Desert Gold Ventures Inc. provided an SMSZ Project update. A total of 445 auger holes totalling 2,067 metres have been completed over priority soil and structural targets proximal to Desert Gold's Mogoyafara South and Gourbassi West North gold deposits. Samples for these holes have been submitted to SGS Laboratories in Bamako.

As part of Desert Gold's regular site routine, exploration staff tour 440 km2 property to document artisanal mining activity. Recently a new zone of artisanal mining activity was observed approximately 500 metres south of Mogoyafara South gold deposit. The new artisanal zone is approximately 400 metres long and 50 to 75 metres wide.

Host rocks include sheared conglomerate, sandstone, siltstone and shale with both northerly and easterly trending quartz veining with associated albite, sericite and pyrite alteration. The image below shows a narrow, easterly-trending quartz vein with darker pyrite casts in the weathered rock adjacent to the vein. Samples from this site have returned up to 1.55 g/t gold.

Another new area of artisanal mining has open up approximately 1,000 metres to the east of the Mogoyafara South trend; samples from two, 50 metre long by 2 to 5 metre wide artisanal zones returned grab samples to 5.04 g/t gold. Another informal mining area was noted approximately 2 km east of the Kolon Zone located in the central eastern part of the concession area. This area, which has not yet been explored by Desert Gold was the subject of a larger scale mining operation using excavators and several large sluice boxes using water supplied from two, 50-100 metre wide, man-made lakes.

Open pit excavations, in saprolitized sediments, ranged up to 100 metres across and up to 15 metres deep before authorities stopped the work. The initial planned exploration drilling consisted of auger drilling (approximately 2,500 metres in 325 holes) to probe the strike extents of the magnetic anomaly trends for gold enrichment, test several large- scale structural targets and validate the proximal, high gold (>200 ppb) in soils and termite mounds. To date, 2,067 metres of auger drilling have been completed with holes averaging 4.6 metres deep with a range of 2 to 15 metres deep.

Two samples are collected for assay from each hole corresponding to the base of the laterite and upper portion of the saprolite or weathered rock. Additional holes, to fulfill the 2,500 m auger drilling contract will be carried out to bracket the best anomalies, once the first phase assay results are received. Once the auger results have been received, it is expected that follow-up drilling to further test the deposit and to test new targets, will be recommended.

Desert Gold has successfully used auger drilling to discover new gold zones like the Gourbassi West North Zone where holes have returned up to 1.08 g/t Au over 123.95 metres (true width estimated to be approximately 87 metres).