Mr. Greg Davison reports

SILVER SPRUCE RECEIVES PERMITS, SIGNS DRILL CONTRACT AND MOBILIZES TO TOTE BROOK TARGET IN MARILYN CLAIMS AT MYSTERY AU PROJECT, EXPLOITS GOLD BELT, NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR

Silver Spruce Resources Inc. has received its permits and drill mobilization for the Tote Brook target at the 602-claim Mystery gold (Au) project.

"Our drill permit was approved by the mineral lands division of the Department of Industry, Energy and Technology (IET) and access for the drilling was granted by the Ministry of Transport. The company recently signed a contract with Trust Drilling of Springdale, Nfld., and their rig was mobilized to the Tote Brook target this week with diamond drilling scheduled to start immediately upon arrival," said Greg Davison, Silver Spruce vice-president, exploration, and director. "A second drill target in the southern claim showed elevated Au, As and Sb in exposed quartz and chalcedony veins will follow at the earliest opportunity."

"We met our goal for the summer programs completing rock and soil sampling, structural mapping and regional till sampling with a primary view to drill target generation in Q4 2023. The company is excited to begin a four-hole, 1,000-to-1,500-metre program to target the downdip projection of the surface vein exposures at Tote Brook and look forward to receiving promising core samples over the next few weeks," added Mr. Davison. "Sawn core will be sampled and sent to Eastern Analytical in Springdale, Nfld., for precious metal assays. Core photographs and interval descriptions will be provided in due course."

Four holes (two scissor sections) directed to the north and south are proposed from the collars TB01 and TB02, respectively, to intersect the downdip projection of the veins. Trust Drilling will supply a new Duralite Rig (DL1400), moveable with tracks, five-tonne excavator, Marooka track vehicle and all the necessary supplies associated for NQ core drilling using in-house logistics support.

The Tote Brook prospect is located 22 kilometres (km) south of the intersection between Bay d'Espoir Highway and the Trans-Canada Highway. Phase 1 drill targeting on Tote Creek is focused where structural geological mapping on the ground and desktop analysis of the property geophysics identified a coincident east-west topographic and magnetic lineament in the Badger Group and western contact of the Mount Peyton intrusion (MPIS). Surface exposures of steeply south-dipping, multistage quartz-carbonate veins and breccias with silicification, carbonatization and vuggy to drusy quartz and laminated chalcedonic textures exposed along the banks of Tote Brook.

The east-northeast zone of brecciation is eight to 10 metres (m) wide and parallel to Tote Brook. Along the north bank of the brook a vein of massive, bladed calcite is exposed for approximately 50 m along a similar orientation to the quartz veins. Locally sourced angular boulders of quartz vein material have been discovered by prospectors above the calcite vein. The hydrothermal system covers an estimated 55 m width on surface.

Prospecting of the new Marilyn claims identified localized float and outcropping rock samples showing intense silicification with iron carbonate accompanied by multiphase siliceous veins and breccias and minor to trace arsenopyrite, pyrite, chalcopyrite and malachite. Gold to 1,035 parts per billion (ppb), arsenic to over 1,000 ppm and antimony to 346 ppm are typical to the coincident precious metals and pathfinder elements of the regional orogenic mineralizing systems.

The eastern side of the property is mostly underlain bymafic intrusions of the MPIS. The western side of the property is mapped as a narrow window of Ordo-Silurian age Badger greywacke overlain by extensive Botwood metasediments. The erosional pattern suggests a westerly dip though exposures are very limited by a veneer of glacial till. The regional and its 2022 high-resolution airborne magnetic survey is strongly influenced by the sharp, northerly trending boundary of the MPIS with local decreases inmagnetic intensity interpreted as embayments by the overlying siliciclastic rocks of the Badger Group.

Exploration going forward

The properties comprise a large, virtually untested area with many outcrop showings and mineralized float, prospective geology, and regional and second order geophysical structures within and adjacent to its holdings. The company has staged plans to continue regional till sampling for gold grain analysis and soil geochemistry, regional and property-scale airborne geophysical compilation and interpretation, prospecting, ArcGIS geological and geophysical data compilation and grid soil sampling with a tighter grid spacing. Further wide-spaced sampling also is proposed for both the currently incomplete areas near anomalous sample results and infill sampling for several targets of the claim package.

Contracting for detailed compilation and interpretation of the regional geophysics and property airborne data was announced recently (see press release of Nov. 9, 2023). Mineral textures and chemistry point to high-level epizonal veins though more evaluation of the spatial position within the system is clearly warranted. Further work to isolate and orient the bedrock source and define Au-bearing drill targets in the southern Marilyn claim also will be a focus of the follow-up field program.

Project background

The company signed a definitive agreement in September, 2021, with two parties to acquire 100 per cent of three early-stage gold exploration properties, Mystery, Till and Marilyn, located near Grand Falls, Nfld., Canada, 20 to 25 kilometres west of New Found Gold Corp.'s Queensway project and 15 to 35 kilometres south of Sokoman Minerals Corp.'s Moosehead gold project. Map staking (see press release Feb. 8, 2023) of additional claims tied to both the Marilyn and Till properties effectively doubled property coverage to 148 square kilometres (14,790 hectares (ha)). The new claims are subject to first rights under the five-kilometre area of interest in the agreement and occur adjacent to several gold grain and geochemical anomalies reported from the company's 2021 and 2022 phase 1 programs.

The properties are located within the Exploits subzone, an extensive area of mineral exploration activity and discoveries over the last four years and are well situated in terms of exploration logistics 10 to 45 kilometres south by Bay d'Espoir Highway from Bishop's Falls, Nfld. The properties are located less than 70 kilometres from the Gander International Airport and are easily accessible from major paved roads and local trails.

The region is structurally complex and located, in large part, between several major crustal lineaments. Numerous major to lesser subparallel features merge and bifurcate along strike and are transected by northwest-trending and east-west-trending faults. These deep-seated structures, which juxtapose geological terranes over hundreds of kilometres, are key to the location and formation of orogenic gold deposits with several million ounces of gold as reported by junior companies.

Early work on the Mystery Lake area reported massive to semi-massive occurrences of arsenopyrite and gold assay values to 17,678 ppb (17.7 g/t Au). Historical assays were reported for 123 samples collected by the vendor from Mystery and Marilyn (see press release of Sept. 14, 2021). Eighteen samples reported Au over 0.5 g/t (maximum 12.5 g/t Au). Cu values were reported up to 9.85 per cent with minor Ag, Pb and Zn. Arsenic was highly anomalous in 36 samples reporting over 2,200 ppm upper limit for inductively coupled plasma (ICP-OES) analysis, strongly associated with elevated Au values and displayed as minor to abundant arsenopyrite.

Multiple surface occurrences are reported of agate chalcedony to colloform and crystalline silica veining and multiphase breccias, carbonate replacement by quartz, and open-space filling quartz and calcite, all textures indicative of the upper zones of epithermal systems and structural conduits in orogenic systems, and are accompanied by gold, arsenopyrite, stibnite, chalcopyrite, bornite and Cu carbonate mineralization.

Silver Spruce received an independent due diligence report on the mineral and rock textures potentially related to shallow epithermal and/or orogenic vein-style mineralization. The company completed an initial phase of till and soil sampling in late 2021 and an airborne magnetic, VLF-EM and radiometric survey in February, 2022 (see press release of Feb. 23, 2022). The company's reconnaissance sampling (95 sites) was completed before the winter 2021 shutdown and an additional 34 of the readily accessible sites were tested during the 2022 field season. A total of 27 rock samples, 108 soil samples, and 65 till and soil samples were collected during the recent 2023 exploration programs. The 2023 till sampling (66 sites) of the new claims identified its best gold grain frequency data so far with a maximum of 39 grains in GR-37 in the southern part of the claims and other significant results spread from north to south throughout the Marilyn claims.

Qualified person

Mr. Davison, PGeo, Silver Spruce VP, exploration, and director, is the company's internal qualified person for the Mystery project and is responsible for approval of the technical content of this press release within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101 (Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects), under TSX guidelines.

About Silver Spruce Resources Inc.

Silver Spruce Resources is a Canadian junior exploration company which has signed definitive agreements to acquire 100 per cent of the Melchett Lake Zn-Au-Ag project in Northern Ontario, 100-per-cent interest in the Mystery Au project near discoveries by Sokoman Minerals and New Found Gold, among others in the Exploits gold belt, Newfoundland and Labrador, 100-per-cent interest in the Pino de Plata Ag project located 15 kilometres west of Coeur Mining's Palmarejo mine in Chihuahua, Mexico, and up to 50-per-cent interest in Colibri Resource's Diamante Au-Ag project near Alamos's Nicho deposit in Sonora, Mexico.

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