Bald Hill
Location, Access, Description
The Bald Hill Project is located approximately 40 km northwest of Sussex, Queens County, New Brunswick (NB), near the community of Wickham. The Project area is easily accessible from Sussex or St. John by paved roads and on-site by secondary access roads.
The property is composed of 26 mining claims totalling 416 ha and covering a number of antimony (±Au ±Ag-Pb-Zn) occurrences. The claims are fully owned by Globex.
The property lies on a gently rolling farmland and woodland. Typical boreal forest, chiefly balsam and spruce, covers most of the property.
Geology and Mineralization
The following sections regarding Geology and Mineralization of the Bald Hill property are essentially taken from Banks and Langton (2014).
Regional Settings & Property Geology
The Bald Hill Work Area is located in Annidale Group north of the Mascarene Cover Sequence, and north of the northeast-trending Taylors Brook Fault Zone, considered to be the contact between the Annidale Group and the Mascarene Cover.
The Late Cambrian-Early Ordovician Annidale Group is a sequence of interbedded mafic to felsic volcanic rocks with clastic sedimentary and volcanogenic sedimentary assemblages. Zircon U-Pb values from two samples in the Annidale Group have yielded ages of 493 ±2 Ma and 497 ±10 Ma. Carboniferous cover sequences unconformably overlie the Annidale Group to the north and northeast.
All rocks within the Annidale belt have undergone multiple episodes of faulting and deformation. The metamorphic grade is restricted to the chlorite grade or biotite grade facies in this area.
The Bald Hill Suite is a suite of peralkaline rhyolite dome complexes that are spatially and temporally associated with the Carpenter Brook Formation and are parallel to the regional northeast-trending fabric. Grey to tan felsic ash tuff, red to grey felsic pyroclastic breccia and rhyolite flows are included in the Suite. The felsic volcanic and sedimentary units are also locally intruded by reddish to greyish pink microgranite. Microgranite fragments occur within the felsic pyroclastic breccia, indicating a close temporal relationship between the intrusive and extrusive phases.
The Bald Hill Suite is commonly enriched in sulphides including pyrite, arsenopyrite, and locally massive stibnite and gold.
Metallogeny
The antimony (Sb) mineralization on the Bald Hill project is a vein-style mineralization associated with a northwest-trending fault zone. Sporadic gold (Au) mineralization is also present in lower-grade Sb mineralized zones, either due to pre-existing gold mineralization associated with an earlier deformation event, or remobilization during the stibnite-vein forming event (Banks and Langton, 2014).
In drill core, the antimony mineralization is observed in a breccia unit with stringers of pyrite and fragments of tuff and quartz, within a boundary zone of volcanic-derived sediments and rhyolite, suggesting a vein-system model. True widths of the mineralized zones, interpreted from drill-core intersections, vary from less than 1 metre to over 3 metres. Individual intersections range as high as 17.4 % Sb over 0.21 m (true thickness) in hole BH-08-13 and 11.70 % Sb over 3.19 m (true thickness) in hole BH-08-03.
Stibnite (Sb2S3), pyrite and arsenopyrite are the most common sulphides on the Bald Hill property, and minor galena has also been observed. Sporadic gold (Au) content has also been noted in assay results, generally in inverse proportion to stibnite grades.
The regional foliation strikes generally NE ; however, the main antimony mineralized zones trend NW and dip sub-vertically to the SW. Northwest-oriented lineaments are visible on geophysical surveys and possibly represent fault zones, which would suggest that the mineralization has a structural control component Banks and Langton (2014).
History
Exploration work of the Bald Hill area has been completed intermittently since the late 1800s for base and/or precious metal occurrences. Historical work identified Sb with minor gold (Au) mineralization, associated with low-grade silver (Ag) and disseminated copper (Cu) mineralization in outcrop and in drill core.
Interest in antimony in the Bald Hill area began in the 1960’s when stibnite bearing boulders were found in a farmer’s field. The next recorded work included the first insitu antimony being found in the 1970’s followed by till sampling on behalf of Maritime Resource Research Associated Ltd in the 1980’s and 90’s that identified significant gold and antimony anomalies.
Prospecting by Doiron and Thorn in the late 1900’s and early 2000’s located boulders of high grade stibnite near the current South Showing. Further soil sampling outlined widespread anomalous antimony values (R. Dahn, 2015).
Arsenopyrite and stibnite bearing quartz was discovered by Kay Thorne in 2005. More intensive exploration began in 2007 by Rockport (Tri-Star) that included trenching and drilling, which continued to 2015 (R. Dahn). Rockport’s preliminary work during the late 00’s has identified two separate mineralized trends of antimony plus or minus gold mineralization on the Bald Hill Property. Assay results have ranged up to 48% Sb and 3.01 g/t Au in rock grab samples. Soil geochemical results have suggested a large mineralized system with anomalous Sb, Au and molybdenum (Mo) being evident. Initial drill results
on the Bald Hill Property have delineated one of the two mineralized trends over a strike length of 450 metres and to a maximum vertical depth of approximately 300 metres. The mineralized zones have not been delineated and remain open in all directions.
In 2010, Rockport retained Conestoga-Rovers & Associates (CRA) to complete the National Instrument (NI) 43-101 Technical Report of the Bald Hill antimony exploration project (MacDonald, 2010), resulting in a potential estimation of between 725,000 and 1,000,000 tonnes @ 4.11% to 5.32% Sb for the Bald Hill deposit. This estimation is not NI 43-101 conformable since it is only based upon 16 widely spaced drill holes totaling 3,554 metres and 609 assays. The report concluded the mineralization occurs as massive stibnite veins occurring in hydrothermal breccias and stockworks along NW-SE fault structures. A 1 500 metre zone of potential was proposed.
A metallurgical report documenting preliminary testing in 2010 for Rockport on the Bald Hill antimony indicates processing recovery rates should exceed 90% (R. Dahn, 2013, File 477458).
Between 2011 and 2014, Rockport carried-out environmental study, additional Airborne Mag and DIGHEM surveys, ground VLF-EM, and soil geochemical sampling. Trenching and diamond-drilling then evaluated some high-antimony soil anomalies. Channel sampling returned up to 3.53% Sb over 8.18 m and 9.04% Sb over 2.60 m. Best DDH assays included 1.37% Sb over 1.00 m. New metallurgical testing was also performed in 2013 on 1.5 tonne bulk sample from trench BH-TR-11-01.
As a total, Rockport has completed 20 DDH for a total of 3,768.32 m, 15 trenches totalling 887 m, and 1,028 soil samples on the Bald Hill property. Rockport’s work on the Bald Hill property has thus confirmed the Sb mineralization over a significant area of approximately 700 m on surface and to 300 m depth (Banks and Langton, 2014). Surface mineralization and soil geochemical anomalies indicate that the mineralization extends for at least 1.5 km, along strike from the delineated mineralized zones. The 2014 trenching program, centered approximately 1.0 km along strike to the southeast from the main Bald Hill occurrences, exposed new antimony mineralization grading 9.04% Sb over 2.60 metres.
Globex Mining acquired the Bald Hill claims (Claim Unit 5745) in early 2021 and immediately began planning a drill program on the property ; five (5) holes were drilled in December of 2021 (McKinnon, 2022) in order to better characterize the geometry and continuity between the North and South mineralized zones. Numerous quartz veins were intersected in the core, many of which contained arsenopyrite, chalcopyrite and traces of sphalerite. Significant intercepts were encountered in three of the holes, with assay results up to 4.71% Sb and 0.73 ppm Au over 10.2 metres (DDH BH21-28).
Globex optioned the Bald Hill project to Superior Mining International Corp. in September of 2024.
Resources and Potential
Historical exploration campaigns on the Bald Hill main grid have confirmed the main zone of antimony mineralization over approximately 700 m in strike and to 300 m depth. Surface mineralization and soil geochemical anomalies imply that the mineralization extends for at least 1.5 km, along strike of the drilled mineralized zones (Banks & Langton, 2014). The work completed by both Rockport and Globex on the Bald Hill Project thus substantiates the occurrence of a potential resource of economically interesting antimony mineralization. The Project is a valid exploration target that remains largely untested with respect to its full dimensions and its regional structural relationships.
There are actually no defined NI 43-101 mineral resource or reserves on the Bald Hill property.
Following Banks & Langton (2014), the recommended exploration programmes should aim to establish an NI 43-101 antimony Mineral Resource through additional surface excavation and diamond drilling. The proposed budget for the recommended work is $200,000 for a 40 holes Phase 1 exploration work. Then depending on results of Phase 1 additional $1,500,000 for each of the Phase 2(a) and Phase 2(b) exploration programmes would be required.
Globex regards the property as highly prospective. The recent termination of antimony exports by China, the world’s largest exporter, bodes well for the price going forward.