Mr. Caleb Stroup of Headwater Gold reports

HEADWATER GOLD AND OCEANAGOLD COMMENCE DRILLING AT JAKE CREEK PROJECT, NEVADA

Headwater Gold Inc. has commenced drilling at its Jake Creek project in Nevada. The program is expected to total approximately 3,500 metres of drilling, fully financed by Oceanagold Corp. pursuant to the earn-in agreement announced Oct. 15, 2025.

Highlights:

• Drilling under way at Jake Creek: Approximately 3,500 metres of drilling are planned in eight to 10 holes, utilizing two drill rigs and a combination of reverse circulation (RC) and core drilling to test multiple high-priority epithermal targets.
• Fully financed by Oceanagold: The program is fully financed pursuant to the Oceanagold earn-in agreement announced on Oct. 15, 2025, which includes $10-million (U.S.) in expenditures for Oceanagold to earn a 51-per-cent interest in Jake Creek.
• Core drilling the discovery corridor: Initial core drilling will test the area of blind gold mineralization identified by historical drilling, including 11.30 grams per tonne gold over 1.53 metres within 45.73 metres grading 0.98 gram per tonne gold in hole JC-005, where mineralization has not been adequately followed up and has never been tested with core.
• New district-scale targets: The majority of the program will test newly defined and previously undrilled targets across the property, including Pete's Vein, Frostline, Owyhee and Snowstorm, generated from integrated mapping, surface geochemistry, SWIR (short-wave infrared) analysis, and CSAMT (controlled-source audio-frequency magnetotelluric) geophysics.

Caleb Stroup, president and chief executive officer of the company, stated: "We are very pleased to have drilling under way at Jake Creek with our partner Oceanagold. This program marks the first systematic drill campaign on the project focused specifically on epithermal gold mineralization and is designed to test both the known discovery corridor and several newly defined targets across the property. Historic drilling demonstrated the presence of blind gold mineralization at the Tertiary unconformity, including high-grade gold in hole JC-005, but that mineralization was never adequately followed up and has never been tested with core drilling. Over the past year, our team has integrated historical drilling, new geologic mapping, surface geochemistry, SWIR mineralogy and CSAMT geophysics to build a much stronger targeting model. Importantly, while the discovery corridor is a key focus, the majority of this program will test new targets such as Pete's Vein, Frostline, Owyhee and Snowstorm, reflecting our view that Jake Creek is a district-scale epithermal system with multiple opportunities for discovery."

2026 Jake Creek drill program:

The 2026 Jake Creek drill program is expected to consist of approximately 3,500 metres in eight to 10 holes utilizing one RC rig and one core rig. The program will test five target areas where epithermal vein targets have been identified through the integration of geological mapping, surface geochemistry, SWIR alteration data and CSAMT resistivity profiles. This represents the first systematic drill campaign at Jake Creek focused specifically on epithermal gold mineralization.

A portion of the program will focus on the discovery corridor, where historical drilling intersected broad zones of gold mineralization at the Tertiary unconformity, including 11.30 grams per tonne gold over 1.53 metres within a broader interval of 45.73 metres grading 0.98 gram per tonne gold in hole JC-005. Recent relogging and reinterpretation of historical RC chips have improved Headwater's understanding of the subsurface geology in this area, including the relationship between mineralization, the Tertiary unconformity and controlling structures. Planned west-directed core holes through the discovery corridor will be the first core holes drilled through the altered Tertiary volcanic section above the unconformity and are designed to better define the geometry of mineralization and test for potential high-grade feeder structures.

Headwater has completed systematic SWIR analysis of historical RC samples from the discovery corridor, totalling 2,115 analyses from 12 drill holes. This work identified ammonium-bearing illite and buddingtonite (ammonium feldspar), both important alteration minerals in low-sulphidation epithermal systems, and demonstrated a strong correlation between these minerals and gold grade at Jake Creek. Buddingtonite is an important vector mineral at several Nevada epithermal systems, including the Sleeper deposit, where ammonium alteration is closely associated with high-grade gold mineralization. At Jake Creek, the correlation between ammonium mineralogy and gold provides a practical near-real-time downhole vectoring tool that will be applied during the 2026 drill program.

The majority of the planned drilling will test newly defined targets outside of the discovery corridor. These targets were generated through the integration of property-wide geological mapping, surface geochemistry, SWIR mineralogy, CSAMT geophysics and subsurface information from historical drilling. Whereas most historical drilling and prior exploration focused on the discovery corridor, the 2026 program is designed to test the broader project-scale opportunity and evaluate multiple new structural targets across the property.

The 2026 drill program is expected to test approximately five target areas distributed across the property throughout the broad spatial extent of the Jake Creek high-level epithermal alteration cell. These include the following:

• Discovery corridor target: blind discovery area with well-defined untested structural targets adjacent to high-grade historic drill intercepts near a Tertiary unconformity;
• Pete's Vein corridor target : a zone of outcropping epithermal quartz veining that coincides with a high-resistivity CSAMT feature at depth; along strike to the south, the veins trend into linear structurally controlled crackle breccias with highly anomalous epithermal pathfinder element geochemistry;
• Frostline target: east-dipping structural zone evident in CSAMT, gravity and aeromagnetic data sets that corresponds to anomalous gold and pathfinder element soil geochemistry;
• Owyhee target: regional northeast-striking range front fault that preserves subparallel dikes and quartz-carbonate veins in the footwall;
• Snowstorm target: large north-trending normal fault that aligns with significant aeromagnetic high and gravity break along the western edge of the Northern Nevada rift; upper volcanic stratigraphy near the fault is intensely clay altered and corresponds to a broad zone of anomalous pathfinder element geochemistry in soil, anomalous SWIR mineralogy as well as discrete zones of high-level chalcedonic quartz vein boulder float.

About the Jake Creek project

The Jake Creek project is 100 per cent owned by Headwater and consists of 212 unpatented lode mining claims on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land in Humboldt county, Nevada, located 65 kilometres northwest of Winnemucca and eight kilometres east of the Nevada Gold Mines' Turquoise Ridge mine complex. A portion of the project is subject to a 1-per-cent net smelter return royalty, half of which can be purchased for $1-million (U.S.) at any time. For further information, see Headwater's news release dated March 3, 2025.

The project covers 2,400 acres (1,000 hectares) on the western margin of the Northern Nevada rift, a north-northwest-trending structural corridor known for hosting significant precious metal mineralization, including Hecla's past-producing Midas mine and Hollister mine. The geology is dominated by mid-Miocene bimodal volcanic rocks, including rhyolite to dacite flows and welded tuffs, unconformably overlying Paleozoic sedimentary rocks at depths of 50 to 300 metres.

Historic drilling by Evolving Gold Corp. in 2010 and 2011 (13 RC holes total) intersected widespread epithermal mineralization at the Tertiary unconformity, with notable intercepts such as 11.3 grams per tonne gold over 1.52 metres within 45.72 metres grading 0.98 gram per tonne gold from 210.3 metres in hole JC-005. This mineralization, associated with silicification, clay alteration and banded quartz veining, suggests a robust low-sulphidation epithermal system with potential for high-grade feeder zones at depth or along strike.

About Headwater Gold Inc.

Headwater Gold is a technically driven mineral exploration company focused on exploring for and discovering high-grade precious metal deposits in the Western United States. Headwater is actively exploring one of the world's most well-endowed, mining-friendly jurisdictions, with a goal of making world-class precious metal discoveries. The company has a large portfolio of epithermal vein exploration projects and a technical team with diverse experience in capital markets and major mining companies. Headwater is systematically drill testing several projects in Nevada and has strategic earn-in agreements with Oceanagold on its TJ, Jake Creek and Hot Creek projects, Newmont Corp. on its Spring Peak and Lodestar projects, and Centerra Gold Inc. on its Crane Creek project in Idaho. In August, 2022, and September, 2024, Newmont and Centerra acquired strategic equity interests in the company, further strengthening Headwater's exploration capabilities.

Qualified person

The technical information contained in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Dr. Stephanie Grocke, PGeo (EGBC licence No. 58217), an independent qualified person as defined in National Instrument 43-101, Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects.

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