The Black Prince is at approximately 2150 metres elevation, on a northwest trending spur on the northwest side of Mohican Mountain. The Black Prince (L.755) tenure is drained by a small tributary of Gainer Creek, which flows to the southwest into Lardeau Creek.
The prospect was explored in the 1890s and early 1900s. In 1893, high-grade lead-silver lenses were located on the contact between Badshot limestone and Index Formation phyllite and within two years there was a 55 metres long tunnel on the property. In 1903, Anthony Becker and Associates acquired the claim and drove a second, 12.2 metres long adit. The following year, the operators shipped a 27-tonnes bulk sample which produced 144,411 grams of silver and 3870 kilograms of lead. By 1982, the workings included a shaft and two adits.
The Trout Lake area is underlain by a thick succession of sedimentary and volcanic rocks of the Badshot Formation and Lardeau Group near the northern end of the Kootenay arc, an arcuate, north to northwest trending belt of Paleozoic and Mesozoic strata that is now classified as a distinct, pericratonic, terrane. The arc rocks are bordered by Precambrian quartzite in the east and they young to the west, where they are bounded by Jurassic-age intrusive complexes. They were deformed during the Antler orogeny in Devonian-Mississippian time and were refolded and faulted during the Columbian orogeny, in the Middle Jurassic. A large panel, the "Selkirk allochthon", was later offset to the northeast by dip-slip motion along the Columbia River Fault.
The Badshot Formation is composed of a thick Cambrian limestone that is a distinctive marker horizon in the Trout Lake area. It is underlain by Hamill Group quartzite and it is overlain by a younger assemblage of limestone, calcareous, graphitic and siliceous argillite and siltstone, sandstone, quartzite and conglomerate, and also mafic volcanic flows, tuffs and breccias, all of which belong to the Lardeau Group. The rocks are isoclinally folded and intensely deformed, but only weakly metamorphosed. They occur as intercalated beds of marble, quartzite and grey, green and black phyllite and schist. Fyles and Eastwood (EMPR BULL 45) subdivided the group into six formations (Index, Triune, Ajax, Sharon Creek, Jowett and Broadview) of which the lowermost (Index) and uppermost (Broadview) are the most widespread. The Triune (siliceous argillite), Ajax (quartzite) and Sharon Creek (siliceous argillite) are restricted to the Trout Lake area. The Jowett is a mafic volcanic unit.
The Black Prince is in a similar stratigraphic and structural setting to the Badshot [082KNW033]. It straddles Badshot Formation strata and the basal part of the overlying Index Formation. The Badshot limestone is a thick, massive, grey marble unit that was informally known as the "lime dyke" in the early 1900s. It is overlain by a thick succession of black and grey phyllite that is intercalated with beds of calcareous phyllite, limestone and quartzite. The rocks are isoclinally folded and highly deformed. They have an axial planes schistocity that displays the regional northwest trend and steep, southwest dip found throughout the eastern part of the Trout Lake area. There is a considerable amount of stratigraphic repetition in the area.
The Black Prince prospect consists of high-grade lead-silver lenses on the contact between Badshot limestone and Index Formation phyllite. The main adit shows high-grade stringers, between 0.23 and 0.46 metre in width, in the limestone. The stringers contain galena, grey copper (tetrahedrite) and a little sphalerite in a gangue of quartz and calcite. The sulphides are locally exceedingly rich in silver. The higher-grade shoots reputedly produced assays of between 6857 and 41,143 grams per tonne silver.
During 2006 through 2009, Mineral Mountain Resources Ltd. completed programs of prospecting, geochemical (soil, silt, talus fines and rock) sampling and an airborne geophysical survey on the area as the Kootenay Arc property. In 2007, ten samples of mineralized talus located below two historic adits yielded values ranging from 0.007 to 2.970 grams per tonne gold, 92 to 4481 grams per tonne silver, 0.02 to 5.46 per cent lead, 0.23 to 18.09 per cent zinc, 0.06 to 7.22 per cent copper and 0.02 to 5.00 per cent antimony (Fingler, J. (2010-01-25): Technical Report on the Kootenay Arc Property).
