The Pink Mountain coal occurrence is located on the eastern flanks of Pink Mountain, 3.3 kilometres north of Halfway River, about 151 kilometres northwest of Fort St. John.

Pink Mountain is underlain by a sequence of deltaic sediments (predominantly sandstone and siltstone) belonging to the Lower Cretaceous Gething Formation (Bullhead Group). The Gething Formation, 311 metres thick, is disconformably underlain by Jurassic Fernie Formation strata and is overlain conformably by Cretaceous Buckinghorse Formation (Fort St. John Group) or Badheart Formation (Smokey Group) shale.

Pink Mountain marks one of several sharp narrow anticlines that define the eastern edge of the Foothills. There structures have a northwesterly trend and most have a length many times in excess of their width. The exposure of the Gething Formation which marks the Pink Mountain structure is about 4 kilometres wide but 48 kilometres long. The Pink Mountain anticline in general is an asymmetrical box-type structure with moderate to steeply dipping flanks and low easterly dips across the broad apical region. However, this broad structure is complicated by numerous minor folds with axes parallel to the principal anticlinal axis and by faults of similar trend.

Nineteen coal seams and numerous coaly horizons occur in the Upper, Main, and Lower coal units of the Gething Formation. The coal seams, up to 12.2 metres in width, form large lenses and in some instances crosscutting "dikes".

The Main coal zones, from bottom to top of the section are as follows: the Bottom seam, 3.7 metres of bright coal; the P-10 seam, four coal partings varying from 0.09 to 0.5 metre thick; the P-1 seam, 2.1 metres of coal and coaly mudstone; and the P-2 seam, 0.85 metre of vitrain with minor durain partings, shaley in the top 0.24 metre.

The P-1 seam, with an average width of 3 metres, was traced for 122 metres along strike. Analyses of nine air dried coal samples from surface exposures are as follows: ash, from 3.56 to 11.01 per cent; volatile matter, from 27.83 to 35.43 per cent; fixed carbon, from 33.67 to 59.79 per cent; calorific value, 8300-12243 BTU per pound; and sulphur, from 5.22 to 7.17 per cent (Coal Assessment Report 595). Except for the high sulphur content, the coal is good coking coal quality.

In January 1971, 100 coal licenses were located by Nickel Hill Mines Ltd. on, and in the vicinity of Pink Mountain and later in the year the company conducted a program of geological mapping, bulldozer trenching (3657 metres) and sampling to evaluate the number and dimension of coal seams present. One diamond-drill hole (63 metres total depth) was drilled to obtain a coal sample.