Anacortes Mining Corp. announced that the Company's wholly owned Peruvian subsidiary, Aurifera Tres Cruces S.A. commenced drilling in accordance with the approved Ficha Technical Ambiental (FTA), the environmental instrument utilized for permitting the exploration drilling program at its Tres Cruces gold project in the prolific Quiruvilca Mining District in northern Perú. The drilling contractor Remicsa Drilling S.A. is fully mobilized to site, and ALS Global's Peruvian subsidiary, ALS Perú S.A. is prepared to carry out the assay services for the drilling campaign.

ALS has committed to providing a quick turnaround on assays. With an estimated budget of $1.6M - $2.0M USD, this initial drilling program will consist of 3,000 - 4,000 meters of core drilling, which will include infill drilling of the known oxide resource, and metallurgical holes and will test previous high-grade intercepts that ended in gold and silver mineralization. The infill drilling of the known oxide resource is intended to confirm the high-grade nature of the near surface mineralization which hosts 630,000 ounces of leachable gold at 1.28 g/t gold, making it one of the highest-grade gold oxide development deposits globally.

The recently announced Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) on the oxide resource demonstrated an after tax NPV5% of US$165.9M at $1,700 gold. For more information on the PEA, please see the press release dated March 8, 2022. Deeper exploration drilling will be conducted to test the depth potential of the known sulphide resource, which currently hosts 1.84 million ounces of gold in the indicated category at 1.84 g/t gold and 85,000 ounces of gold in the inferred category at 1.55 g/t gold.

There is exceptional potential below the known sulphide resource based on previously encountered high-grade drill intercepts, alteration patterns and breccias. One of the early holes in the program will test Hole RTC-255, where the bottom 173.0 meters of the hole from 92.0 m to 265.0 m had an average grade of 3.12 g/t Au. This hole, which ended in strong gold and silver mineralization, included 2.0 meters grading 79.7 g/t Au and 180.5 g/t Ag from 196.0 m to 198.0 m down hole.