First Hole At Linnguekoto West Zone And Barani East Zone Metallurgical Hole Support Historic Drilling

DELTA, BC - Desert Gold Ventures Inc. reported on the first RC/core hole drilled to test the Linnguekoto West Deposit, a metallurgical hole drilled into the Barani East Deposit and the first 2 holes drilled into the Mogoyafara South Deposit.

President & CEO, Jared Scharf, said, "I'm very pleased to have drilled our first three holes at Mogoyafara South and Linngeukoto West. Drill results confirm and support the historic drilling done by Hyundai circa 2002. Obviously much more drilling is needed at these deposits as they have only been tested to shallow depths and are mostly open to depth and along strike to the North and South. The metallurgical test hole at Barani East returned significantly higher grades than anticipated which bodes well when or if mining is carried out in this area."

The Linnguekoto West Zone, which hosts inferred mineral resources of 66,200 ounces of gold in 1.39 million tonnes of gold mineralization grading 1.48 g/t gold1, is located in the south-central part of the property. One hole was drilled to acquire firsthand information as to the character of the zone. This hole returned a best intercept of 1.83 g/t Au over 27 meters including 2.25 over 20.7 meters and 26.5 g/t Au over 1.0 meters. As well, this hole returned a new gold lens intercept of 0.61 g/t Au over 23.8 meters, including 1.26 g/t gold over 5 meters and 0.64 g/t gold over 8.9 meters. The zones are hosted by moderately to intensely fractured and quartz veined siltstones, shales, limestone and micro-conglomerate. The Linnguekoto West Zone is interpreted to represent a steep-dipping higher-grade structure flanked by a series of shallow-dipping, gold-bearing dilational structures. More drilling is required to validate this model.

The Barani East metallurgical hole returned higher than expected grades returning 12.41 g/t gold over 45 meters. Nearby holes, that intersected the zone returned 7.82 g/t gold over 13 meters, 5.66 g/t gold over 16 meters and 1.5 g/t gold over 25 meters and 1.58 g/t gold over 7 meters. (True width in these holes is estimated at 80-90% of drilled length). The goal for this hole was to collect enough oxidized mineralization in one hole for a series of metallurgical and geotechnical tests and as a result was drilled mostly down dip. Core from this hole will be used to evaluate the gravity gold, heap leach and geotechnical characteristics of the oxidized upper portion of the Barani East Zone. Previous metallurgical work estimates gravity gold recoveries up to 64% with typical CN leach recoveries, together totaling up to 98.6%.

The final 2 holes of the program began the testing of the Mogoyafara South Zone with two pit areas tested with holes approximately 800 meters apart. Gold mineralized zones were intersected where expected with better than expected widths of mineralization in hole KO-22-RC-001 with an intercept of 0.75 g/t Au over 17 meters. Based on holes, 25 meters on either side, an 8-10 meter wide zone was expected. Most of the gold mineralization in this hole is hosted by felsic intrusion. Less mineralization than expected was intersected in hole KO-22-RC-002. This hole, however, ended in gold mineralization, suggesting that the gold-bearing system is still open to depth. A significant amount of drilling is still required both to validate and test for zone extensions.