The Irene vein is at approximately 1200 metres elevation on Irene Creek, a southwest flowing tributary of the Duncan River. The vein strikes to the northwest and is covered by the Irene (L.7464) and Eva (L.7463) crown grants. In the the early 1900s, there were two other tenures (Marion and Charlotte) in a linear cluster; however, they have now lapsed.
The area was prospected by the Irene Mining Company in the late 1890s and early 1900s. By 1904, the company had sunk a shaft for approximately 15 metres, driven a crosscut for 80 metres and drifted for approximately 76 metres along the main vein. It had also driven a winze for 12.6 metres at the end of the drift. There may have been other workings. Thereafter, the property remained idle until 1983, when Homestock Resources Limited renewed exploration and commissioned soil geochemical and geophysical surveys.
The Trout Lake area is underlain by a thick succession of sedimentary and volcanic rocks of the Badshot Formation and Lardeau Group near the northern end of the Kootenay arc, an arcuate, north to northwest trending belt of Paleozoic and Mesozoic strata that is now classified as a distinct, pericratonic, terrane. The arc rocks are bordered by Precambrian quartzite in the east and they young to the west, where they are bounded by Jurassic-age intrusive complexes. They were deformed during the Antler orogeny in Devonian-Mississippian time and were refolded and faulted during the Columbian orogeny, in the Middle Jurassic. A large panel, the "Selkirk allochthon", was later offset to the northeast by dip-slip motion along the Columbia River fault. The showing is on the east side of the allochthon.
The Badshot Formation is composed of a thick Cambrian limestone that is a distinctive marker horizon in the Trout Lake area. It is underlain by Hamill Group quartzite and it is overlain by a younger assemblage of limestone, calcareous, graphitic and siliceous argillite and siltstone, sandstone, quartzite and conglomerate, and also mafic volcanic flows, tuffs and breccias, all of which belong to the Lardeau Group. The rocks are isoclinally folded and intensely deformed, but only weakly metamorphosed.
The Irene vein is in a thick limestone unit intercalated with quartzite of the Upper Proterozoic Horsethief Creek Group, which is similar to the Hamill. The limestone is sheared and the shears contains small lenses and veinlets of quartz and sulphide. In 1904, the vein exposed in the adit was described as having a continuous shoot 12.2 metres long and 0.2 to 0.38 metre wide rich in silver, lead and lesser amount of copper. High-grader samples were reported to contain between 1028 and 2057 grams per tonne silver and 65 per cent lead (Minister of Mines Annual Report, 1904).
Homestock constructed a grid, collected 432 soil samples and conducted eletromagnetic and magnetometer geophysical surveys looking for the southeast and northwest projections of the vein. The results were inconclusive. The best geochemical results came from east to west oriented areas of low magnetic signature.
