The Mable, Rainy Lake, Virginia, Nora Lee and Golden Gate prospect is at 1850 metres elvation on the west side of Silver Cup Ridge. It is near the head of Laughton Creek, which flows to the southwest into Trout Lake. The tenures are reverted but a map of the Lardeau Mining District, dated 1901, shows that they were staked a short distance to the northwest of the Alpine [082KNW214].
By 1900, there was a crosscut on the Mable and a shaft on the Virginia. The area was covered by the Bug claims and explored by Golden Rule Resources Limited, in 1981.
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 Mable group tenures covers a short stratigraphic section through phyllites of the Broadview Formation. The rocks are tightly isoclinally folded and highly schistose. They display the regional northwest-trending strike and moderate to steep northeast dip found throughout the Silver Cup Ridge area.
The Mable crosscut taps a quartz-carbonate vein, that is about 1.22 metres wide, at considerable depth. The vein contains a 0.61 metre wide zone of "concentrating galena ore", carrying a little copper, and a 0.15 metre wide streak of "carbonates". There is a shaft on the Virginia that goes down 15.24 metres and exposes a 0.15 metre zone of "carbonates" near its floor. In 1900, a crosscut had been started at its base to intersect the vein. The ledge has been stripped for 100 metres on surface, where there is also reported to be an excellent showing of "concentrating ore".
