The Mystery mineral claim, together with the Blue Peter and Magnet claims, belongs to the Alki claim block and is located approximately 20 kilometres west of the town of Kimberley, BC. The property is situated west of the Rocky Mountain Trench within the Saint Mary Range of the Purcell Mountains. Topography is moderate to steep with glacially rounded ridges. Within the property, elevations range from 1000 to 2000 metres.
Regionally, the area of the Alki claim block is underlain by Precambrian Purcell Supergroup rocks of the Aldridge Formation. These are fine-grained elastics that include impure quartzites, siltstones and argillites. The rocks have been metamorphosed to lower green schist facies and have been intruded by a series of mafic sills and dykes.
Locally, Precambrian Aldridge Formation rocks are generally flat-lying with local dips up to 20 degrees. Outcrops comprise less than 50 per cent of the area and are generally restricted to cliff faces and ridge crests. Considerable glacial material covers the slopes and valleys. Some outcrop exists in the stream beds (Assessment Report 25194).
Placer gold exploration and mining in the East Kootenay region began on the Wild Horse River near Fort Steele in the mid-1860s. The discovery of the Saint Eugene deposit at Moyie, and the Sullivan deposit, 13 kilometres to the east at Kimberley, switched the major focus of exploration to lead and zinc mineralization. Several small-scale workings mainly in quartz veins and shears are located in the Alki Creek and Upper Pyramid Creek areas and date to the 1890s or early 1900s.
Current exploration activities in the East Kootenays are mostly focused on lead-zinc mineralization within the Aldridge Group, particularly in the Sullivan–North Star corridor and the Moyie-Yahk and Findlay–Skookumchuck Creek areas.
Cominco explored the Pyramid Peak area in the past as part of their regional search for Sedex deposits in the Aldridge Formation, completing a few drillholes in the 1980s. Cominco continues to hold claims in the area. More recently, Abitibi Mining Corp. undertook mapping and prospecting on the Pyramid Peak property in 1997 and 1998. Two holes were drilled by Abitibi in the south part of the Pyramid Peak property, near the Saint Mary River.
In 2000, an exploration program on the Pyramid Peak property completed by Rio Algom consisted of two diamond drill holes (PP-00-1 and PP-00-2). Geological mapping, which expanded and refined previous work and geological interpretations initiated in 1999, preceded the drilling. Faulting, the dip surface and weak geochemistry of the Lower to Middle Aldridge Contact limit prospective geology for a mineral deposit of economic significance. This suggested that the potential location of an economic mineral deposit within Rio Algom’s exploration parameters lies outside the Pyramid Peak property (Assessment Report 26361).
In 2011, work carried out by Electra Gold Corp. focused on general prospecting, rock and soil sampling on known showings on the claims. The previously known underground workings known as the Blue Peter and Mystery mineral claims returned grab samples assaying more than 1 per cent (up to 2.48 per cent copper) copper with variable gold (from trace to 1.423 grams per tonne) and silver values (Assessment Report 32814).
