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Golden Mile Property
The Golden Mile Property is located approximately 70 kilometres (43 miles) northwest of Tonopah, along the Walker Lane Gold Trend in Southwest Nevada. Subject to net smelter returns royalties, Columbus Gold controls a 100% interest in the property.
In October 2007, Columbus entered into an agreement with Portage Minerals Inc. to explore and develop the Golden Mile Property. Under the terms of the agreement, Portage can earn an initial 60% interest in Golden Mile by incurring $2.5 million in exploration expenditures and issuing 500,000 common shares of Portage to Columbus, over a five year period.
Geology
The geologic setting at Golden Mile is similar to the productive Fortitude (Newmont) and McCoy (Kinross) mines on the Battle Mountain Trend. Golden Mile has the potential to host a high temperature gold skarn deposit hosted by Mesozoic limestones intruded by Cretaceous to Tertiary granite. Gold mineralization at the project area occurs within irregularly distributed skarn zones for 350 metres (m) (1,148 ft) in a northeasterly direction, and to a depth of 100 m (328 ft) along a variably altered and mineralized contact between Cretaceous quartz monzonite and calcareous sediments of the Triassic Luning and Jurassic Dunlop formations.
Past Work
Golden Mile produced approximately 10,000 tonnes grading 12 g/t (11,000 tons @ 0.34 opt) gold in the 1930's. Geophysical surveys and limited drilling carried out in the 1970's and 1980's defined skarn, breccia and disseminated gold mineralization and included a drill intercept of 16 g/t gold along 29.5 m (0.46 opt along 96.7 ft), which included 47 g/t gold over 9.1 m (1.36 opt over 30 ft).
Drilling by Columbus in 2006 confirmed mineralization within the Central Zone including intercepts of 7.6 m of 4.2 g/t gold (25 ft of 0.12 opt) in drill hole MI-6 and 9.1 m averaging 13.8 g/t gold (30 ft of 0.4 opt) in drill hole MI-12, including 3.1 m of 28.94 g/t gold (10 ft of 0.84 opt).
A second phase of drilling in 2007 expanded the mineralization to the north and west of the Central Zone. The intercepts in the recent drilling to the north of the Central Zone are all hosted in intrusive rock, and much greater thicknesses of continuous low-grade material were encountered (best holes MI-22 with 57.9 m (190 feet) of 0.59 g/t (0.019 opt) Au, and MI-16 with 80.8 m (265 feet) of 0.39 g/t (0.0114 opt) Au. This mineralization, although low-grade, presents a very large volume target, and remains open north, west, east, and down-dip of the current drilling. The deposit remains open to the northeast and at depth.
Planned Program
Portage plans on carrying out an active exploration program in 2009 consisting of geological mapping, sampling and drilling.
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