The Punch Bowl showing outcrops on Punch Bowl Creek, 1.05 kilometres north of Punch Bowl Lake and 39 kilometres southwest of Princeton.

Punch Bowl Creek is underlain by thin-bedded siltstones, argillite and arkosic sandstone of the Cretaceous Pasayten Group. These sediments are intruded by altered hornblende diorite dykes and plugs. Bedding strikes north with steep to vertical dips. Immediately to the south a thick section of sandstone, with lesser siltstone, tuffaceous argillite and lapilli tuff of the Early to Middle Jurassic Dewdney Creek Formation (Ladner Group) is exposed. The beds strike north and dip 60 to 70 degrees west.

Locally, a small plug of medium-grained diorite intrudes argillite, siltstone and sandstone along the east bank of Punch Bowl Creek. The plug is faulted against the sediments and contains abundant pyrite in fractures and bedding planes and iron oxide staining. The sediments are intensely fractured and moderately silicified, bleached and laced by a stockwork of pyrite veinlets over a distance of 200 metres along the creek.

Adjacent to the main intrusive body, concordant and discordant shears cut the sediments and contain narrow discontinuous quartz veins with variable amounts of pyrite and arsenopyrite, and trace amounts of chalcopyrite, sphalerite and galena. Pyrite, sphalerite and arsenopyrite also form blebs and disseminations in the sediments near the fault.

In 1984, a 4.55- kilogram chip sample (KC-151984) taken across an 18 metre section exposed along the creek, analysed 0.275 per cent zinc, 0.005 per cent copper, 1.5 grams per tonne silver and 0.025 gram per tonne gold,; while another chip sample (KC-171984), taken approximately 10 metres to the west, yielded 0.014 per cent copper, 0.330 per cent zinc, 2.8 grams per tonne silver and 0.020 grams per tonne gold over 4 metres (Assessment Report 14692, page 9).

In 1987, a chip sample, over 0.1 metre, taken across a vertical quartz-sphalerite vein, assayed 0.085 gram per tonne gold, 13.0 grams per tonne silver, greater than 1.0 per cent zinc, 0.52 per cent lead and 0.025 per cent copper (Assessment Report 16279, page 7).

The area was originally prospected in the 1930’s and 1940’s and some placer gold was noted in Punch Bowl Creek. During 1984 through 1987, Kam Creek Mines completed programs of prospecting, rock and soil sampling and geological mapping on the area as the Punch Bowl and K.C.M. claims. In 1988, Locke Rich Minerals completed a program of rock and soil sampling, geological mapping and minor trenching on the area.