask Pete what's controlling the high-grade mineralization. And it's okay if we don't have the definitive answer. There are certain attributes that you look for, but that's the beauty of what these potential assays could yield is more data, more data, more data. And I guess I'd ask Pete what's controlling. But I would say, Rich, actually, even to you, in the Fort Knox like another deposits that you visited in this sort of deposit family -- are we going to just drive ourselves crazy trying to figure it out? Is it just a function of drilling it?

No, there's always something. It could be changed -- something as simple as changes in strike or changes in dip because at least in my opinion, you're talking about -- we just mentioned how this is 2, 3 kilometers of exhumation. This really structure and timing are keys. This isn't like at 2, 3 kilometers in a real brittle area, you'd see porphyry style or epithermal style mineralization that is more easy to understand structurally, Here, we're looking at fluids that have come into these rocks maybe because you heated them up when you put the intrusions into these but those fluids have not come out of those granites at least, in my opinion, because they also have a bunch of CO2 in these epithermal and porphyry deposits, you don't get a bunch of CO2 coming out of magmas at the shallow levels. So I would be looking at what you look at where you have regional fluids structurally controlled and simple things you might just see things like changes in strike and dip control where the high grade is. So you're not looking at zoning and temperature changes, really changes in structure anything that opens spaces that can get more fluid or maybe just even the change in chemistry, you're talking about more fine-grained intrusion phase and a more cost grained with enlists and more mafic material. Some of the chemical changes between phases may control where you get high grade versus low grade?

Excellent. Pete, what's controlling high grade.

It's tough answer Tony.

Step up, you're on record. The good news is it's recorded. So we can always.

I think I would sort of agree with Rich, it is going to be likely a structural component. And we've often looked at the differences in the vein orientation and the Chicken Mountain structure, and that's going to define a plunge, that plunge would be up to the northwest and that could be what it is that you're looking at kind of broad scale kind of plunging grade shoots. But they're very difficult to see. And that's why more drilling is really the key and to see if you can get some coherency like in terms of a plunge direction or something like that, like if you were to ask me like going to Chicken Mountain and there's obviously every grade from like point 1 to 200 grounds in there? And do I see any sort of pattern or like predictability of where those higher-grade things are going to be. And I'd say at this point, no, it certainly got to kind of blender into them and then figure out where they're going. They're not going to be like dimensions of like this extreme high grade sort of 1 gram-ish, 2 gram-ish things. I think both form coherent zones, they are aligned with corridors of more intense like vein development. And that's again the dilatancy and permeability that structural preparation. We'll predict those. But where it's really getting that -- those real bonanza grade things is going to be a bit more granular to figure out. They're going to occur within the 1 to 2-gram corridors, you'll see those higher grade plunging bodies, I would suspect. Interestingly, we don't see -- we talked a lot about this oxidation and things of that nature. I don't necessarily think we're seeing in any form of supergene gold enrichment associated with those extreme high grades. We do see, I think, some mobility of arsenic and mercury within that oxidized material, but not necessarily. I don't think it's moving significant amount of gold with it. The other thing I'm going to add, Ian, is when we start looking at some of the, I guess, gold department in terms of assaying and things of that nature, we are seeing multiple populations of gold occurrence. And we have a certain population that we see, particularly from doing met screen samples is like the presence of coarser gold, which is getting hung up on the plus fraction screens, which is contributing a large percentage of gold to that particular assay. And other samples, we don't see that at all. It's like almost nothing in that plus fraction. So why that is, why you're getting that potentially coarser more gold-rich fluids or vein or precipitation is also something that we can kind of try to work out. Thank you.

Thank you, Pete. We have another question here. Well, actually, before we go to the question, I wanted to ask, because you were talking about porphyry and epithermal, is -- I think, Rich, you mentioned -- so we're seeing chalcopyrite. We're seeing some porphyritic some epithermal type stuff. What is it -- what does that mean in relationship to the system? Is there the elusive porphyry at depth here?

Southwest Maska really is in the Kuskokwim itself a porphyry province. I wouldn't be surprised if some of that chalcopyrite is unrelated to the gold and may just be a little copper coming out of the intrusive, but well, it's hard to know.

The thing about Southwest Alaska other than Donlin, there really hasn't been a whole lot of exploration or drilling to that extent.

So, the Mercury antimony arsenic gold signature is throughout every occurrence in Southwest Alaska. So it's pretty regional and my gut feeling would it be, a lot of that is cooking up of some of that Kuskokwim sediment where you're getting those elements out of the sediments. But it really is you can't go anywhere in the Kuskokwim without finding that signature. And most of these are small occurrences just in the [ flush ], where you have an intrusive complex like Donlin or here at flat Chicken Mountain you really concentrate those metals in there. So the copper, I just don't know. My gut feeling is it could be something different.

Yes. Yes. I appreciate that. Okay. So going back to the question from one of the audience members here is in regards to, I may have said something along the lines of 200,000 meters of drilling would be required. I'm not sure, I quite -- I stated exactly in that fashion, if I did, I apologize. I was comparing our peers -- some of our peers, I should say, that's the amount of drilling that they required to get to something north of 5 million ounces. For total transparency right now, we do have ounces that are compliant, and we could technically publish an MRE. Does it capture all the ounces or some of the ounces? No, not yet. So the follow-up question was what key milestones like an initial resource, you expect well before the full 200,000 means. We -- our target is that we can to get something to meaningful with more drilling and how much more drilling? Well, we need the assays from this year to really inform us on that. But to put a very forward-looking statement, I think with something like an additional 30,000 meters of drilling or less, we can have a fairly significant mineral resource to kick things off. Will that get published? To be determined, but that is based on what we currently have drilled. We have engaged with an external independent to formulate that mineral resource estimate. And we do have ounces currently that, I would say, are quite compelling from a starting point. And to kind of loop back to the higher-grade mineralization bit. The good news is that heap leach mineralization and in conjunction with where the current gold price is, 0.5 gram per ton gold is high grade, especially when processed through via heap leach. So we collectively, as an industry, have to start wrapping our heads around $3,000 gold and what does that mean. So previously, your average grade for an open pit was around 0.98 gram per ton average grade for heap leach 0.4. That was using gold price below $2,000. Now where the gold price is now and as mines adjust accordingly, you're now going to be able to capture some of that lower grade material. So heap leaching. I was at a conference recently, and I asked there were several CEOs sitting with me, including some very notable investors. And I said, would you take a 2-gram per ton refractory deposit, would you take a 1.5 gram million operation or would you take a 0.5 gram per ton heap leach operation and CapEx factored into everyone's question, a refractory deposit, we're talking billions of dollars of CapEx, $1 million operations typically starts around $1 billion. And your heap leach depending on the size of the pad, $300 million, $200 million, $500 million capital required to get your mind off and running. It is extremely still sensitive these days, let's just say. I think we're going to end there. And there can be the opportunity for more questions vis-a-vis the tectonic e-mail. So I'm just going to post in the chat here in our e-mail address, the collective one is [email protected]. Do you have any follow-up questions, comments or would like to subscribe for an e-mail list. Please feel free to e-mail us. We love engaging not only with our current team, but also with the investment and our shareholders. And so thank you again for taking time out of your day. I think the attendance. I've actually never seen an attendance stay so strong from start to finish. And so I want to thank you for enduring this geological discussion, which sometimes, yes, it can be dry, but for us that love rocks, it's quite intriguing and passionate. Thank you to each one of my team members and the technical advisers for also making this year a success in participating on our call. Stay tuned for more assay results. And happy holidays, everyone. I just wanted to acknowledge that it's the end of the year is upon us, the holidays are upon us. And however you choose to celebrate that we wish you all the best and a very successful and healthy closing out to the 2025 year. Thank you, everyone.