A Fireside Chat With Kit Marrs and Aaron Schutt

0:04 Okay, as folks start filtering into the room, I will say good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where in the world you're signing in from. I did see logins from all the way from Alaska to Abu Dhabi, so thank you so much for spending your early morning or your late evening with us today, really appreciate it. I'm lucky enough today to be joined by Kit Mars, CEO and future executive chairman of Alaska Silver and director and incoming CEO, Aaron Shutt. Gentlemen, how are you today? Hey. Great. Good to see you, Romil. Thanks for saving it. No, I'm excited for this conversation. I think it's fun that we're able to have this chat. We start the transition period. Here's how today's going to work just for the folks in the room. I've got some questions. I'm really just moderating, so it's more to get Kit and Aaron chatting more than anything else. And obviously to introduce you guys, for those who don't know, to Aaron, but also for Kit to speak to ongoing operations. So those questions should hopefully cover a lot of what you want to know coming out of today's event. But that being said, this is interactive, So there is a chat button at the bottom of your screen. Please press it and ask questions at any point during today's event. We'll try to get to as many as we can. But if for whatever reason I don't get to your question, I run out of time, it's off topic, it's already been repeated, please do watch the replay, but I'll also make sure that transcript gets to the Alaska Silver team and they'll be able to answer your questions separately. I should also note there's a request meeting button at the bottom of your screen, kind of the far left of that panel at the bottom. Please do click that button and I'll try and connect you with the Alaska Silver team following today's event. If you have any follow-up questions, I'm sure they'd love to meet

1:34 with you. Last boring piece of housekeeping before I get into Protein. This is being recorded and will be available for replay before end of day Eastern time today. It'll be both on the same URL, but also on Six's YouTube channel. But okay, boring stuff's over. Kit, I wanted to start with you. I know you've been the face of this project for quite literally decades. And this week you announced you're handing the CEO role to Aaron in October. Walk us through, if you wouldn't mind, And Aaron, feel free to jump in at the end. How this transition came together? Just give people some color on it. Yeah, it's a great, great question, Romeo.

2:10 Been known Aaron for a couple of years. Doyon, we're in the Doyon region and Doyon is one of the largest of the Alaska regional native corporations. And so started a few meetings about a year ago discussing with Aaron some of the details and how to best go about our next, probably one of our next big announcements. We've been working on engineering for a access route from Illinois Creek to the Yukon River, and so we had a few meetings strategy on how best to do that. We then followed up with a number of local community meetings throughout the middle Yukon, starting at Galena, south to Nulato and Caltech. And during earlier in this year, when we were having some of that follow-up work, Aaron announced that he was retiring from Doyon after 20 years.

3:02 And so that led one thing to another. And during those discussions, we finally said, Aaron, what do you think you'd like to do after you retire?

3:12 And one thing led to another. And the end result is we asked Aaron if he'd like to join the company as CEO and he accepted and that's where we are today. And it's really a great thing. I'm very excited about it and very pleased. Aaron,

3:30 Does that sound like what happened? Yeah, that's pretty similar to my recollection. And I appreciate the chance to meet everybody today virtually and talk a little bit about the transition here. But I am retired from Doyon, but it was not my intention to retire from work. So I was always going to be looking for something to do. And the project here with Alaska Silvers in the Doyon region, as Kit said, and I've traveled all over the Doyon region over the years.

4:03 Part of my family, my late grandmother's family, is from that area of our enormous region, so I'm pretty familiar with those communities in that area and really looking forward to continuing to work in the Doyon region was one aspect of my excitement about this. And then getting to know Kit and Joan and the whole team at Alaska Silver was another important part of that decision.

4:27 Awesome. And Kit, I know with a solid company, solid projects in a tier 1 jurisdiction. To some degree, you had your pick of mining executives for this job. So I'll give you a chance to make Aaron Blush here for a second. What was it about Aaron specifically that made him the right person to lead Alaska Silver into this next phase coming up? Okay, well, I'll try not to embarrass Aaron with this, but as we had a number of meetings and got to know each other well,

4:54 it was really clear that Aaron is extremely well-known, respected in the Alaska business community, for starters. Doyana has been very active on the North Slope, drilling in natural resources, and a few other areas which I'll let Aaron dive into. But it was clear that he also had some very similar ideas on how to manage a company. We really feel that our team is excellent, and so we wanted to explain that and have been introducing Darren to our team going farther. His integrity is second to none in Alaska. Very well known, very well respected and I really didn't think he would, he had a number of things that he could have chosen to do and really very grateful that he chose to join Alaska Silver.

5:50 Awesome, I appreciate that very much. Now, Aaron, I will jump to you for this next one just to get into a bit of your history so people can kind of get some color for it. You spent 20 years at Doyan, including 15. That's as president and CEO of a family of companies doing over 500 million dollars in revenue. So certainly no slouch. I'd love if you could just help folks in the audience understand, people who don't know Doyon, a sense of what the organization is and what you were able to build there. Yeah, thank you. I think based on your introduction where people are, they probably don't know a lot about, some people on this call don't know a lot about Alaska Native corporations, but we were formed in 1971 as an alternative to the reservation-based land settlements for Indigenous groups in the United States.

6:38 And Congress created 12 regional corporations and over 200 village corporations to receive the lands and settlement with the United States government. So Doyon is the regional corporation for interior Alaska, which is an enormous region. It's the size of France

6:57 in land area, for some perspective. Within that there are 35 communities and there used to be about 35 village corporations. There are now 25 based on some mergers. So each community had its own village corporation. Doyle had about 9,061

7:18 shareholders, all Alaska Native at the start, 1971. We've grown to about 20,500 when I left the company a few weeks ago. We have 12.2 million acres of land entitlement. So none of the Alaska Silver Project is on Doyon land or impacts Doyon land, but it's obviously very close to some of our communities and the land base that Doyon has. So Congress told Alaska Native Corporations to go run for-profit businesses. That was one of the other unique part of the model there. And Doyon got into the resource industries early. We were selected about probably a third of our land for mineral potential, and had a lot of exploration in the early days of INCSA, 1970s and 80s, and there was kind of a dry spell until recently.

8:11 But we got into oil and gas on the North Slope a long time ago. Our most successful

8:17 business is Doyle Drilling, which owns 9 large Arctic drilling rigs and does a lot of the work on Alaska's North Slope and sometimes other parts of the state as well. But We've also built out a lot of other resource-based industries, pipeline company, own some pipeline interests,

8:38 used to have an engineering company, own some camps, have a company called Fairweather that actually works some for Alaska Silver and does a lot of resource support and kind of across the state multi-industries but heavily oil and gas. So New Orleans is a pretty large Alaska for Alaska-based business and across several different industries. I've talked about natural resources, but we also own the utility system on the 3 army bases that they privatized in 2008 and 9 and some government contracting businesses and IT and construction, small tourism business heavily centered on Denali National Park, and just a few other things here and there. So it was a lot of fun to work at Doyon for 20 years with that diverse portfolio of businesses. There was always something going on, usually good, but sometimes

9:33 challenges as well. So, and then a lot of interactions with the federal government on land management and finishing up our ranks and entitlements. So 50, what are we at 52 years in, we still going on still owed a few hundred thousand acres of the 12.2 million that it selected. So a lot of work with federal agencies over the years as well. Well, that's great. It sounds like you have an opportunity to wear a lot of hats, which obviously is important as a junior mining CEO. I want to get into one specific part of your experience that I think is really interesting. During your time leading Doyon, the corporation built a long-term partnership with Tectonic Metals at Flat. Structures it as a discovery to production lease that aligns

10:15 the native landowner interests with the Junior Explorer right from those earliest stages. What did building that kind of a partnership teach you about what it takes to advance a gold project in Alaska?

10:27 Yeah, thanks. I've had some experience with junior mining companies on Doyle on land going back almost the full 20 years. In a couple cases we've actually invested in the junior miner that's on Doyle on ground and Tectonic was the one of the later examples of that, but the first example was with full metal minerals up in the 40 mile country years ago with Rob McLeod. And so watching what the junior companies, the challenges they have in fundraising every year, the Logistics of working in remote Alaska are familiar to us, but I'm learning a little bit about that. Tectonics specifically, this was their fifth doyenne agreement. So they were up in the 40 mile country long before they were at flat. They did some work at 70 mile on some doyenne ground near their Tibbs project.

11:19 They still have at what we call Cary Creek, another property called Mount Harper and then the fifth property, Road Metals, which is right near Northway Village on the Alaska Highway system there.

11:31 So it was a couple of those projects in where Doyon decided that we would invest in Tectonic. It was based on their work with our communities and the work with Doyon on the projects. So some of our experience with the junior miners have been less positive than that one, I'd say, to put it nicely, I guess. And then just really the importance to us is the work with the communities,

11:58 which going back to Alaska Silver, that's one of the things that Kit and his team have done exceptionally well is working with our Doyle communities. It can be hard to get to know people from rural Alaska, especially in the resource industry when you're, you know, there's, they always envision big pits and, you know, impact on subsistence and things and talking people through what a project actually is and getting into those communities early and often is super important. I think the first time we met with Kit, I think we're having a steak lunch at Club Paris in Anchorage here, the oldest restaurant in town. And in talking about that outreach, that was the very first thing. They were outreaching to Doyon and have used a really good consultant, Joey Huntington, to do some of the work in the communities here, help with those relationships.

12:52 And again, that's a super important part of the work in rural Alaska that we learned from working with junior miners and continuing all the way through with Alaska Silver here. Well, I appreciate that. And I do wanna kind of delve deeper into that same topic for a second. Cause I know from my research, Aaron, that you're a Quake on Athabaskan, you're raised in Tok, and you spent your career, obviously, you've just talked about working with communities across Interior and Western Alaska. How do you think that background

13:22 shapes or help shapes the way that you're going to approach relationships with stakeholders around Illinois Creek specifically?

13:29 There's 2 components. One is continuing the work with those local communities. And those are all Doyon shareholders. So the closest one is Caltech. And I was just in Caltech a few months ago with Doyon. And then Nulato is the next closest. And a lot of family history in Nulato. My late great grandmother was originally from Nulato.

13:53 Her daughter, my late grandmother, was the very first person born in Galena, another community that's close by. And my parents actually helped open the state schools in the late 1960s in Nolato. So I haven't spent a ton of time in those communities myself, but some family history there. I did grow up in rural Alaska though. I grew up in Toke on the far side of the Doyon region, Alaska highway town. And for those familiar with mining in Alaska, the Manchot mine,

14:25 my moose camp growing up was at the toe of the hill where the peak deposit sits on the top of the hill. So I've told people, I'm pretty sure that I probably stood on that without knowing anything about what was under the ground. Because when we were having not so good luck, my dad would say to my twin brother and me, walk up the hill and look all the way down the valley.

14:49 So I've spent a lot of time in rural Alaska and I very much value rural Alaska. I'm headed out on the Yukon River this coming weekend, go visit relatives in Tanana and spend some time on the Yukon.

15:04 I think that helps our project with Alaska Silver that lifetime of relationships and hopefully some credibility built up with people when you talk through various issues. And then the other part is just the long work with DOION, with state regulators and state government representatives and the federal folks that we mentioned as well. We've done a lot of work over the years with many different agencies at the state and federal governments on the work that DOAYON does? Also, I'll interject a little bit at Aaron's last comment there. Very important. As a company, Alaska Silver has 2 great resources. We won't spend time on those today. One was the past producing Illinois Creek mine that we're looking at. Is this something that we can put back into production?

15:55 And it's all on state land. So the interaction with the state government is very important. We've been doing that for the last 10, 15 years. But going forward, we will start to have some interaction with the US Corps of Engineers. And I think Aaron's relationship there will be very important And that will really help us move the project ahead.

16:21 Great. And Aaron, I got one more for you before I bring Kip back in to talk about his history. I know you joined the board as recently as May. Within a month, You agreed to take the CEO job. For everybody I talked to building up to this interview, it sounds like you could have done anything in Alaska after Doyon, really. I'm looking for your next spot. What convinced you this was the opportunity worth moving past retirement into? Yeah, thanks.

16:49 There were a couple really important things. I'll start with the things that were very easy to say no to. There were a lot of opportunities. Everyone wanted me to run for some kind of political office up here. And that was really easy to say no. Sure.

17:07 But based on my history, I wanted to stay in the resource industry. And a lot of work with Doyon over the years with relationships and it's just something I enjoy doing as well. So the things I kind of expected some opportunities related to oil and gas would probably bubble up but they didn't and that's okay because I met Kit and had some great conversations. And I really do

17:37 strongly believe in the potential of interior Alaska and the resource industry. And we're just starting to touch that potential across the region. I think it's critically important for the Alaska Native communities that we build some cash economy out in rural Alaska. And so the Alaska Silver Project fits right into that category of things that will help build that part of the interior of the Doyon region on the cash economy side. And then what's really important to me and my wife and our family is the people. We wanna work with and for good people with good

18:16 ethical and business practices. And that's something that we saw with Kit and the Alaska Silver team that made the decision quite easy. And then the last thing that was just a happy coincidence for us, Kit and Jonah from Tucson, and my wife's from Tucson. She grew up in Tucson. So going home to Tucson every now and then, we have a house down there, is a very convenient little bit of a decision as well.

18:44 Oh, That's lovely. Yeah, I think personally Tucson is the best of Arizona, which is a fun state to be in generally, so I'm glad. Kid, if you don't mind, I'm going to wax historical with you for a second, because I know first walked the ground, Anaconda's project geologist in 1981, 1st built the camp and airstrip. 46 years later, which sounds like a crazy number of years, what does it mean to you to see where the district stands today?

19:10 Well, it is very exciting and very fulfilling to see where the project is today. This was really a true grassroots discovery, Greenfield discovery back in the early 1980s. That was actually a partnership between Anaconda Copper Company, who was then a part of Atlantic Richfield and a joint venture with another Alaskan Native Corporation, Cook Inlet Region, known as CERI. And so that actually introduced me to the existence of Alaskan Native corporations. The discovery was great. There's a copper deposit right on top that was the first discovery. Soon after that, Illinois Creek, which is about 10 miles away.

20:00 And then 2 more after that, the Hunker Gold Deposit, which we haven't spent too much time, a little bit of drilling, but a great opportunity. And the fourth one was just starting to be discovered when Anaconda closed in 1984, 85, and that's Water Pump Creek. So we were able to Have a lot of the information

20:21 Since I worked there Nate Brewers one of our directors was the geologist that actually drilled the discovery holes at Water Pump Creek in 1984 or something like that. So then there was a period when the project moved ahead pretty quickly and Company out of Denver USMX Dakota mining took it over from Siri and actually opened the 1st

20:47 Gold silver oxide heap leach deposit in Alaska timing is everything and won't go through the long history, but basically they opened and went in production when gold hit the all-time post-Nixon low of $274 an ounce. So that is the main reason the deposit was not successful. Lucky for us it sat dormant for quite a few years and then Our partner and chief exploration officer, Joe Pickenbrock, was able to, worked on the reclamation at Illinois Creek, and went out and staked the claims on snowshoes. So that's, we did it the old fashioned way. Joan and I got involved a year or 2 later and stake the northern half of the district where Round Top and Hunker are. And then Joe and Joan and I put together our properties.

21:39 We quit claimed everything into the

21:43 Western Alaska copper and gold and to privately for about 10 years. And then a turning point was in November of 2021, the decision was made to really move the project ahead. And that's when we went public on the Toronto Venture Exchange.

22:00 Now we have 2 drills turning as we speak, a great team in place. We've developed our own logistics management personnel from the ground up. We have a great technical team led by Sage Langston Stewart, who started with us 7 years ago and now is our principal geologist. So, Joan and I look back, it's a tremendous team, a tremendous project, and this is one of the best years that we have planned. And it's really exciting to look back and see that transition. So I wanted to wait until everything was perfect before we turned it over to a new CEO and that's where we are today. So hopefully Aaron agrees with that and I'm sure he will, he'll be coming up to visit, meet everybody on site here in the next coming weeks.

22:48 How exciting. And I'll take that actually as the perfect transition to go from facing back into facing forward, because I'm curious to talk about the future of my next couple of questions. And Aaron, as a person coming into the role, that goes to you. Looking ahead to October and beyond,

23:04 what's your vision really for taking Alaska Silver from resource expansion into that crucial pre-development phase?

23:12 Yeah, I think I have 20 years of as aggressive as reasonably possible growth at Doyon. I think that's the overall message with the district there and a couple of prospects that are furthest along at Alaska Silvers project is know what your limitations are and be as aggressive as you can to keep things moving along. When times are good, you just can't burn daylight in Alaska, as we say. It's a big place where the summertime is when you get things done, so you've got to plan all winter and get things ready to go. And that'll be October 1st, the drilling season will be either done or very close to done, but getting everything set up for the next year and hit the ground running as early as possible for the summer season of 27

24:04 will be very important and learning from from Kit and getting to know the team there better and understanding what decisions need to be made. I think Kit probably already knows this but I'm very collaborative with the team. I like to learn from everybody else around me. Hopefully everybody on the team is smarter than me. That makes me look better. That's been my experience at Doyle.

24:28 And looking forward to really advancing the project into the next stages as quickly as we can. I love the phrase, don't burn any daylight, but I imagine there's no shortage of daylight in June in Anchorage. Yeah, if you want to book a tea time at 10pm, you can right now. That would be a bit disorienting for me, but it does sound fun. Now, Kit, just for folks who may not have caught this in the press release, you're not going anywhere. You're stepping into the executive chairman role, effective function immediately after Aaron pops in. Now, I know it's early, and I'm sure there's still conversations ongoing, but what are first thoughts on how you and Aaron plan to divide responsibilities to keep the technical momentum going? It's a great question, and we will work through this as we go ahead.

25:15 Aaron and I have got to know each other pretty well and some have no concerns that we will be able to work together and come up with a plan. I see my role is staying involved, maybe not on a day-to-day basis, but certainly weekly and be there to facilitate things, helping Aaron with the company, answering questions,

25:37 bringing him up to speed on the technical side. We have an excellent technical team, as I mentioned, Sage, Lanks and Stewart. I will continue on from the technical side, Joe Pekinbrock as well. And Peter McGaugh, I mentioned, is a technical advisor, but he's been very close to us on this project. Good friend of mine, and he is the world's expert in carbonate replacement deposits, exactly what we have at Illinois Creek. So we have a great technical team

26:08 that Aaron will get to work with. And then what I really see is Aaron taking us into the next step from a corporate standpoint, working with the state and Alaska governments to expand the project in the best way that he and the board decides on how we should move forward. And we'll learn that as we go.

26:30 Awesome, I appreciate that. It's good just to even get initial thinking I think is helpful for the folks in the room. But Kit I want to talk, you mentioned this and I had the pleasure to talk to you recently about it, but drills have started turning at Illinois Creek last week. 2 rigs, 6,000 meters, most aggressive season in the company's history. If you could, just for the folks here, give us a lay of the land on what's being targeted this summer. What are we looking to find?

26:55 Well, it is an excellent season, though I must say that probably back in the Anaconda days we may have even had more drill rigs going, maybe 3, but it's hard to remember that far back. So this is very important. We fully funded from a financing that we completed last October with Cantor Fitzgerald, one of the very prominent New York investment banking houses.

27:20 That's gave us the ability to plan well in advance. So we have 2 drill rigs, we own our own equipment, but we don't have to lease anything or go out in the market. We'll try to bid against others, which is what's going on today with all the activity in Lower 48, Canada, and Alaska. So we have 1 drill rig that started about 4 or 5 days ago at our new discovery called Silver Sage, just south of the airstrip that's above my head in the photo of Illinois Creek Camp. So that we're well into our first hole. The goal there is really to define what is the Silver sage mineralization, which way does it go? And we have 5 or 6 good hits on it, but we want to find the thick zones. And the goal is to turn that into a third resource in the next year or 2.

28:15 And then the second drill rig just started yesterday up at our Water Pump Creek deposit. We're actually drilling on the northern extension, Water Pump Creek North. That drill rig is underway. We'll spend a few holes there and then move it, oh, just a few hundred yards, 100 meters to the south, and work on the Waterpump Creek South extension. But we're not going to just stop with that. We have a very full technical team. We've expanded it by a factor of 3 or 4 from previous years. We're going to be doing the Silver Sage discovery showed us that we should not ignore boots on the ground, old-fashioned exploration prospecting. So we have teams Expanding that around the airstrip area, around the Illinois Creek mine itself, and also up at Round Top, which is our copper deposit, but more importantly, it intrudes into the same carbonate rocks that host Illinois Creek and Waterpump Creek. And that prospect is called TG North. I think it's a lookalike to Water Pump Creek. We'll do a lot of work there and hopefully, and probably not this year, but next year, turn that into another drilling area. So a lot of things going on, a lot of baseline studies working on the getting ready to apply for a right-of-way permit with the state of Alaska. So we have a fishing game coming out shortly from Alaska, I think it'd be their 6th or 7th straight year.

29:46 Fish habitat, We have wetlands consultant coming out in July, cultural resources in July, and continuing our engineering work. So a lot of things going on. It is a great season. Great. I appreciate that. I do want to zoom in, actually, on Silver Sage for my last question for you here, Kit. First of all, so unbearably cute that your geologist name is Sage. I think that's too fun. But Silver Sage was a blind discovery last year about 3 miles south of Waterfront Creek as you said. And it's getting half the meters roughly this season. Specifically on that one, what does success look like by the end of this summer? So once we have burned through some of the daylight, what does success look like at Silver Sage? Well, first of all, we'll be doing some wide space drilling so we can understand the three-dimensional geology below the Silver Sage area, which as you can see from my photo behind me there, we have a lot of green stuff and so it's very tough to learn geology without drilling.

30:44 So We're going to do that. We have a number of geophysical anomalies that one came from the USGS and state of Alaska survey. That was the geophysical survey is completed about a year and a half ago. Test that. The goal here and what success would look like is to get a couple of significant intercepts of the lead, zinc, silver mineralization. We'll define significant when we find it, but a very interesting Silver Sage is the first time we've seen Gold and Copper show up along with the Silver, Lead and Zinc. So it's a new part of the metal zoning program. And if we can have some good intercepts that will then lead us to more of a resource definition program next year.

31:33 Great, I appreciate that. And Aaron, my last question before we get into the great stuff that's in the chat and sent in advance over email. I do want my last question to go to the incoming CEO. For shareholders and prospective shareholders, I know there's both in the room watching this transition. What should they be expecting from Alaska Silver over the next 12 months? Well, we'll start by acknowledging that transitions can be hard. And I'm just helping the new Doyon CEO as we had a long plan transition there. So I kind of understand it from the other side a little bit, but collaboration with Kit and the team on this transition, which is, we have a few months here to continue to work on that. And again, I think you'll find that the plan going forward is gonna look like a lot of the plans that Kit has laid out here and in the past.

32:26 And you can expect to, for those existing shareholders, you can probably expect to meet me in the next, what, 6 to 9 months. If you're a community stakeholder, you'll probably expect to see me much sooner than that here in Alaska. And then for prospective shareholders, I think any time that they want to talk more with Kit and or me, I think we'd be very, very happy to have those conversations. In terms of on the ground, I think you heard about the exploration program this year, and then we're going to be early in my days as CEO, planning for what's coming for the next summer, and we'll have probably some results by then or some thought about.

33:11 What those results might be and planning for the best next steps, which obviously in this district includes some of that earlier phase exploration, some of the prospects Kit already mentioned. So kind of balancing how do you continue to advance your prospects with the more defined mineral resources at Illinois Creek, at Waterfront Creek, and Silver Sage. So, trying to find the balance on how do you keep all those things going at the same time. We'll have some months to do that over the winter. That's great to get some exercise on your plate spinning hands. I think that's fun. So I will say as we transition into now the audience questions, I do want to remind everybody in the spirit of Aaron saying that you know you'd love to meet with shareholders, There's that request meeting button at the bottom of the screen. Please do press that if you'd like to get in contact with the team. I'll get you in touch with Kit Aaron and the team at Alaska Silver so you can be able to meet with them. One question that came in over email, I'm going to combine with a question that came in the chat.

34:17 Somebody wanted to know generally if there's been an update or if they can give an update on progress towards a PEA. And then somebody in the chat asked, will Aaron's time as CEO change any timelines or should we expect recent guidance to remain? So I'll kind of throw those as one question on general update on timelines for MECID. Yeah, I'll touch on it first and then turn it over to Aaron. So, you know, PEA is a preliminary economic analysis. It's something that we would like to do on 1 or both of our resources, Water Pump Creek and Illinois Creek. But a PA involves quite a bit of engineering. We have a lot of engineering background and all the records from when the Illinois Creek mine was in production that we received from the state of Alaska that we're working on now. So from an engineering PEA standpoint, Illinois Creek is probably further advanced.

35:12 Water Pump Creek has a great resource, extremely high grade, but we haven't had the chance to do any geotechnical work there. And so that is really a required precursor to a PEA. But I think one of the things I'd like to mention is, haven't really discussed today, I was very impressed when I found out that Aaron has a master's degree in civil engineering. So he really brings an engineering focus to the company that we haven't had in the past. We have a good team and from a technical side, we're all geologists. So we tend to think of exploration and geology. So as we move ahead and make that decision when the time is right, we need some more engineering data. I'll be working with Aaron to get him up to speed on a lot of the historical work, and then rely on his engineering background and insights on.

36:08 That will really make the decision on what areas we move ahead, what areas do we need to expand on, and look forward to working with an engineer on that. I haven't had that ability to do that in the past. So. And actually jumping off that, Aaron, I'll give you a chance to speak on it because somebody in the chat said the same thing. They said, they noted you have a civil engineering background, they did their homework, and built a remote power plant business at Doyon. They wanna know, will those skills help in developing Water Pump Creek and Illinois Creek, and how? Yeah, I'm smiling because most people don't wanna work with engineers kit. Most people want to run like they're going to the dentist. At Doyon for a long time, I've talked about project management, the executive team there.

37:00 Most everything you do in corporate America's project management. So you've got, you can focus on your scope, but you also have a schedule and a budget and all 3 of those things plus safety and some other important aspects make up the project management. So I do look forward to getting to know this project better and bringing what project management skills I might have to help make that the best plan and the most efficient plan and keep things on schedule. So I do have some history. The privatization, what became Doyon Utilities of the Army Utility Assets was a super large project that I worked on early in my tenure at Doyon. But we've also had many projects over the years that are very large. So the rig 26 was largest drill rig in North America was the last rig Doyon built a few years ago.

37:58 And that had plenty of challenges come up, including COVID, right at the end of that. So I'm very familiar with working with a team to get through large and challenging, complex projects, and look forward to bringing some of that skill set to bear here. Awesome, Aaron. Oh, sorry, go for it, Ken, if you got something. Yeah, Aaron, you might touch on it's not, it's I wouldn't say totally unrelated, but very far from the metal industry that you were involved in a data center on the North Slope that has just broke ground under construction. And that's example of building a project in Alaska in far Northern Alaska, which is much more extreme weather. But Maybe a few comments on that, how you saw that come about.

38:50 Yeah, those, well, the data center hasn't quite broken ground. The methanol plant on the North Slope has, so that was another investment, that same thing, same family investments, McKinley's Nano Fund too, that Doyon was the largest LP and actually a small part of the GP on that. And it's just an example of how relationships really matter in Alaska. We're a very large state with a small population. And opportunities in Alaska often come from knowing the right people and having conversations at Coffee House or wherever they might arise. And then really, you have to sort through a lot of different examples and opportunities before the right fit comes along. But when they do, we often have the best opportunities in Alaska because we're so underdeveloped, underexplored and tremendous opportunities.

39:48 And I've been saying for the last few years that mining and mining exploration is the next 10 years in Alaska. There's so many different opportunities with critical minerals And Doyon has another example we haven't talked about with partnering with the MDF group out of Australia to do generative exploration all across the Doyon region, state ground and Doyon ground. Alley corporation is another partner down in the Aleutians. And the same idea of what people used to be doing in Alaska when KITT was first out with Anaconda on Illinois Creek, which is doing that generative exploration and finding the next best targets across the state. So Again, there are many examples of how things come together. At the data center was some conversations I had with Rob Gillam early on, and then that project, but we're just kind of a small part of that at Doyon, a very large, very important project to be a major user of North Slope gas.

40:51 It's a defined resource. It's been re-injected in the ground how many more times at Prudhoe Bay than it probably should have. And then the opportunity to participate in the AI and tech revolution that's currently going on and bringing some of that work to Alaska was another exciting part of that. These are national level types of opportunities that Doyon has had the opportunity to participate in periodically over the years. No, great. I appreciate that extra color in the background. I think that's helpful. Enio from the chat wants to ask about a whole different part of being CEO, which you touched on earlier, but I'd love if you could expand here. He says, being CEO of a junior public company means meeting shareholders. How do you plan to do that? And have you done anything like that in the past?

41:38 I've had lots of experience meeting with shareholders, but our Alaska Native shareholders are a little different. So the 20,500 I mentioned earlier, the median shareholder owns 100 shares, just like I do in Doyon. But kind of the concept is the same, that you have a lot of stakeholders, and in the Doyon region it's important for us to have those face-to-face meetings and then virtual meetings as well. People want to know what you're doing, what you plan to do, what's gone well, what's not gone well. How do you keep things moving forward? They just have a desire to know. And I think it's really important to have those frequent conversations with your stakeholders and share as much as you reasonably can and try to be as transparent as you can. That's The approach we've had at Doyon for a long time, predating me for sure, but certainly tried to keep that up over the last 15, 20 years.

42:39 And I think Kit and I are already starting to work on schedules of some travel for the fall and winter time to get in front of people. I do know a few of the Alaska Silver shareholders already, which is a nice coincidence. So some of those relationships are already started, but I know there are many others that will continue to have to develop and look forward to meeting everyone in person. Awesome. I'm sure I'll see you on the conference circuit at some point. Some of those late nights. John from the chat wants to know, including partners, etc. How many employees does Doyon have roughly? Oh, that's a hard question to answer because our business is highly seasonal. I say about 1500 to 2000, but the reality is on the North Slope, we're busiest in the winter. So for example, the pipeline company, Doyle Energy Services, this time of year, maybe about 50 full time year round, but it'll swell up to 600 to 700 in the winter on a big year.

43:44 Same thing in our drilling company, most active in the winter. Now, in reverse, the construction segment and the tourism segment, tourism in particular in Alaska is 100 day season, so they're just starting to get going right now. So that The overall company, some of the businesses are very steady, like Doyle Island Utilities has roughly 200 employees. Doyle Island Drilling goes up and down a little bit with ice road season, but it's a steady employer of 300 to 500. Across the company, it just kind of varies on the seasonal aspect. Great, I appreciate that. Kit, I'll throw into you, this is from Jacqueline in the chat, obviously you have not put out the PEA yet, So I hope everybody in the audience keeps that in mind. But their question was, they assume Illinois Creek remains profitable at pulled back silver prices. Obviously, the price of silver is still as high as it was at Halloween, but it's pulled back since January. And they're just looking to see that Illinois Creek is still profitable at these numbers?

44:48 Yeah, I'd just like to point out that of our 2 resources, the Waterpump Creek resource used a price, a silver price of $24 an ounce, and it looked very good at that price. We just put out in January, February, February I think, an updated resource for Illinois Creek. And that is because the original 2019, 2021 resource used gold at $1,600 an ounce and silver at 20. So both of those were pretty out of date with the current market. So the new resource, I believe, didn't go to spot prices, but we increased it quite a bit. And that increased the resource by a factor of almost probably about 75%, 80%.

45:38 So we have a few things to work on. The Gold Recovery is excellent. That's been known historically in the mid 90% range. Silver is a little more difficult. At Illinois Creek, some of it is oxidized. So historically, silver was so low when the mine was in production, it was in the $3 range. There wasn't any metallurgy done and no work on metallurgy extraction. And so silver is now much more important economically. And that's one thing that we are starting right now to work with some consulting metallurgists to come up with a good recovery for silver. And the third item there is copper. We can't even mention copper in the resource because we don't have any metallurgy.

46:27 And it's about a 0.3 copper deposit, which is not high if it's standalone copper, but it's a third of the 3 metals. So it's a very important economic factor. We just need to do work on that and ultimately maybe come up with a pilot plant. We just need some good engineers and management to help design and run and plan that. So I know Aaron will have fun doing that. And when you put those 3 things together, then we will have the data needed to come out with a strong PA. You want to have the data first and then do the study. Awesome. I appreciate that. 3 bucks, I would love to have 100 ounce bar for $300.

47:15 That was a treat for me this week. There's a tricky question for you from the chat, Aaron, that I've kind of saved for last here because it is one of those tricky ones. Feel free to answer however you'd like. Julio asks, do you see yourself as someone who will develop this resource resources into a sale or do you see yourself as a mind builder for the next stage of the company? Well, it's far too early for me to answer that question. I'm just getting to know the various aspects of the project. People that know me, I'm a little bit of a nerd. So I just did a family trip to Japan and just read the 43-101 on the plane ride. But I do look forward to digesting all of the different material that Kit and the team have and discussing it with them and then talking to the board about what the goals of the company are with regard to how do we best develop those resources and maximize shareholder value.

48:12 So it's a little bit early for me to answer that. Maybe if we have a chat a year from now, we'll have a little bit better answer on that one. Awesome, and I look forward to that chat in a year. But I will say, as that appears to be the end of the questions, Kit and Aaron, thank you so much. I think this was a really fun conversation. Aaron, I heard so much about you. It's great to meet you and get a chance to chat. And Kit, looking forward to much more conversations as you progress your projects through the summer and beyond. But this was really fun, really appreciate your time. Well, great, thank you for setting up ROMEON. It's a great opportunity on this platform to introduce Aaron and let people hear directly from him what his thoughts are and ideas. And that's very important. And thank you for putting that together. And Aaron, thanks for taking the time to join us today.

48:57 Yeah, fun. Look forward to getting to know everybody that's on the chat and watching. And Romeo, thank you so much for the opportunity to host this today and talk to people about Alaska Silver. Awesome. Well, looking forward to our next conversations. I hope everybody has a wonderful end of their Monday.