Athena Gold Corporation (CSE:ATHA)(OTCQB:AHNRF) (“Athena” or the “Company”) is pleased to report additional results from its 2024 regional prospecting and sampling program at the 100%-owned Excelsior Springs project in Nevada’s Walker Lane Trend. The program proved successful in providing new geologic interpretations and defining new, untested zones of prospective mineralization. On the back of this program, the Company expanded its landholdings by approximately 68 hectares.

“One of the drivers behind the Fall 2024 program was to confirm whether prospective ground exists outside the Buster Trend, which to date, has been the main target of focus at Excelsior Springs. We are happy to report the identification of the new Rhino Zone, in addition to the high-grade silver and antimony potential revealed at the Blue Dick Trend. Importantly, both these targets remain untested by the drill bit. We believe a larger-scale program is warranted in order to adequately explore such a target-rich project,” stated Koby Kushner, President & CEO of Athena Gold.

Highlights:

• The newly defined Rhino Zone, located to the northeast of the project area, returned high-grade gold on surface, with grab sample assays returning up to 27.1 g/t Au, 49 g/t Ag, and 1.4% Pb (see Figure 2).
• Results from Blue Dick, as previously reported, returned up to 6,630 g/t Ag (Sample K024547; refer to the Company’s press release dated January 23, 2025). In addition, the remaining analytical results from this sample returned high-grade antimony of 1.53% Sb.
  • Antimony is designated as a critical metal by both the United States and Canada due to its essential role in national security, energy infrastructure, and industrial manufacturing.
• On the back of the successful 2024 exploration program, the Company recently expanded its land position through staking, increasing the project footprint by 68 hectares to better capture the Rhino and Blue Dick Trends (see Figure 1).
• The Company continues to receive third-party interest regarding potential joint venture partnerships and earn-in agreements across its Nevada portfolio.

Figure 1: Map of the Excelsior Springs project highlighting the various mineralized trends, historic drilling, additional staking, and recent sampling completed by Athena Gold Corporation in November 2024.

1. Athena Gold Intercepts Shallow High-Grade Gold with 15.3 g/t Over 35 Feet at its Excelsior Springs Project, Nevada

2. Athena Reports High-Grade Silver, up to 6,630 g/t, from Newly Completed Prospecting Program at Excelsior Springs, Nevada

3. Athena Gold Drills 1.02 g/t Gold Over 51.8 Meters and Extends its Shallow Oxide Gold Discovery at Excelsior Springs Project, Nevada

Figure 2: Map of the Rhino Zone showing recent sampling, the approximate outline of the Rhino Zone, and the area of newly acquired ground.

A total of 95 surface grab samples were collected during the recent mapping and prospecting program, conducted by Big Rock Exploration in November. Results from the program have highlighted…

Grande Portage Resources Ltd. (TSXV:GPG)(OTCQB:GPTRF)(FSE:GPB) (“Grande Portage” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce results from testwork of a sensor-based ore sorting system, utilizing a composite core sample from the New Amalga Mine Project located approximately 16 miles (25 km) northwest of the city of Juneau.

Summary of Results:

	Unsorted Feed	Sorter Reject	Sorted Product
Mass (kg)	64.8 kg	37.2 kg	27.6 kg
% Mass Distribution	100%	57%	43%
Gold Grade (g/t)	5.9 g/t	0.6 g/t	12.9 g/t
% Gold Distribution	100%	6%	94%

Ian Klassen, President and CEO comments: “We are extremely pleased with the results of the testwork with the Steinert ore sorting equipment, which demonstrated excellent ability to identify and reject the unmineralized particles within the sample of New Amalga material, resulting in a 120% increase in gold grade and a 57% reduction in mass with very minimal gold loss.”

Mr. Klassen continued: “These results are game changing for a host of reasons. Integrating ore sorting into the conceptual mine production plan significantly reduces the amount of mined rock requiring transportation and processing at a third-party facility, lowering per-ounce costs and also providing useful sorter-reject material for underground backfill, all without the use of chemical processing reagents. This further enhances the existing advantages of our proposed direct-ship mine configuration which utilizes offsite processing. As demonstrated by the test results, it may also create opportunities for inclusion of thinner veins into the mine plan – areas of the deposit which otherwise may not have been considered viable.”

Background:

As previously announced, the Company’s Conceptual Mining Plan envisions the future development of the New Amalga gold mine as a selective underground mining operation which would send ore off-site to be processed at a third-party facility, enabled by the project’s location near tidewater and less than 4 miles (6.5km) from existing paved highway (Fig. 4). This results in a dramatically reduced mine site footprint due to the avoidance of chemical processing and tailings storage facilities.

The purpose of ore sorting is to quickly separate particles of waste dilution rock from the mined material, without the use of chemical reagents. The goal is to significantly reduce the volume of material that would be transported off-site to a third-party processing facility.

Grande Portage assembled a drill core composite which included both ore and waste material to reflect the dilution from wall rock (waste) which is inherent with underground blasting of narrow ore veins. The core composite was subjected to a sensor-based ore sorting test process at the facilities of Steinert US Inc, a leading global manufacturer of ore-sorting equipment.

Technical Description of Ore Sorting Test Process:

Sensor-based ore sorting can utilize a variety of measurements to determine whether a particle is ore or waste, including color, electromagnetic induction, laser, and x-ray analysis to…