The Silver Belt showings are on the south side of Brown Creek, a northeasterly flowing tributary of Lardeau Creek. The Silver Belt (L.5695), Agnes (L.5696) and Whistler (L.7443) claims straddle the creek between 1650 and 2000 metres elevation. The tenures are down stream from the Cromwell Group [082KNW058].
Workings on the Silver Belt claim consist of a 16.8 metres deep shaft sunk on a stringer zone and an adit collared lower down the hill. Several shipments were made to the smelters in 1899. However, they are not all documented.
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 southwest side of the Silver Belt group is underlain by a structurally complex assemblage of grey carbonate, and green phyllite and metatuff of the upper part of the Index Formation. The northeast side, including much of the Silver Belt claim, is underlain by black siliceous argillite and phyllite of the Sharon Creek Formation. The rocks are tightly isoclinally folded, deformed and highly schistose. The phyllites display the normal northwest trending, moderate to steep northeast dip found throughout the Silver Cup Ridge area. They are cut by a series of faults with the same approximate orientation.
The Silver Belt vein is a well defined structure lying on a contact between limestone and slate. It is 1.2 metes wide and contains several stringers of mineralization, ranging from 0.02 to 0.08 metre in width. The stringers contain pyrite and galena "which should concentrate well" and lesser amounts of chalcopyrite and sphalerite. The shaft was sunk on a feeder to the main vein, and the adit was driven to intersect the bottom of the shaft. It continued to the southeast along the vein. It was driven for 61 metres as a drift but had yet to reach the projection of the surface showing in 1899. At that time, a further 17 metres of drifting was required. During the work in the shaft some samples of very high grade ores "which have assayed over $500" were found. There is no record of recent work on the property.
