One year ago, we tagged along with a crew as they searched for gold in Northern Minnesota. The company, Vermillion Gold, did survey work from the air in a plane, and on the ground, hauling heavy equipment through the woods.

They remain the only company in the state doing such exploration. It’s all work to get clues as to where gold might be deep underground. Part science and part luck, with the goal of a find that leads to an extraordinarily profitable mine.

We met back up with them in March for an update and found progress has been made.

The gold search a year ago involved hacking through miles of forest and swamp with heavy equipment, performing something called a geomagnetic survey.

Fast forward to now, and the progress made lies on a table in a warehouse in Virginia.

The core is filled with clues for project geologists. Photo: KBJR-TV

It includes clues the company hoped to see. Ed Glowacki is the project geologist for Vermillion Gold. After zeroing in on possible locations of gold, he shows off the results of recent drilling deep into the earth. “You look for different rock types that might be signs of gold mineralization,” said Glowacki.

Bits of pyrite could be seen on a section of drill core, unearthed from diamond drilling in northern Itasca County.  It had project leaders feeling hopeful enough, they began another diamond drill nearby late last month. “This is just moved over a couple hundred meters from the other hole,” said Glowacki.

Work done over the past year and a half has been a process of narrowing down and narrowing down locations, leading to the drilling in Itasca County, some 650 feet into the ground.

“This is our last hole for now because things are thawing out,” said Vermillion Gold President Kate Lehmann.

Lehmann will spend much of the warm weather months with her team, analyzing what the machine pulls to the surface. “A reasonable expectation would be to see alterations in the geology in the structures, potentially to find some evidence of gold that helps us to locate how close we are to a deposit,” said Lehmann.

The gold hunt in Northern Minnesota, a big gamble, with odds of finding riches increasing slightly with each drill.

“Exploration is a high risk, high reward kind of business,” said Lehmann.

As we reported last year, Kate Lehmann’s father, Ernie Lehmann, founded Vermillion Gold in the early 2000′s. He previously had a successful career as an exploration geologist all over the world.

We’ll continue to keep you updated on the company’s progress.  To see the original report and read related stories, follow this link to the KBJR-TV website. https://www.kbjr6.com/2022/04/06/new-developments-hunt-northern-minnesota-gold/