MRE Completed For The Columba Silver Project

VANCOUVER – Kootenay Silver Inc. announced the filing of the independently prepared National Instrument 43-101 technical report supporting the first ever Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) for the Columba Silver Project, located in Chihuahua, Mexico. The technical report entitled “Technical Report on the Maiden Mineral Resource Estimate for the Columba Ag-Pb-Zn Project, Chihuahua State, Mexico” has been filed.
The Company is also extremely pleased to announce recommencement of drilling activities at Columba. The new program marks the seventh phase of drilling since work began in 2019 and is primarily designed to extend all mineralized zones to depth and along strike.
President & CEO, James McDonald, said,  “We are extremely happy with the first ever mineral resource estimate at Columba. We are also pleased to announce that drilling has recommenced at Columba. Our drilling plan includes extension drilling on all mineralized structures still open in all directions.”
The underground MRE includes, at a base-case cut-off grade of 150 gpt Ag, Inferred Mineral Resources estimated at 5.92 Mt grading 284 gpt silver, 0.19% lead, and 0.50% zinc. The Mineral Resource Estimate includes Inferred mineral resources of 54.1 Moz of silver, 25.2 Mlbs of lead, and 65.6 Mlbs of zinc. The MRE is exclusive of mined out material (F Vein). A total of 17 epithermal veins that comprise the Columba vein system were included in the Mineral Resource Estimate. The underground base case cut-off grade of 150 gpt Ag considers metal price of US$26.00/oz Ag, metal recovery of 90% for Ag, a mining cost of US$60.00/t rock and a processing, treatment and refining, transportation and G&A cost of US$45.00/t mineralized material.
The Columba project is a classic high grade epithermal vein system. That management believes is a newly recognized vein district. It is typical in character and size of other vein districts in Mexico known to have deposited significant resources of silver or gold such as La Chispas and Panuco.
Hosted within a volcanic caldera setting, the surface extent of mapped veins measures roughly 4 kilometres by 3 kilometres. Vein mineralization occurs over a minimum vertical extent of 350 meters as shown by drilling. The veins appear to be intermediate sulfidation veins indicating the potential for depths exceeding 700 meters of vertical extent. This remains to be tested, and all veins remain open to depth.
The veins cut every known rock type on the project and the veins or vein structures can be traced across the highest elevations of the caldera. This indicates veins formed late in caldera history. As elevation increases vein development becomes irregular eventually being replaced by breccias at the higher elevations. Silver grades diminish with increasing elevation right down to background values. Correspondingly silver grades increase with depth from background at higher elevations to highs of kilograms per tonne at depth. It is evident from these features that the vein system has undergone almost no erosion and so whatever silver was deposited originally is largely still there.
A general rule of thumb on the project is at levels deeper than 1,750 meters above sea level is where good grades begin to appear. This is what is referred to as the grade line.
Prior to Kootenay Silver no exploration had occurred at Columba in nearly 40 years. Historically there were two periods of mining on one of the veins referred to as the F Vein. The first being in the early 1900’s when underground development included 6 drifts (tunnels) at different levels coming off a 200-meter-deep shaft. This work was halted by the Mexican Revolution. Then a second brief period of mining occurred around 1958 to 1960 when a small private company used the old development to mine. It is estimated that around 100,000 tonnes were mined.