The North Ridge showing is located approximately 100 kilometres north of McBride (Highway 16) and 168 kilometres east-northeast of Prince George. It is 20 kilometres west of the British Columbia–Alberta border, in the Liard Mining Division.
The region is underlain by an assemblage of sedimentary rocks that were deposited in a continental shelf environment along the western margin of Ancestral North America. This clastic and carbonate rock sequence ranges in age from Hadrynian to Upper Cretaceous and now lies within the Foreland tectonostratigraphic division of the Canadian Cordillera. Folds and southwest-dipping, northeast-directed thrust faults are the dominant structures of the region.
At the kilometre scale, shallow- and potentially doubly-plunging folds, as well as thrust panels, juxtapose three units relevant to the phosphorite showing: the Mississippian Rundle Group (limestones, marbles, calcareous sediments); the Carboniferous to Permian Stoddart, Fantasque and Kindle formations (undivided sedimentary rocks) and the Triassic Sulphur Mountain Formation of the Spray River Group.
The occurrence area plots on the southwest limbs of two northeast-trending folds that expose these three units in succession, with the youngest Sulphur Mountain Formation at the fold core.
At this location, a barite vein/replacement zone, greater than 1 metre wide, was found in Carboniferous Rundle Group carbonate rocks (dolomite), near the upper part of the unit. The vein consists predominantly of coarse-grained white barite with carbonate rock inclusions and rusty vugs. No base metals were noted; however, this vein is along strike of, and approximately 6 kilometres south of the Belcourt lead-zinc showing (MINFILE 093I 007). It is very similar to parts of the Belcourt showing and may be part of the same system.