Metallurgical Testing at Eastside Gold Project

 

VANCOUVER, BC - Columbus Gold Corp. reported conclusion of its 2016 drilling program at its 100% owned Eastside gold project in Nevada. Columbus completed 57,413 feet of drilling during the 2016 program - 41,544 feet of reverse circulation rotary drilling and 15,869 feet of diamond core drilling. To present, a total of 37,311 meters (122,411 feet) of drilling in 136 holes has been completed at Eastside. Columbus is aiming to complete a maiden resource estimate at Eastside in the fall.

Eastside is a district scale project consisting of 725 claims covering 22.55 sq. miles, in an area of outstanding infrastructure. Significant gold values of up to 27.9 g/t have been obtained in surface sampling at Eastside and so far seven large geochem anomalies have been identified, however drilling to date has been confined almost exclusively to one target (referred to as the Original Target), in an area of only approximately 1 sq. km., of the large 57.7 sq. km land package.

Thorough oxidation is remarkably deep at Eastside in certain areas, exceeding 300 meters in places. Cyanide-leach, bottle-roll tests on 40 drill samples began at KCA in June, 2016. These 40 samples range in grade from 0.16 g/t gold to 1.5 g/t gold, and are of all ore types, depths, oxidation states, and host lithology. This testing will be completed in September 2016. Initial metallurgical testing at Eastside was completed by Kappes, Cassiday, and Associates (KCA) in 2014. The tests were 96 hour, cyanide-leach, bottle-roll tests, and were reported in a Columbus Gold press release on July 10, 2014. The 2014 testing indicated gold at Eastside was highly amenable to extraction using cyanide, irrespective of alteration type, depth, host rock lithology, grade, or state of oxidation. Columbus is currently planning a third phase metallurgical program of column-leach testing on various sizes of drill core from 2016 drilling. The column-leach testing will provide information to evaluate potential heap leaching at Eastside, in particular whether all, or parts, of the Eastside gold mineralization will need to be crushed and, if so, the optimum size of crushing.

The Eastside project has outstanding infrastructure for mining and processing, is 20 miles west of Tonopah, Nevada, and lies 6 miles north of paved highway US 95, the main road route from Las Vegas to Reno. A good County-maintained, gravel road from the highway, along with a major power transmission line both pass through the claim block. The claim block extends well into the adjacent flats, which would provide excellent operating sites. The valley is known to have shallow water available in the same aquifer, which provided water for milling in the early 1900's. The area is high desert with sparse vegetation, and year-round drilling is possible.