Ms. Tara Christie reports

BANYAN GOLD ANNOUNCES COMMENCEMENT OF 2017 FIELD EXPLORATION PROGRAM ON AUREX-MCQUESTEN

Banyan Gold Corp. has commenced a $450,000 exploration program on the recently optioned Aurex-McQuesten property located 25 kilometres north of Mayo, Yukon (see company news release dated May 25, 2017). Heavy equipment for trench construction and diamond drill support has already been mobilized to the property where excavation, sampling and mapping of historic trenches have been completed. Additionally, an initial property-wide geochemical soil sampling survey has begun.

A 1,200-metre drill program focused on the McQuesten showing area will begin this week. The McQuesten showing is a 1,000 m by 400 m wide zone where previous exploration results include drill intercepts of up to 120 m grading 1.36 g/t Au with intervals of up to 1.5 m grading 8.89 g/t Au (see company news release dated May 25, 2017).

"With the Aurex and McQuesten properties now combined under single ownership for the first time, coupled with a wealth of valuable historic exploration data, our geology team is well positioned to advance the property in a prolifically mineralized district of the Yukon," stated Tara Christie, president and chief executive officer. "This year's exploration program will be the first systematic, modern exploration on this combined property."

Additional targets for trenching and potentially drilling include Aurex Hill, Corkery Creek, Powerline and Snowfield showings.

The exploration target at the Aurex-McQuesten is near-surface gold mineralization in metasedimentary host rocks related to interpreted buried intrusive stocks. Structural traps are known to control intrusion-related gold-silver mineralization in the area and known gold mineralization on the property occurs in sheeted quartz veins, silicified skarn horizons and quartz-monzonite dikes similar to mineralization at Victoria Gold's Eagle project, as well as silver mineralization related to faults similar to those found at Alexco Resource Corp.'s Keno Hill district.

Technical information

The technical information in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Paul D. Gray, PGeo, a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

About Banyan Gold Corp.

Banyan is a well-financed growth-stage gold exploration company whose flagship property, the Hyland gold project, is approximately 70 kilometres northeast of Watson Lake, Yukon, along the southeast end of the Tintina gold belt. The main zone gold inferred resource, at a 0.6 g/t gold equivalent cut-off, hosts an NI 43-101 resource of 12,503,994 tonnes containing 361,692 ounces gold at 0.9 g/t and 2,248,948 ounces silver at 5.59 g/t for a combined gold and silver 396,468 ounces gold equivalent.

The newly acquired 9,230-hectare Aurex-McQuesten property, in close proximity to Victoria Gold's Eagle project and Alexco Resource's Keno Hill silver district, is highly prospective for structurally controlled, intrusion-related gold-silver mineralization in relation to quartz monzonite dikes of the Tombstone intrusive suite.

Paul D. Gray of Banyan Gold is a qualified person within the meaning of such term as set forth in National Instrument 43-101 of the Canadian Securities Administrators and has verified and supervised the preparation of all of the scientific and technical information contained in this news release.

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