Broken Bit Barite occurrence is located on a south-facing slope, approximately 6 kilometres northeast of Gataga Mountain.
Regionally, the area lies immediately east of the Northern Rocky Mountain Trench, which here coincides with the Kechika River valley, in a broad belt of Paleozoic basinal-facies sedimentary strata known as the Kechika Trough, part of Ancestral North America (Map 38; Exploration and Mining Geology, Volume 1; Geological Survey of Canada Map 1713A). The area is underlain by a generally northwest-trending and southwest-dipping belt consisting dominantly of quartz arenite sedimentary rocks the Cambrian Gog Group, a strongly deformed sequence of grey to brown dolostone, shale, siltstone and chert of the Silurian to Devonian Road River Group and a varied unit composed mostly of chert-pebble conglomerate and quartz sandstone, and blue-black siliceous shale and siltstone of the Devonian and Mississippian Earn Group (Geological Survey of Canada Map 42-1962, 1712A; Geoscience Map 1998-9). All rock units have been deformed into tight, northeast-overturned folds and imbricated by thrust faults.
Locally, massive, bedded calcareous barite within limestone and argillite rubble of the Middle Devonian to Lower Mississippian Earn Group have been identified over an area of approximately 70 by 50 metres. Samples of the barite assayed from 25.29 to 47.91 per cent barium; one sample assayed 0.16 per cent strontium (Geoscience Map 1998-9). Coarse 'sand' beneath the rubble contains 47.91 per cent barium, apparently accounting for the large kill zone in which no vegetation, not even lichen, survives (Bulletin 107, page 99).
Work History
The occurrence was discovered in 1995 during a BCDM regional mapping program.
In 1997, Cominco Ltd. completed a program of geological mapping, and geochemical (rock, silt and soil) sampling on the area as the Net 1-30 claims.
In 2011 and 2012, BCarlin Resources Ltd. completed regionally extensive programs of geochemical (rock, silt and soil) sampling on the area as the Netson Lake property.
