The geology of the region consists of (?)Hadrynian to Paleozoic Snowshoe Group rocks. The Snowshoe Group is an assemblage of dominantly metasedimentary rocks within the Barkerville Terrane of south-central British Columbia. The metasedimentary rocks consist primarily of marble, quartzite and phyllite. In the Yanks Peak area these rocks comprise the Keithley and Harveys Ridge successions of the Snowshoe Group. Metamorphism of the region varies from chlorite to sillimanite and higher grade. The lode gold deposits of the region occur in rocks metamorphosed no higher than greenschist facies.
The Talbot showings consist of a number of quartz veins at an elevation of about 1737 metres in the central part of the Yanks Peak No. 2 claim (Lot 10663) on Yanks Peak, located about 25 kilometres south of Barkerville. The veins are exposed in a shallow shaft and in surface trenches.
Gold mineralization in the Talbot veins occurs sporadically in northeast trending quartz veins which mainly cut quartzite. The veins are structurally controlled and their orientations are "in part controlled by the regional fault and fracture pattern" (Struik, 1988; Geological Survey of Canada Memoir 421). It is suggested that gold mineralization and chlorite grade metamorphism was coeval.
Gold in the Talbot quartz veins is associated with pyrite. The quartz is extremely vuggy, and the veins are 0.3 to 1 metre wide and are generally only sparsely mineralized. In 1954, a selected grab sample containing pyrite mineralization assayed 18.84 grams per tonne gold (Bulletin 34, page 89).
In August, 1864, Thomas Haywood, G.W. Anderson, William Luce, and eight others, known as the Rising Sun Company, recorded eleven claims on a quartz vein on Little Snowshoe Mountain (Yanks Peak was known to old-timers as Little Snowshoe Mountain). The above location is not positively identified, but it may be on what are now known as the Talbot and Corban (093A 021) showings (Bulletin 34). In 1954, the Yanks Peak group consisted of seven Crown-granted claims (Lots 10662 to 10668) and the assessed owner was Cariboo Yankee Belle Mining Company Limited. The claims are on the southwest slope of Yanks Peak and extend in single file from the top of the ridge at 1768 metres elevation southeastward downhill to French Snowshoe Creek at 1371 metres elevation. In 1923, veins were found by H. Talbot and J. Larsen on the southwest slope of Yanks Peak, and three claims were located in that year. Three other claims were located in 1924. The veins for the most part lie in two main groups. The Corban vein zone is on the Yanks Peak claim (Lot 10662), between 1699 and 1745 metres elevation, in an area about 152 metres long and 61 metres wide below the old high-level trail to the Midas camp. The Talbot veins are on the Yanks Peak No. 2 claim (Lot 10663) at about 1737 metres elevation and are about 457 metres northwest of the Corban showings.
