Two areas of quartz showings are located adjacent to Donaldson Creek, approximately 300 metres upstream from tidewater at Patsey Cove on the east side of Banks Island, approximately 95 kilometres south of Prince Rupert, B.C..

The area of the occurrence is largely underlain by hornblende granodiorite of the Coast Plutonic Complex. There are also some exposures of Permian and/or older metasediments consisting mainly of laminated micaceous quartzite, crystalline limestone, skarn and schist. The showing is underlain by a gneissic diorite-migmatite complex near the contact with hornblende-biotite quartz diorite.

Several outcrops of pure white quartz occur on the northwest side of Donaldson Creek. The outcrops define a northeasterly trending body exposed over an area measuring at least 20 by 30 metres. The quartz is usually massive, coarse-grained and milky white, but minor amounts of smoky quartz are present. Two other small bodies of quartz are exposed in Donaldson Creek to the south- west of the main group of outcrops. This quartz is white weathering, coarse-grained and massive. It contains veinlets of magnetite and amphibolitic inclusions. A chip sample of about seven metres from the main outcrop was collected by the Geological Survey Branch in 1982. It assayed 99.26 per cent silica (Open File 1987-15, page 34).

The latter area on Donaldson Creek contains a massive sulphide pod of mainly magnetite and pyrrhotite with lesser amounts of chalcopyrite and pyrite and very minor scheelite. Actinolite, quartz, and calcite constitute the gangue material. A 2.3 metre chip sample assayed 1.05 per cent copper and 4.1 grams per tonne silver (Assessment Report 11176). A selected bulk sample taken in 1971 assayed 0.60 per cent copper and 1.12 per cent WO3 (Assessment Report 11176). In 1968 a large chip sample was collected and yielded 0.58 per cent copper with traces of gold, silver and nickel (National Mineral Inventory Card 103G8 Cu1).

In 1975, reserves were estimated to be at least 9,000 tonnes of silica with a grade of 98.8 per cent SiO2 (Open File 1987-15, page 34).

Exploration by New Global Resources Ltd. in 1993 consisted of surface prospecting, detailed geological mapping, hand trenching, and surface diamond drilling. Two diamond drill holes were completed in August 1993 totalling 74.7 metres. Based on a minimum central zone of massive quartz (without the intercalated actinolite-chlorite skarn margin) with dimensions of 250 feet length x 140 feet width x 200 feet depth, a reasonable preliminary resource inventory of high-grade silica is 540,000 tons. Including 50 percent of the skarn margin in the event that sorting is a viable option increases the inventory to about 700,000 tons of high grade silica. There is considerable potential to increase reserves both along strike and at depth (Assessment Report 23369).

The massive milky quartz zones that contain no skarn material contamination assay greater than 99 percent SiO2 and present desirable, high quality product potential. Assays done by Homegold Resources Ltd. in 2005 support these surface sampling (SiO2 + Fe2O3) (Assessment Report 28250).