In April 2009, Atna entered into a Mining Venture Agreement ("MVA") for the Pinson gold project in Humboldt County, Nevada, with Pinson Mining Company ("PMC'), a Nevada general partnership comprised of Homestake Mining Company of California and Barrick Holding Company of California, both subsidiaries of Barrick Gold Corporation (NYSE:ABX). Under the MVA, Atna will own a 30 percent equity interest in the joint venture, PMC will own 70 percent and will manage the project.

In early 2009 PMC notified Atna that it had completed the expenditure of US$30 million at Pinson to earn its 70 percent equity position. The results of that work are being evaluated to determine the feasibility of development and a future plan for the project. Dewatering of the underground facilities will continue during this decision period to protect the partners' investment and facilitate re-start, if warranted.

From mid-2007 through December 2008, Barrick completed 163 surface and underground drill holes totaling 112,578 total feet of drilling (91,892 feet from surface drill sites and 20,686 feet underground) as part of its earn-in obligations. Total reverse circulation footage was 50,721 feet and core footage totaled 61,857 feet. In addition, PMC completed an extensive review and quality control analysis of historic drill information and data. PMC's focus included both shallow drill targets to be evaluated for open pit mining potential as well as high grade drill targets at depth for potential underground development.

In June 2007, Atna completed an updated Technical Report on the Pinson property and revised the mineral resource calculations based upon all available data from its work through June 2006. The total Pinson project has measured plus indicated gold resource totalling 2.5 million tons grading 0.424 ounce per ton gold containing 1.1 million ounces of gold and the inferred resource totalled 3.4 million tons grading 0.34 oz/ton gold containing 1.1 million ounces of gold and all categories were calculated at a gold cut-off grade of 0.20 ounce per ton.

Pinson Project Revised Gold Resource Estimate (0.20 oz/ton Au cutoff)

The Pinson Mine produced over 987,000 ounces of gold from relatively low-grade oxidized ore by open pit mining methods, prior to 2000. Gold production came from decalcified, locally silicified and/or argillized, fine-grained, limy sedimentary rocks of the Ordovician Comus Formation. Mineralization is focused along and adjacent to the Getchell Fault zone.