Red Mountain Mining (ASX: RMX) has commenced an expanded auger soil sampling program at the Oaky Creek antimony prospect within the Armidale antimony-gold project in New South Wales.
Results from initial exploration early last year at the southern end of the Oaky Creek conventional soil anomaly demonstrated the effectiveness of auger sampling as a prospect-scale tool for targeting antimony mineralisation.
Soil anomalies and assay results of up to 39.3% antimony and 1.09 parts per million gold previously reported for Oaky Creek indicate the presence of a large-scale system with a surface strike extent of approximately 3 kilometres, analogous to Australia’s largest known antimony deposit—Larvotto Resources’ (ASX: LRV) Hillgrove project.
Tighter Soil Grid
The expanded program is designed to tighten Red Mountain’s soil grid to better constrain individual high-priority drill targets over the full 1.2km strike extent at Oaky Creek North, the primary initial target at Oaky Creek.
It will also test the extension of a 200m-long antimony-arsenic auger soil anomaly at Oaky Creek South, covering the area between previous auger work and the prospect’s historical workings.
Conventional soils defined a weak but coherent anomaly at Oaky Creek South, with past work showing an increase in arsenic toward the edges—a potential vector towards antimony-gold mineralisation.
Red Mountain anticipates completion of the expanded program before the end of the current quarter, with results defining multiple orogenic antimony-gold targets for drill testing during the first half of this year.
World-Class Region
Armidale lies west of the Hillgrove project, extending 85km along the western side of the Peel Fault system.
This system has been recognised as having world-class mineral potential, with over 400 known orogenic gold and base metal mineral occurrences along a 400km strike extent.
The region is underexplored, with less than 200 mostly-shallow drill holes along strike, the majority focused on discrete prospects.
Additional targets include the Horsley Station and Horsley North gold prospects, as well as East Hills, where initial rock-chip assays reported 9.9% antimony and soil sampling returned anomalies up to 109ppm antimony and 304ppm gold.
Red Mountain’s expanding US antimony portfolio consists of the ++Utah++, ++Yellow Pine++, and ++Silver Dollar++ projects.
