Breaking a long tradition, mining group selects Reno

The Northwest Mining Association a group that focuses on minerals exploration will conduct its annual meeting in Sparks this year, marking the first time it's met anywhere other than Spokane.

The association whose members focus mostly on minerals exploration and development expects to draw at least 1,500 people to the early-December annual meeting at John Ascuaga's Nugget.

The group's previous 111 annual meetings were in Spokane.

So far, the once-in-a-century decision to host the annual meeting somewhere else is a hit. The group said last week that all but four of 144 booth spaces had been sold, and it was in serious talks for two more.

The decision to move the meeting to Reno in 2006 it returns to Spokane in 2007 marks an effort by the association to reconnect with mining professionals in Nevada, said Laura Skaer, executive director of the association.

During the last minerals boom in the mid-1990s, Skaer said, the association's annual meeting typically drew 3,000 people a year many of them from Nevada.

But the collapse of minerals prices and the travel hassles that followed the Sept. 11 attacks curtailed attendance by Nevada miners.

"We have a lot of people who got out of the habit of trucking up to Spokane every December," Skaer said. "Sometimes you have to take the mountain to Mohammed."

The meeting Dec. 4-8 will be dominated by presentation of research papers and short courses on mining geology.

"It's a peer-to-peer event," said Mike Heywood, who handles marketing

and information for the mining association.

Traditionally, he said, the annual meeting hasn't drawn many investors or industry analysts, but instead has focused on exploration geology.

The group's membership includes about 1,500 people, most of them from the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, Idaho, Nevada and other states in the West.

Canadian mining companies especially those with interests in Nevada and elsewhere in the West participate in the annual meeting.

The meeting is likely to bring even more attention to the importance of exploration activity in Nevada, said Russ Fields, president of the Nevada Mining Association.

"These are the guys who are out there finding and getting ready to develop new deposits," said Fields.