Beach sands with concentrations of magnetite occur for about 3 kilometres on the shore of Burnett Bay, 7 kilometres southeast of Cape Caution on the coast of the Coast Mountains. The area was sampled and investigated geophysically in the 1950's, but no subsequent work is recorded (Property File - Noble, J.A., 1975).

The area is underlain by quartz diorite and migmatitic gneisses of the Jurassic to Tertiary Coast Plutonic Complex (Geological Survey of Canada Map 1386A). Bedrock is exposed at the northern and southern ends of the beach and on the bluffs behind the backshore, and consists of quartz diorite (Property File - S.S.H., 1958). Ultramafic rocks in float blocks up to 2 metres across have also been found in the vicinity of the beach (Property File - Noble, J.A., 1975).

The sands at the northern end of Burnett Bay contain the most magnetite (Property File - S.S.H., 1958). The average assay of 6 samples of sand was 9.8 per cent iron, including a peak value of 14 per cent iron (Property File - Sargent, H., 1956). Spectrographic analysis showed that the metal content of the magnetite includes approximately 10 per cent titanium (Property File - S.S.H., 1958).