The Princess Marie and Queen Mary showings are at elevations of between 1670 and 2000 metres at the head of Hall Creek, a northeasterly flowing tributary of the Duncan River. The Princess Marie (L.3475) and Queen Mary (L.3469) tenures are on strike with and approximately midway between the past-producing Wagner [082KNW212] and Sheep Creek [082KNW050], and Jewell [082KNW057] and Abbott [082KNW056] occurrences.
The tenures in the Wagner area were located in the late 1890s and were explored in various combinations over the years. The Princess Marie and Queen Mary claims were acquired by Wagner Mines Limited in 1903 and, since then, they have been part of the Wagner Group (see Wagner [082KNW212]).
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 Princess Marie area is underlain by black and grey phyllite of the Index Formation, in the hanging wall of the Badshot limestone. The rocks are highly deformed and cut by a, regionally extensive, northwesterly trending, banded, crystalline quartz and carbonate vein that has been traced across the property from the Wagner [082KNW212] in the northwest to the Abbott [082KNW056] in the southeast, a distance of approximately 5.0 kilometres. The vein is 3.0 to 4.57 metres thick, rusty and weakly mineralized with pyrite, galena and locally sphalerite. The vein is exposed for 274 metres from 1853 to 1973 metres elevation on the Princess Marie and Queen Mary tenures. It contains less coarse-grained galena than is found on the Wagner and it is relatively enriched in pyrite, sphalerite and also calcite.
