The Copper prospect is on Fays Peak, on Silver Cup Ridge. The open cuts are at 2680 metres elevation on the southwest facing slope of the peak. There is also an adit at approximately 2130 metres elevation, downhill to the northeast of Fays Peak, in the Ottawa Creek drainage. The history of development of the area is unknown but the showings are described in the Ministry of Energy and Mines report for 1914.
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 Fays Peak area is on the southwest, footwall, side of a major fault that runs down the axis of Silver Cup Ridge. The ridge is underlain by deformed, grey, gritty, schistose sediments of the Broadview Formation and mafic volcanic rocks of the Jowett Formation. The rocks are folded and typically display the northwest oriented foliation and moderate to steep northeast dip found throughout the region.
Calcareous schistose metasediments on the property are commonly cut by northeast trending joints and fissures that are between 0.1 and 0.3 metre wide and filled with quartz with pyrite, chalcopyrite and a little galena. However, at 2680 metres elevation on the south slope of FayÆs peak, the schists are more mafic and there is an extensive area of copper-bearing schist exposed in surface cuts. The mineralized unit has been traced down the mountain into the basin at the head of Ottawa Creek and it is exposed in a 15.24 metres-long prospecting adit at 2130 metres elevation. A sample of "better-grade" material collected across 2.44 metres in the open cut assayed a trace gold, 6.86 grams per tonne silver and 0.2 per cent copper. A "selected" sample from the adit assayed 4.46 grams per tonne gold, 171.4 grams per tonne silver and 4 per cent copper.
