It don't matter how good the hole is. They will always shut down during the christmas season. Always have. Regarding abandoning the hole, it is a term they use. If they only lose the bottom 50 feet of it they still refer to that part as abandoned. And yes there is something VERY, VERY, important about this hole. Consider that they have been working, trying to get the hole, or as much of it as possible saved, for most of a month now. If they had had to back up to the 1500m point and wedge from there, they would be about back on their own property by now, and they would then have the core from the original hole plus the core from a parallel hole too. There is something very intriguing about what is transpiring and I don't mean that in a negative way. Exercising a bit of patience now is likely going to pay dividends in the very near future.

Best regards

K