The Mother Lode prospect is located at 1035 metres elevation above sea level between Poplar and Cascade creeks, in the Slocan Mining Division.

Regionally, the area lies within the Selkirk Mountains of southeastern British Columbia. The occurrence is within the Kootenay Arc, a curving belt of highly deformed metasedimentary and metavolcanic rocks which includes the Upper Proterozoic Horsethief Creek Group, the Upper Proterozoic to Lower Cambrian Hamill Group, the Lower Cambrian Badshot Formation, and the Paleozoic Lardeau and Milford groups. The volcano-sedimentary sequence is intruded by numerous Paleozoic to Mesozoic granitoid plutons.

The Lardeau River area of the Selkirk Mountains is mainly underlain by massive pillow lavas, volcanic breccia and green phyllitic rocks of the Index Formation and by grey-green mica schist of the Broadview Formation. Grey phyllitic rocks and marble of the Milford Group are exposed near the edges of the Mesozoic Mobbs Creek, Rapid Creek and Poplar Creek stocks. All rocks have undergone regional metamorphism to middle or upper greenschist facies. Rocks of the Milford Group have also been affected by thermal metamorphism (Geological Survey of Canada Bulletin 193).

The main showing consists of quartz with coarse-grained pyrite, galena and sphalerite as replacement of calcareous schist of the Index Formation. The mineralization has been exposed in two short adits driven 15 metres apart for a total length of 45 metres. Replacement has taken place parallel to the foliation for at least 12 metres along strike. The mineralization has an average thickness less than 45 centimetres. A grab sample of the replacement vein assayed 5.5 grams per tonne gold, 1190 grams per tonne silver, 15 per cent lead and 10 per cent zinc (Minister of Mines Annual Report 1919).

One tonne of ore was mined from the adits in 1924 to produce 1649 grams of silver and 396 kilograms of lead.