For this episode of DD-on-the-GO!, Steve heads into the Northwest Territories to see a tungsten project that has gone untouched by a drill for 44 years.
Long before Rackla Metals (TSXV: RAK) arrived, Union Carbide drilled roughly 27,000 metres across the property, carried out engineering, metallurgy and environmental work, and even applied to put part of the project into production. Rackla estimates that recreating that historical work today would cost roughly $25 million. Then tungsten prices surged roughly sixfold.
Now Rackla is back on the ground with a 10,000 metre drill program designed to answer one critical question: can the historical work be confirmed? If the twin holes reproduce the old results, the company can begin incorporating decades of historical drilling into a modern technical picture of the project.
Steve walks the old roads, visits historic drill collars, examines the tungsten mineralization firsthand and sits down with the team rebuilding a camp on ground they believe has a much longer future ahead of it.