Rackla Metals has a tungsten camp in the Northwest Territories that a major drilled, took to an internal mine plan, and left when the price broke. The Deep Dive went up the hill with Simon Ridgway and filmed the argument. The film is worth your hour. Not because a narrator has decided the bet is won. Because the bet is now a drill program you can see, and the man in charge will not promise a resource on camera.
We wrote about Lentung on March 23, while it was still a file and a tungsten price. Since that piece, the company has started drilling. On August 17 it collared the first new hole on the property since 1982. A second rig followed on August 26. The shares, which had traded around $0.10, have since traded at $0.30 and above. By October 5 they had printed $0.35, last around $0.34, on about half a million shares. The 52-week range is $0.08 to $0.35. A move from about a dime into the thirties is a fact. It is not a forecast. Watch the film if you want to know what those holes are actually testing. Then decide whether the next release deserves attention, or only caution.
Nothing here is an offer to buy or sell Rackla Metals, ticker RAK on the TSX Venture Exchange and RMETF in the United States. A junior can give back every cent of a rally. Historic tonnes are not a modern resource. Past price action is not a promise.
What the helicopter found
Lentung, formerly Lened, sits about 60 kilometres by road north of the past-producing Cantung mine. A crew flying the valley saw decades of drill core stacked on a slope, and a road of switchbacks cut across the face so the last operator could drill on a grid. You do not build that road to test a hunch. You build it when you intend to measure a body. Core on a mountain means someone was curious. A switchback grid means someone had already decided.
Union Carbide bought the ground in 1976 and, through 1982, drilled 26,900 metres in 178 holes. It mapped the hill. It ran metallurgy, engineering, economics, and environmental work through to an internal pre-feasibility. In 1982 it filed for a federal mine permit. The same year it withdrew, because the tungsten price had fallen, and said it would wait. In 1984 the parent company's wider troubles took over. Dow later absorbed Union Carbide. The claims lapsed. Nobody put a meaningful new hole into this ground for the next 44 years. Rackla staked it.
The file in the garage
Yukon prospector Ron Berdahl restaked the ground in 1996. Rackla's own history says his work was minor, aimed at gold and a beryl occurrence, and that the claims lapsed again in 2014. The film's version is that a news release brought him to the phone, and that he sold the Union Carbide paper for a 1 percent net smelter return. Drill logs. Lab sheets. Metallurgy. Pit designs. Baseline environmental work. Hand-drawn maps. The royalty is real. It is on the company site. The whiskey and the garage are the film's. Treat them as color around a documented deal, not as a second assay.
What the boxes represent is the point. This was not a first soil sample. Union Carbide had applied to mine. Rackla has digitized that file and built a model from it. The historic figure the company cites is about 1.27 percent WO?, and a separate internal mill grade of about 1.14 percent WO?, from a study that imagined a small open pit. Neither number is NI 43-101. There is no compliant resource. Not one. The company has described the mineralized strike as both about 10 and about 15 kilometres, with 15 tungsten zones. This page does not pick a length the filings themselves do not settle. A film estimate of roughly $25 million to repeat the old work in today's dollars is the team's arithmetic, not an audit, and it is not a valuation.
The metal, without the costume
Scheelite, the tungsten mineral here, fluoresces under ultraviolet light. A lamp is not an assay. It is a way to see, in the core shack, whether the box is empty before the lab writes back. Tungsten's uses are ordinary and hard to replace. Cutting tools. Drill bits. Wear parts. A slice of defense demand that is real and smaller than the posters. China mined about four-fifths of world supply in 2025, on USGS-based counts near 79 percent, and a still larger share of refining. Export rules tightened. Western prices moved.
Fastmarkets' China APT export assessment was about $390 to $410 per metric tonne unit in late June 2025, and about $2,600 to $3,250 by June 24, 2026. Rotterdam duty-free APT was quoted around $2,900 to $3,210 in mid-June 2026. A fivefold to sixfold move from the middle of 2025 is in the data. Ridgway, in the film, doubts these levels hold. He thinks an open pit of this shape can stay economic if they do not. Hear both sentences. An open-pit case that works only at the top tick is not a case. He says he does not think that is this hill. The film does not prove him right.
Cantung ran, with interruptions, from 1962 until it closed in 2015 under creditor protection. When it shut, it was one of the largest operating tungsten mines outside China. The mill remains on care and maintenance, about 60 kilometres down the road. Mactung, farther north in Yukon, is one of the larger undeveloped tungsten deposits. The U.S. Department of Defense awarded Fireweed Metals US$15.8 million to advance it, with Canadian support beside that. Lentung sits in the same family of intrusions. That is geology. It is not a mill, and it is not a permit.
The Northwest Territories is also watching its diamond economy thin. Ekati and Diavik closed earlier in 2026. Gahcho Kué was still the last diamond mine running as of the start of October, and its minority owner was stepping away. Mining, oil, and gas have been a large share of territorial output. They are not a feasibility study for one tungsten skarn.
The only test that counts
The 2026 plan, as the company has published it, is about 10,000 metres. About 4,000 metres of diamond drilling are aimed at confirming the historic holes, the grade, and the geometry, and at building a database a modern resource could stand on. About 6,000 metres of reverse-circulation drilling are aimed at filling gaps and testing near-surface tonnes. The company hopes to put that work into a technical report, with a compliant resource as the goal, around the end of 2026 or early 2027. The film describes the diamond metres as twins drilled beside Union Carbide's holes. Use the company's split, not a hole count the releases do not lock in. If the new holes match, Rackla inherits a generation of drilling it did not pay for the first time. If they do not, the file goes back to being a story.
Ridgway does not dodge that weight in the film. He says a great deal is riding on the proof. Then he draws the line worth remembering. He does not think they are out to discover something. He thinks the discovery was made in the early 1980s. They are trying to prove it is still there. He will not talk as if a resource is already in hand. That reluctance is the most useful minute in the film.
A camp, a reopened trail, and a crew that talks about staying a decade are in the film. They are a belief. A belief is not a mine. A camp is cheaper to leave than a mill.
What changed after March
On March 23 we asked readers to pay attention to Lentung before the drills turned. The drills have turned. August 17 is the marker. September brought an airborne survey and the close of a $3.65 million flow-through placement, 10 million units at $0.365, with the money aimed at Canadian exploration on this property. A September 29 notice that looked like a fresh financing was that same closed deal, not a second book still open. From prints around $0.10, the shares have traded at $0.30 and above, and on October 5 they set a 52-week high at $0.35, on heavy volume for a name this size.
Read the order. The film was made while the proof was still ahead of the assays. Some of its market-cap talk belongs to a cheaper stock than the one on the screen now. A value of about $63 million, at the October 5 quote, is the market paying for the start of the test. It is not the result of the test. If you arrive because the chart is green, you are late to the easy part and early to the only part that matters. The easy part was noticing a dime. The hard part is whether new core agrees with 44-year-old paper.
What to watch for
Watch the film for four things, then write them down.
First, the hillside. Core still on the mountain. Old roads cut for a grid. A permit that was filed and withdrawn in the same year. That is different from a soil anomaly. It is also not a compliant tonne. Hold both ideas, or do not hold the story at all.
Second, the paper. Logs, metallurgy, pit shapes, an environmental baseline. That is a production file from 1982. It is not an NI 43-101 resource. The 1.27 percent and the 1.14 percent are historic figures. Say them that way or do not say them.
Third, the lamp and the check holes. Scheelite glows. The glow is not a grade. The new diamond holes either match the old ones or they do not. There is no third reading that saves a bad match.
Fourth, the metal price. The multiply from mid-2025 is why a dead file woke up. It is also why Ridgway's doubt belongs in the cut. Do not let a poster about shells do the work of a cost curve.
Then watch the calendar, not the thumbnail. Assays, metres, and any step toward a technical report are the record. The film is the context those releases will sit in. Without it, a glowing-core photo will do your thinking. With it, you already know what a glow is worth.
The close
Rackla Metals staked a tungsten camp a major drilled, permitted on paper, and abandoned to a price. A prospector's old file came back with a 1 percent royalty. Since we wrote in March, the first holes in 44 years have started, a second rig is on site, and the stock has risen from about $0.10 to $0.30 and more, up to a $0.35 high, on real volume. That is the market leaning in. It is not the mountain answering.
The Deep Dive's film is the cleanest way to see both in one hour. Watch it before a chart, or a fluorescent rock, does the thinking. If the check holes match, this season will have done in one summer what most junior stories stretch across years. If they do not, the story goes back to the start, and Ridgway has already told you he will say so. Either ending is worth having seen coming.
A note on sources and limits
Lentung history, 26,900 metres, 178 holes, the 1982 withdrawal, Berdahl's 1996 staking and 2014 lapse, the 1 percent NSR, the 1.27 percent and 1.14 percent historic figures, and the absence of an NI 43-101 resource are from Rackla's project page and its March 30, 2026 update. The company has described the strike as both about 10 and about 15 kilometres. This piece does not pick one. The distance of about 60 kilometres by road from Cantung is from company materials. Drilling dates, the 4,000 and 6,000 metre split, the second rig, the airborne survey, and the closed $3.65 million placement are from Rackla releases of August 17, August 26, September 17, and September 24, 2026. Cantung's 2015 closure and care-and-maintenance status are a matter of public record. The Mactung award of US$15.8 million is from the U.S. Department of Defense and Fireweed Metals. Tungsten prices cited for June 2025 and June 2026 are Fastmarkets assessments, not a forecast. October 5, 2026 share figures are TSX Venture quotes for RAK and will move. The helicopter, the lamp in use, the camp, the trail, any dollar estimate of the old work, and Ridgway's refusal to promise a resource are from The Deep Dive film and are labeled as such where they are not in a filing. The March 23, 2026 Canadian Mining Report piece is "A Perfectly Timed Junior Resource Opportunity." This is not a solicitation, a recommendation, or investment advice. Historic results are not current resources. Readers should read the filings and speak to a licensed adviser before any decision.