The Shelly occurrence is located 24 kilometres southwest of Invermere in the Golden Mining Division. The occurrence is near the headwaters of Ben Abel Creek, a tributary of Dutch Creek, north of Mount Abel in the Purcell Mountains.

Regionally, the area is underlain by Proterozoic clastic sedimentary rocks of the Purcell and Windermere supergroups and by Cretaceous intrusive rocks (Geoscience Map 1995-1).

The Purcell Supergroup strata include the Aldridge, Creston, Kitchener, Dutch Creek and Mount Nelson formations. The Windermere Supergroup overlies the Purcell Supergroup rocks and includes the Toby Formation and Horsethief Creek Group (Paper 1990-1).

In the vicinity of the occurrence, rocks of the Kitchener and Dutch Creek formations have been further subdivided and assigned to the Van Creek and Gateway formations (Open File 1990-26).

The Van Creek Formation consists mainly of coarse to medium grained, light grey to dark green quartzite, siltstone and silty argillite. The beds have consistent thickness of between 20 to 50 centimetres with slightly undulose bases and truncated tops. The Van Creek Formation grades upwards into thinly bedded quartzite of the Gateway Formation.

The Gateway Formation is subdivided into the Hg1 and Hg2 members. The Hg1 member consists of an interbedded sequence of quartzite, green siltstone and buff dolomitic siltstone and dolomite. Bed thicknesses vary from generally 2 to 10 centimetres in the fine- grained quartzite to 10 to 50 centimetres in the upper dolomite. The contact with the underlying Van Creek Formation is gradational or marked by the basaltic flows of the Nicol Creek Formation.

The Hg2 member consists of a 90 metre thick, cream to buff weathering dolomite unit. The dolomite displays stromatolitic laminations, cream chert intercalations and rare salt casts. Bed thickness varies between 50 centimetres to 2 metres. The sedimentary rocks have undergone regional metamorphism to at least greenschist facies.

The occurrence consists of quartz-barite veins up to 2 metres wide containing galena, chalcopyrite and pyrite with varying amounts of malachite and azurite. The veins trend north to northeasterly and are hosted in dolomitic siltstones and argillites. In the vicinity of the occurrence, the Dutch Creek Formation strikes north and dips 15 degrees to the west. A vertically dipping, southeast trending andesite dike cuts the Dutch Creek rocks in the area where the veins are exposed (Assessment Report 2611).

A two metre chip sample across the mineralized vein assayed 1.6 per cent lead (Open File 1990-20).