The Butte showings are near the crest of Silver Cup Ridge, between American Creek, which flows to the southwest, and Butte and Haskins Creeks, which flows to the northeast. They are in rugged terrain at an elevation of approximately 2300 metres. The property was originally part of the northwesterly trending cluster of crown granted claims which comprised "Mineral Lease M219". These claims are, from south to north, the Gallant Boy (L.14179), Harlock (L.14180), Butt Fraction #1 (L.14176), Butt Fraction #2, (L.14177), Butt (L.14082), and Bonanza King (L.14178). The showings at the south end of the lease are described under Gallant Boy [082KNW215].

There were several old workings scattered over the north end of Mineral Lease 219 by the time Lardeau Gold and Silver Mines Limited explored the area in the mid to late 1920s. However, most of the early work had focused on the Gallant Boy tenure, at the south end of the cluster. The northern claims, were acquired by Burdos Mines Limited in the late 1960s and the company did some soil geochemical work and trenched and drilled three holes in the Bonanaza Creek area for a total depth of 769 metres. The ground was later acquired by Camborne Resources Limited, which was active in the late 1980s.

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 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. They occur as intercalated beds of marble, quartzite and grey, green and black phyllite and schist. Fyles and Eastwood (EMPR BULL 45) subdivided the group into six formations (Index, Triune, Ajax, Sharon Creek, Jowett and Broadview) of which the lowermost (Index) and uppermost (Broadview) are the most widespread. The Triune (siliceous argillite), Ajax (quartzite) and Sharon Creek (siliceous argillite) are restricted to the Trout Lake area. The Jowett is a mafic volcanic unit.

The Butte group claims are northwest of the Gallant Boy [082KNW212]. Both are on the northeast side of Silver Cup Ridge and they are underlain by similar rocks. The Butte tenures cover the hanging wall of a major fault that separates Broadview Formation phyllites (on the southwest side of the ridge) from slightly older strata (on the northeast side). The tenure are for the most part underlain by a variety of green, grey and black phyllites of the Index Formation; however, to the north these are mixed with argillites of the Triune Formation and quartzites of the Ajax Formation. The rocks are highly deformed and intensely schistose. They commonly display parasitic folds with shallow northwest-plunging axes. The foliation strikes to the northwest and dips moderately to steeply to the northeast, as it does throughout the Silver Cup area. In the Butte area, the Index Formation rocks are intruded by dykes and/or stocks of gabbro or diorite.

The schistose rocks in the Butte area are cut but two types of veins; "formation leads" that strike to the northwest and are conformable to bedding and schistocity, and "fissure veins" that are highly discordant, northeast trending, structures. In both cases the veins are in altered country rock and are composed of quartz with disseminated and semi-massive galena, with or without "grey copper" (tetrahedrite), somewhat erratically distributed sphalerite, and pyrite. The pyrite appears to carry most of the gold.

There were numerous old workings scattered over a considerable area and it is not entirely clear which descriptions match which. Some workings evidently showed small showings of hand-cobbable "shipment grade" mineralization in northeast trending veins and others exposed undefined widths of probable "milling grade" material in "bedded" veins. One of the northeast trending fissure veins exposed in a showing on the Butt #2 claim is reported to have 0.15 metre wide streaks of "grey copper" (tetrahedrite or boulangerite) on its footwall and hanging walls. The footwall streak assayed 15.77 grams per tonne gold, 137.1 grams per tonne silver, 8 per cent lead and 10 per cent zinc. The hanging wall streak assayed 11.0 grams per tonne gold, 1714 grams per tonne silver, 64 per cent lead and no zinc.

The Butte zone is a 2 to 7 metres wide, northeast striking, graphitic shear zone which includes irregular quartz-carbonate veins containing minor pyrite and galena. It has been traced for 500 metres across a northwest striking sequence of folded argillites, phyllites and metavolcanic rocks. Mineralization is exposed in three trenches over 80 metres. The vein contains between 1.1 and 4.42 grams per tonne gold over widths of up to 5.0 metres. A narrow (one metre wide) high-grade zone in one of the trenches assayed 7.06 grams per tonne gold. Chip sampling of the same (?) graphitic quartz-carbonate vein by Camborne Resources Limited produced an assay of 4.28 grams per tonne gold over 2.0 metres in a vein "lightly mineralized with pyrite and a trace of galena". In the same general area, some of the northwest striking shear zones contain quartz-carbonate veins that are also erratically mineralized with fine to coarse-grained galena, sphalerite and pyrite. Two short adits appear to have been driven to test this mineralization.