Exceptional Potential At The Black Pine Oxide Gold Project, Idaho

VANCOUVER, BC - Pilot Gold Inc. reported on the compilation and interpretation of historic data at the recently acquired Black Pine Project in southeastern Idaho.  Black Pine is a past-producing heap leach gold mine that contains a large, shallow, oxidized, district scale Carlin-style gold system, similar in nature and target size to Pilot Gold’s Goldstrike Property in Utah.  The high priority target area, as confirmed by historical mining records, drilling and surface sampling, covers a 12 square kilometer area, within a larger claim block covering nearly 32 square kilometers.

While the Company’s focus is on drilling and building a resource at Goldstrike, the addition of Black Pine provides us with another opportunity to advance and define a large, Carlin-style oxide gold resource in the Great Basin of the United States.  Target generation at Black Pine is currently underway, in advance of a drill program expected later in 2017.  

Pilot Gold acquired 100% of the Black Pine Property from Western Pacific Resources Corporation on June 16, 2016, and began an intensive data compilation effort in order to generate a 3D interpretive model and high-priority drill targets. Pilot Gold has locational, geology and assay data from 1,866 shallow holes, totaling 191,481 meters and has identified three broad target types for drill testing, including: 1) down-dip extensions of gold mineralization from mined pits under shallow cover; 2) unmined bodies of mineralization identified by previous operators; and 3) undrilled, high priority gold-in-soil anomalies.

The Black Pine property is located in southeastern Idaho, northwest of Snowville, Utah, between Utah State highway 30 and Interstate highway 15. The property includes 400 federal lode claims, covering 31.7 km2. The mineralized zone was extensively drilled in the immediate pit areas, with mining carried out by Pegasus Gold Corp. from 7 shallow pits over a 6-year period from 1992 to 1997 in a run of mine heap leach operation. The mining operation produced 435,000 ounces of gold from ore averaging 0.63 g/t gold, with a reported recovery of 65%.