News Release 2011-10
August 17, 2011

NEWS RELEASE

St. Elias Mines Ltd. – Diamond Drilling Commences – Tesoro Gold Project in Peru

Vancouver, B.C. August 17, 2011 Lori McClenahan, President and CEO of St. Elias Mines Ltd. (SLI -TSX:V), announced today that diamond drilling has commenced at the Tesoro Gold Project in Peru. The 10,000-metre drilling program has been designed to test near-surface and deeper-seated geophysical anomalies identified by Titan 24 geophysical surveys.

The Company has engaged the Peruvian subsidiary of Energold Drilling Corp. (TSX-EGD) to conduct the initial portion of the drilling program to test the near-surface targets. An additional diamond drill rig, with a deeper drill capacity, is slated to commence drilling in October, 2011 to test the deeper-seated targets.

The initial series of drill holes will test the “Zona Central IP Anomaly” in the A4, A5, A7 and A8 vein areas of Zona Central. The drill holes will test high-priority drill targets identified by Titan 24 geophysical surveys and the down-dip extensions of known gold mineralization.

The above news release was verified by Brophy himself. But the release, IMO, does suggest two different scenario,s?

But, on a better thought, if they are gonna pincushion the anomaly, that means that it is worth proving it up to an ore body and our suspicions of having a resource must be satisfied. So, it then would appear that she will be doing infill drilling to put this into a 43-101. By proving this up this way, it will give us a solid piece of evidence that can be bid on down the road, and for sure, a much more valuable one.

I should add, the A-7 vein mentioned above, is classified as a barren vein, meaning the vein itself carries no appreciable gold. But, the host rock of this vein has disseminated gold ~ 1g/t over a considerable width. This area would become important in an open pit scenario. The below is taken from Brophy,s 2005 tech report.

A7 is a swarm of four veins ranging in width from a few cm to 48 cm with an

aggregate length of about 550 m. Most of the swarm lies within a sheared and

brecciated zone with chlorite-calcite-epidote alteration. The veins themselves are

white and do not carry appreciable gold, but, as will be described in a subsequent

section, the alteration zone itself carries anomalous albeit sub-economic gold

values.

The northern part of the A7 swarm is within a zone of propylitic alteration in

brecciated and sheared diorite. Fourty-two trench samples of the altered diorite

with an average sample length of 3.0 meters returned an average grade of 250 ppb

gold within a north-northwesterly trending zone measuring 200 m by 50 m. The

highest-grade sample assayed 2.26 g/t gold across 3.0 m. Another chip sample

assayed 0.94 g/t gold across 7.5 m. This gold-anomalous alteration zone may be

of economic interest at a higher gold price.