A post from the other side courtesy of Apavlovic who visited the site last week.
I visited Deli Jovan (Rusman) on Thursday f last week with a couple of friends who were my guide and frankly could not have done it without them and their ff road Lada Niva. What an experience that was and I pay my tribute to the Russian off road vehicle despite its looks and extreme lack of comfort but its amazing ability in that terrain is stunning.
Anyway enough about cars but a bit more about my friends. I d not know what their profession is English language but will describe their activity. They are responsible for detailed mapping of the terrain. So for eg. If you buy land they would come up and measure coordinates and determine length and width precise locatin gradient etc. Same for roads, footpaths etc and this information is then entered into maps and these drawings are then used for submitting applications etc. Why is this important?
These were the guys who were contracted by the Belgrade Company to do the work for Reservoir Gold JV Company in Belgrade. They took me to Rusman to show me what I called little pits and excavations which they were asked to map out the work which was subsequently used for submitting applications for exploration permit. The maps which they produced ate 3D n a scale of 1:10 or 1:50 (cannot remember which) which means basically detailed terrain mapping every 10 or 50metres. Presumably these shots are used to produce details images and maps so they can start plotting detail and planning sampling and future excavations
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First let me tell you about the road. Set off via Zajecar all fine up to Seliste. It then gets narrower but the good news was that I spotted a school bus in the village ( well I would call it a hamlet as it had no more then @20 houses) which means road kept open in winter. Keep forgetting the name of the place but anyway when we reached this place it was time for me to leave my rented Scoda Fabia and jump into Lada (see pictures). Could have perhaps made it in a conventional car but would have been bad news for the suspension. It was very dry and if it had rained I would have said no chance. The pictures of the road I have taken go on for @4km. No panic. There is a better road which we could have taken ( we used on return trip) which was better and shorter before we hit gravel. I can now understand why sampling was not taken in December. They would have had no chance - simple as that. Any rain or snow you need a good and narrow 4 x 4.
The road to Gindusa is better I am told but I have not been there. It is @5 miles away and frankly once you have sine one excavation you have seen them all. I was also told there was less activity at Gindusa and the only difference was the rock was predominantly dark unlike Rusman where it is more brown in colour. I tok some samples so when I land at Gatwick hopefully this would be picked up by scanners and IMO this would be a good sign LOL. Rock samples attached seemed to have a lot of sparkle in them and I think these are quarts minerals. In fact you could see the sparkle in the soil which was quite strange and I have not seen it before. However when reading this please be warned: I am not a geologist (far from it) and this is probably a quite nae and amateurish observation.
In terms of possible questions you are probably asking yourself and I would like to say that the climate here is not as severe as it is a little further south. Yes they get lots of snow and cold but roads are kept open and hence mining can be done 365 days but I am convinced that the last stretch of road would need IMPROVEMENT. I will not pst the bits in red.
With regard to sampling I have seen one excavation which looked quite fresh see image 689. You can see some solidified mud to the decide which means must have been taken when it was taken recently or the ground beneath must be wet. In my view this must confirm samples have been taken quite recently. I thought the ground conditins were excellent and I would suspect the company will take the next steps and re open sme of the mines.
It was a very interesting to see. Lots of small pits and what I call holes dug out everywhere. An ancient wall you can see in the photo must have been used a long time ago with some purpose! What is also interesting to see and hopefully you can spot this in my photos is that a lot of mining seems t have taken place at surface level and you can see little terraces were formed on the hills. Des this suggest the possibility of larger open pit mining being one possibility. It is also worth remembering the distance between Rusman and Gindusa is 8km so potentially a large area if veins stretch that far!
At end the day I took the guys to the most fantastic barbecue Zajecar. Wish I took some photos of that to envy you all!
Pay attention to image 689. In my opinion this sample was taken recently. You can tell it was muddy and grass has not grown back which to me suggest quite recent activity.
http://img39.imageshack.us/g/dsc0207j.jpg/