High-Grade Optioned At Columba Silver Project

 

VANCOUVER - Kootenay Silver Inc.  reported that a wholly owned Mexican subsidiary of the Company has entered into an option agreement located in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. President and CEO James McDonald said, "Columba is a very rare opportunity to get into a property with the potential for the discovery of classic high-grade Mexican style vein deposits. These opportunities only arise from the combination of depressed markets for silver and the success of our generative program to identify prospects.  As we have seen in recent months high-grade discoveries have added a lot of value to market cap to a handful of juniors. Based on our sampling and historic reports we believe that Columba has potential for such a discovery. We are very excited to get to work on rapidly advancing the Property to drilling hopefully by the first quarter of next year."

Columba is a past producing high-grade silver mine, which operated from 1900 until 1910, when work ceased in the region due to the Mexican Revolution.  The Property covers a large, high-grade silver epithermal system comprised of numerous veins, which the Company has mapped over strike lengths from 200 meters to up to 2 kilometers. Recent channel sampling on these veins conducted by the Company has returned widths of 0.5 to 6 meters and carried grades of up to 692 gpt silver.  The Property has never been systematically explored in modern times.

Mineralization at Columba is text book low to medium sulfidation epithermal vein hosted, displaying the classic zonation from non or weakly anomalous silver at high elevations that increase with depth into the classic high-grade zones that make them such profitable deposit types. 

Columba is an exciting target that not only hosts a series of high-grade silver veins on surface, but also extensive underground workings.  On surface four (4) old shafts are reported to extend to depths of up to 200 meters and connect to at least six (6) levels of widespread underground drifts covering lengths of up to 1,000 meters.. The majority of the work appears to have been done in the early 1900's and again in the mid 1900's with an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 tonnes being mined. Kootenay is very encouraged with the results from its recent sampling and will be immediately exploring the Property to assess the potential for a new economic discovery.  To the best of the Company's knowledge all mineralized zones at Columba, which include the multiple epithermal veins, have not been previously drilled. Historical reports obtained by Kootenay suggest the silver grades of the main veins sampled on surface increase significantly with depth. For example, highlights of historic data from underground workings at a depth of 100 metres include nine (9) individual channel samples taken along a 25-meter length of vein where several high-grade intervals were reported to return silver values from 350 gpt over 1.2 meters to a high of 1,900 gpt over 4 meters (see table below for sample details). This pattern observed in historic data is supported by sampling and mapping work completed by the Company on surface which shows the same pattern of increasing grades with decreasing elevation.