Timberline Resources Corporation announced that it has commenced the 2022 drill program at its 100%-controlled Eureka Project in Nevada. The 70km2 Eureka Project occupies a substantial portion of the Eureka Gold Belt, a northwest trending corridor of Carlin-type gold deposits hosted in Cambrian-Ordovician aged rocks. The northern end of the belt includes the giant gold deposits (7.7M oz of resources) at the Ruby Hill Archimedes complex, controlled by i80 Gold Corp.

Timberline has one reverse circulation (RC) and one core rig operating at the Water Well Zone (WWZ) target. The primary objective of this drill program is to follow-up the high-grade intercepts reported earlier this year and includes step-out and in-fill drilling. The fully-funded drill program will include at least 5,500 meters before the end of October.

Of this, approximately 4,000m (13,000ft) of diamond core drilling will be by Big Sky Exploration, LLC and 1,500m (5,000ft) of RC drilling will be by HD Drilling, LLC. In addition to the drilling, Timberline will continue its ongoing program of geologic mapping, and structural and 3D modeling of target zones. The Company recently completed a property-wide integration and interpretation of its huge soil geochemistry database.

The 2020 and 2021 drilling programs included several drill intercepts that have boosted the potential of the newly discovered WWZ mineralization, which is downdip from and adjacent to the Lookout Mountain gold resource. The basal contact of the Cambrian-aged Dunderberg Shale is consistently enriched in gold over a large area. Recent core drilling highlights include: BHSE-212C: 41.1m at 5.03 g/t Au, including 19.8m at 9.49 g/t Au; BHSE-220C: 44.2m at 4.10 g/t Au, including 12.2m at 9.18 g/t Au; and BHSE-192C: 24.4m at 3.85 g/t Au, including 4.6m at 8.35 g/t Au.

Drill Targeting: The strong gold intercepts in BHSE-220C and -212C are separated by approximately 400m, and the WWZ remains open to the north and south. There is also room to grow the zone to the east and west. The WWZ is likely to draw approximately 65% of the 2022 drill funding.

A substantial portion of the 2022 drill program will be directed at offsets around these high-grade holes, but the plan also includes numerous holes within the footprint that is loosely defined by previous drilling.Timberline reported comparative results from RC and core drilling in the WWZ on February 24 and March 24, 2022. In this instance, BHSE-205 (an RC hole) had indicated a significant zone of gold mineralization, but the visual indications from the drill chips suggested that the gold grades may be higher. Since the RC drilling had encountered relatively high rates of groundwater inflow, there was concern that higher-grade fine material may have been lost from the RC samples.

The Company drilled a duplicate core hole immediately adjacent to the RC hole. The results from the core hole were markedly higher in gold than the RC results. Several other RC drill holes returned significant zones of gold mineralization at the base of the Dunderberg Shale.

These include the intercepts shown below in Table 2. While these RC results indicate a consistently mineralized zone at the base of the Dunderberg Shale in the WWZ, all of these results are from the same drill rig operating below the water table. The Company intends to twin some of these previously reported RC drill holes with core so that grades and thickness of the mineralization can be compared between the two drilling methods. The 2022 drill program will provide significant new data that will help address questions about the RC sampling.

The deeper portions of the WWZ will be tested with core drilling, but substantial savings can be achieved by using less expensive RC drilling for the upper portions of the hole. Ordovician rocks, such as the Goodwin and Ninemile formations are important hosts of gold at i80 Gold Corp.'s Ruby Hill Mine in the northern part of the district. This northern target is undrilled in the vicinity of the WWZ, but there is significant drill indicated gold farther northwest at the Rocky Canyon Target.

This year's drilling will test the big fault zone and the adjoining rocks to the north. The favorable Cambrian rocks continue for some distance to the south from the WWZ. Along trend from BHSE-212C, there are no historic drill holes for more than 500m.

The Lookout Mountain resource continues south for more than a kilometer from the southern limits of the WWZ. The favorable basal contact of the Dunderberg Shale with the Hamburg Dolomite is believed to dip east from the resource area into this target corridor, but the depth and degree of mineralization are not known. This year's program will include numerous step-out drill holes to the south, some of which may test as far south as 700m from BHSE-212C.

The Oswego Target lies approximately one kilometer east of the WWZ. Timberline recently announced the results of the first systematic exploration at the prospect in more than 30 years. Surface sampling during late 2021 returned high grade gold in channel samples along the fault zone, 25.9m averaging 14.42 g/t and 27.4m averaging 12.02 g/t On May 11, 2022, Timberline reported significant oxide gold mineralization from drilling, including 35.1m at 2.32 g/t Au, including 19.8m at 2.93 g/t gold in drill hole BHSE-213.

The plan for 2022 is to follow-up the recently reported drilling with RC holes along the structure and downdip to the west. Very important targets at Oswego are the prospective Goodwin and Ninemile formations, where they are intersected by the large fault zone that hosts the high-grade surface gold at Oswego. Drilling in the Oswego area may constitute up to 20% of the total 2022 drilling.

The balance of the drilling (~15%) will be contingent on results from WWZ and Oswego, but Timberline geologists are also developing new drill targets at the Windfall Trend, which may get tested during this program. The prolific Dunderberg and Hamburg formations hosted historic gold production from the Windfall Mine. Timberline drilling from 2014 - 2015 intercepted significant gold from this contact zone between the historic Windfall and Rustler pits.

. These historic drill intercepts are open down dip and may be related to geophysical indications of alteration and chargeable rocks at depth. Golden Lake Exploration has also recently announced strong gold mineralization from the Dunderberg - Hamburg contact immediately north of Timberline's property.

Timberline expects to bring a drill back to Windfall later in 2022 or 2023.