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Rainbow Canyon Property

Value Proposition Rainbow Canyon property is highly prospective for economic high or bulk low-grade gold mineralisation, is located in an easy-to-access mining-supportive jurisdiction, and offers Astorius an inexpensive path to 100% ownership.
Property 55 unpatented lode mining claims that cover an area of 417 hectares.
Location Within the Olinghouse mining district, about 40 km east of Reno in Washoe County, Nevada ( Figure 1).
Target Summary Gold in quartz veins and their hosting gold-bearing low-sulfidation alteration zones (Figures 2and 3).
Ownership Option to purchase 100%. There is a 3% NSR on the property, 2% of which can be purchased for US$1,000,000.

Astorius has completed the drilling of six inclined reverse circulation boreholes for a total of 874 meters of drilling at its Rainbow Canyon property in Washoe County, Nevada and received encouraging results from an initial six hole RC program at the north-eastern end of its Rainbow Canyon gold property – the first known drilling ever to have taken place on the property. Highlights of the drilling results are:

Borehole RCR-03 intersected 1.52 meters grading 19.65g/t gold from 100.58m to 102.11m, within an intersection of 9.14m at 3.69g/t Au;

Borehole RCR-03 is on the margin of a magnetic low, previously interpreted to be an alteration zone, now a significant target for further drilling;

Gold mineralisation appears to be structurally controlled, and is present within a number of rock units on the property, apparently in a number of sub-parallel corridors running NE/SW;

This is the first known drilling on the property, which has tested only 400 meters of 3,000 meters of strike over which surface mineralisation has been observed.

Rainbow Canyon is a 417 hectare low-sulfidation gold prospect located in the northern Walker Lane structural and metallogenic domain. Andesites, basalts and rhyolites of the Miocene Alta and Old Gregory Formation underlie most of the property. Forty kilometers to the southwest of Rainbow Canyon the Alta Formation is also host to the world-renowned Comstock Mine, a low sulfidation lode deposit which produced 8.4 million ounces gold. Eight kilometers to the north-west of Rainbow Canyon the Olinghouse gold deposit has reported a non-43-101-compliant resource of slightly over one million ounces of gold (Wilson et al, 1999).

A total of six holes were drilled for a total of 2,780 feet (847m). Five holes targeted a NE trending corridor of gold-mineralised quartz veins dipping to the SE, and one hole targeted a second smaller corridor SE of the main mineralised corridor. Table 1 below lists location and drilling results for each borehole, and Figure 1 below shows the collar locations of holes drilled. Borehole logging results and downhole profiles for a number of elements in hole RCR-03 are shown in Figure 3.


RCR-03 is an isolated hole on the south-western margin of a 400m by 200m magnetic low, which, prior to drilling, was interpreted to be the result of alteration (Figure 3). The high-grade intersection it has yielded now calls for additional drilling both below and to the north and north-east of RCR-03.


All samples were prepared from drill cuttings processed through a rotary splitter on site. Split drill cutting samples were sent to American Assay Laboratories in Reno, Nevada, for total gold and multi-element analyses. Standards, blanks, and duplicates were included at regular intervals in each sample batch as part of Astorius’ quality control program.

These results enhance our understanding of the basic geometry of the gold-mineralizing system at Rainbow Canyon, and give us confidence that the system extends to depth.

Astorius is now planning a follow-up program comprising the following:

  1. Step-out drilling around borehole RCR-03, in particular to test the interpreted low magnetisation alteration zone;
  2. Extending surface structural and lithology mapping from the north-east of the property (partially mapped in detail) to the surface mineralisation in the south west (never mapped in detail);
  3. Conducting a concurrent soil geochemical sampling program over the south-western two thirds of the property to detect mineralisation covered by soil – these latter two programs focused on identifying drill targets in higher-tenor mineralised dilation zones.

The technical information has been reviewed and approved by Clinton Smyth, P. Geo, and Astorius’ Qualified Person as defined in NI 43-101. The drilling program reported in the news release was carried out under the direction of Mr. Smyth.

Local Resources and Infrastructure

The small community of Wadsworth is four km to the northeast, and Fernley, population 14,000, is about 10 km to the east of the property along I-80. Skilled labor, supplies, and accommodation are available in Fernley and in the major centers of Sparks and Reno, 40 km to the west. The Southern Pacific Railroad and I-80 both follow the Truckee River valley just south of the property. There are no facilities on the property, but two electric transmission lines and a gas pipeline are quite near the property. Any water needed in operations would have to be developed by wells.

History

The Rainbow Canyon area, part of the Olinghouse mining district of northwest Nevada, has seen prospecting and minor gold production since 1860. In 2009, PacMag Metals, an Australian company, staked the original block of 80 RC claims, and later merged with Entrée Gold Inc. Alba Minerals Ltd, through their USA subsidiary, Acrex Ventures Ltd, purchased Entrée’s Rainbow Canyon claims in 2011.

PacMag’s exploration work on the property in 2009 consisted of select chip sampling of quartz vein material from outcrop and historic prospect pits that are found on the property. These samples yielded a number of gold values above 3 g/t (ppm), confirmed by additional sampling conducted by Alba in 2011 and 2016. PacMag also conducted a ground magnetic survey which yielded low magnetic response in areas of alteration.

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