Underground Drilling To Target San Jose And El Pinguico Veins

VANCOUVER - VanGold Mining Corp. reported that drilling has commenced at its El Pinguico silver-gold property located 7km south of Guanajuato Mexico. This initial drill program will consist of 12-14 drill holes and will be conducted underground, within old workings at the historic El Pinguico mine.

Last September, VanGold announced that it had purchased its own portable drill rig for use underground at El Pinguico. After examining numerous alternatives, the Company decided to order an Explorer - 75E core drill rig from Grupo Ingetrol S.A de C.V. of Torreon, Mexico. Among other desirable attributes, this drill is small enough to fit into many of the adits, drifts, and galleries of El Pinguico's old workings, while still being able to target the long strike length of potential new in-situ material of the main El Pinguico and San Jose vein systems. The machine is rated capable for drilling 200 meters of HQ size core, or 430 meters of NQ size core. The Company has also purchased 200m and 430m, respectively, of the corresponding drill casing in order to have the capacity to drill holes of those lengths.

This drill rig has now been delivered, and the Company is in the process of drilling 2 short test holes from surface, to allow the Company's drillers to accustom themselves to this drill's particular design specifications. The drill will then be transported to drill stations located in underground galleries that have been prepared for the drill, where drilling will principally target the El Pinguico and San Jose veins, and within the "Don Ricardo" target area.

In November and December, the Company did significant work in preparation for the commencement of drilling. This included the replacement of old transformers on the property to allow for the safe use of electricity from the local electricity grid; the purchase and installation of over 500m of thick gage, high capacity electric cable connecting the transformers to the drill stations; the installation of water lines to the drill stations; the construction of sumps within the mine to use for housing recirculated water for drilling; and the scaling of wall-rock within the drill stations to allow for the size of the drill, and for greater comfort for drill crews.

This diamond drill program will be VanGold's first drilling on the El Pinguico property and will test extensions of underground channel sampling of vein material performed in the fall. The Company had reported assays of channel samples taken from accessible pillars and stop walls within a historic shoot of the El Pinguico vein system between the 4th and 6th levels covering an area approximately 55 meters in height, by 60 meters in width and where the stopped out area, plus remaining vein material, ranges from 1.5 meters to 5.5 meters wide, and averaged 536.8 gpt AgEq. At the end of last year sampling from adit Level 4 was reported. Significant silver and gold values from this sampling tend to be located in ‘clusters' and are more meaningful when the higher-grade samples are grouped over significant strike lengths of the vein. The runs of noteworthy assays over material distances form continuous channel samples which are shown in the table below. Stopes above adit level 4 were mined out historically between c.1902 and 1913. This recent sampling suggests that good grades by today's standards may exist below adit level 4 and were passed over by the historical miners as the grades they encountered did not exceed the very high cut-off grade utilized at that time. VanGold's sampling has established drill targets that may form pillars of mineralization between adit level 4 and adit Level 7 and will be the focus of the Company's current drill campaign which will initially be conducted entirely within the Company's "Don Ricardo" target area.