Find8,I do not see your point. IF the veins are pinched and thin...

Find8,

I do not see your point. IF the veins are pinched and thin and you are using large tracked equipment you are still forced to extract large amounts of rock. I assumed that much of the ore in the CTO vein systems is contained within those vein systems and is NOT disseminated outside of the veins.

My memory says that the CTO deposit is mesothermal and that the gold is concentrated in veins with the surrounding rock being barren. My recollection has always been that all of the drilling was directed to finding "veins" and not disseminated gold. In the earlier phases of the CTO development my sense was that the "development ore" was the stuff that the early miners had partially "high graded" BUT the current development is below? or away? from early mining activity. So I am missing the point about this "development ore"

There were also photos of abandoned high grade vein systems (at depth) that CTO published years ago where the veins were clearly wide and visible. Can someone explain where and why there is so much low grade "development ore"?