Last Chance Lake is located 1 kilometre east of the Meadow Lake road and 200 metres east of Rob and Nan Lake. It is 17 kilometres west of 70 Mile House.

The lake is a semi-evaporitic playa lake. It is located in the "Green Timber Plateau" area (EMPR Bulletin 4), a semi-arid plateau area averaging 1130 metres elevation which is part of the Cariboo Plateau and host to several playa lakes. The area is underlain by alkaline plateau basalt flows of the Miocene to Pleistocene Chilcotin Group, mantled by a thin cover of glacial till and glaciofluvial sediments. Annual precipitation averages between 300 and 400 millimetres (EMPR Paper 1991-1).

Last Chance Lake covers approximately 12 hectares (EMPR Bulletin 4, page 14) and contains approximately 15 centimetres of sodium carbonate-rich brine. The brine almost dissapears at the end of the summer. The lake covers a layer of natronite crystals which averages approximately 1 metre in thickness. Samples were found to contain (EMPR Bulletin #4, page 15) 92.5 per cent sodium carbonate, 4.0 per cent sodium sulphate and 1.5 per cent insoluble material. Canadian Occidental Petroleum staked the Soda 5 claim in 1989 and collected a winter crystal sample and completed analyses for sodium carbonate and other alkalai salts (Assessment Report 20080). Canoxy also completed an airborne infrared survey to test for dissolved solids in the lakewaters. In 1993, the lake was re-staked as the CSW 1 claim by Mr. G.M. Rogers who collected four water samples to test for the presence of natron winter crystal (Assessment Report 23127). None was found.