Columbus Gold Corp. announced that Phase II drilling has commenced at its Overland Pass gold project, located north of Barrick Gold's Bald Mountain gold mine, on the southern extension of the Carlin Trend. Sniper Resources Ltd. can earn an initial 51% interest in Overland Pass by undertaking staged annual exploration expenditures. Sniper plans to drill 25 RC holes from 20 drill sites totalling 3,048 metres (10,000 feet). Sniper reports that the current program is designed to follow-up on the encouraging Phase I drill results of 2007 and also to test additional areas of favorable geology that were not tested in Phase I, some of which yielded high-grade-gold surface sampling results. The overall geological setting at Overland Pass is very similar to that of the Alligator Ridge and Rain gold deposits, both of which produced in excess of one million ounces of gold. Sampling at Overland Pass has yielded gold from silicified zones and breccia in the Pilot Shale and Joana Limestone. The favorable Pilot/Joana stratigraphic sequence is present for approximately 3 km (2 miles) of strike length on the claim block. Gold values range from anomalous to 15.5 g/t (0.45 opt) gold in surface sampling, with nine samples exceeding 3 g/t (0.10 opt) gold.