The Hope H-3 is an occurrence of minor barite-lead-zinc mineralization on the edge of the mountainous Muskwa Ranges of the Northern Rocky Mountains, 10 kilometres north of the Tuchodi Lakes, 42 kilometres south-southeast of the settlement of Summit Lake on the Alaska Highway (Assessment Report 4300, Map 3).

The Hope H-3 is one of a number of similar MINFILE occurrences lying along a narrow, north-northwest trending belt of mainly Devonian sedimentary rocks. The rocks in this 50-kilometres long, 3-kilometres wide belt are bounded to the west by a steeply west-dipping reverse fault which juxtaposes mostly Middle Proterozoic and Lower Paleozoic rocks. To the east, the belt is flanked by moderately folded, mainly Mesozoic rocks forming the more subdued, Rocky Mountain Foothills. All these rocks belong to Ancestral North America (Geological Survey of Canada Map 1713A).

The Devonian rocks in this belt generally dip steeply eastward. The most important units are the Middle Devonian Stone and Dunedin formations (Geological Survey of Canada Map 1343A, Memoir 373; Assessment Report 4300). The Stone Formation consists of pale grey, fine-grained, thick-bedded dolostone, dolomitic breccia and dolomitic quartz sandstone. The Dunedin Formation comprises grey, well-bedded, fine-grained limestone, with minor dolostone and siliceous lithologies. Other units in the area include the underlying Silurian to Lower Devonian Nonda, Muncho-McConnell and Wokkpash formations, and the overlying Middle Devonian to Mississippian Besa River Formation.

In the early 1970s and again in the early 1980s, the belt was staked to investigate widespread stratabound barite associated with lead-zinc mineralization in the Dunedin and, locally, Stone formations (Assessment Reports 4300, 9202). The Hope H-3 showing lies right at the contact between these units. Here, the Dunedin Formation consists of pale to dark grey calcarenite and minor limestone (Assessment Report 4300). The Stone Formation is mainly dolomitic breccia; the matrix, about 10 per cent, is a mixture of calcite and barite.

Visible mineralization is confined to the Dunedin Formation, and takes a variety of forms. Minor, pale green sphalerite associated with pyrobitumen occurs in lenticular beds of fetid limestone up to 15 centimetres thick and about 10 metres along strike. A grab sample of this material assayed 4.51 per cent zinc and 0.24 per cent lead (Assessment Report 4300). In addition, there are metre-scale patches or discordant stringer zones of barite, calcite and fluorite, locally associated with marcasite and lenses of semi-massive red sphalerite up to 30 centimetres long and 10 centimetres thick. One select grab sample of the latter assayed 26.7 per cent zinc and 0.2 per cent lead, and another assayed 13.44 per cent zinc (Assessment Report 4300). There are also numerous irregular barite-fluorite veinlets with local red sphalerite and galena.

A "high zinc zone", about 12 metres thick, was identified by detailed chip sampling about 15 metres above the Stone-Dunedin contact (Assessment Report 4300). However, mineralization is generally discontinuous.