The Noble Five vein is on the east side of Silver Cup Ridge, at approximately 1900 metres elevation on the southeast side of North Brown Creek. The Noble Five claim is 750 metres southeast and on strike with the Morning Star property [082KNW098]. It is immediately down stream of the Cromwell Group [082KNW058].
The Noble Five vein was found in the early 1900s and explored intermittently through to 1914. That year, there was an adit driven to expose a vein along 9.1 metres of drift. At that time, a diagonal crosscut had been collared a short distance to the east and 16.7 metres below the adit; however, it had yet to reach the vein. By 1929, the workings had been abandoned. There was a small amount of production in 1905 and in 1923.
The Noble Five prospect was part of a large claim holding, known as the Silver Basin Group, owned by American Chromium Limited in 1979. The area was explored into the late 1980s. The claims also covered the Morning Star [082KNW098], I.X.L. [082KNW118] and Chance [082KNW119] prospects. 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 Noble Five is underlain by carbonaceous phyllites of the Index Formation on the northeast side of the Cup Creek Fault. The rocks are highly folded, deformed and locally extremely schistose. The foliation displays the northwest strike and moderate to steep northeast dip found throughout the Silver Cup Ridge area. The Noble Five vein follows the strike and dip of the surrounding schists. It is 0.46 metre wide and consists of quartz and some carbonate mineralized with pyrite, galena, chalcopyrite and tetrahedrite. An average sample across the vein over 0.46 metre at the face of the adit assayed 12.34 grams per tonne gold, 4022 grams per tonne silver and 16 per cent lead. In addition to the main vein, there are local, north striking and 80 to 85 degree east dipping stringers of well mineralized quartz in the vicinity of the vein. They contain galena and pyrite and a sample collected in 1914 assayed 15.77 grams per tonne gold, 672 grams per tonne silver and 14.3 per cent lead. The upper adit was open in 1988 but the walls were covered in mud.
