The Falling Creek coal occurrence area is located about 13 kilometres east of Mount Le Hudette and approximately 39 kilometres southwest of Chetwynd.
The majority of the coal seams are found in the Lower Cretaceous Gething Formation (320 metres thick) of the Bullhead Group, however, two seams also occur in the Upper Jurassic to Lower Cretaceous Minnes Group. Rank is generally high volatile A bituminous with 40 per cent of the seams being up to low volatile bituminous. Coal seams up to 3 metres thick are interbedded with sandstone, siltstone, and carbonaceous shale, usually in fining upward cycles. The cycles are 1 to 10 metres thick and were deposited in fluvial channel and floodplain environments. The upper seams may represent coastal coal swamps.
The dominant structural elements are tight, angular, horizontally plunging northwest trending folds. There are several northwest striking, west dipping thrust faults and four sets of high angle faults. The former have moderate displacement while the latter have small displacements.
An average of 20 per cent of the seams are made up of shale and coaly shale partings. Roof rocks vary from coaly shale, shale or siltstone to sandstone, and silty sandstone, while floors are carbonaceous to coaly shale. Average ash content (without partings) is 19 per cent; volatile matter, 23 per cent; fixed carbon, 54 per cent; and sulphur, 0.52 per cent.
From the late 1960s to the 1990s the Falling Creek area was part of a large project area called the Pine Pass property, which followed the coal along strike from the Noman Creek area, through the current Willow Creek mine (093O 008) area, Falling Creek, Hasler mine (093P 024) area and extending southeast into Highhat Creek.
The estimated coal inventory for the area is around 100 million tonnes in five seams that range from 1.0 to 2.7 metres. Most of this is underground recoverable (Coal Assessment Report 522).
Between 1972 and 1977, Pan Ocean Oil Ltd. held coal licenses over the Falling Creek property area and completed eight drillholes. The licenses were relinquished by Pan Ocean and subsequently acquired and then relinquished in 1980 by Manalta. Esso Resources Canada Ltd. acquired coal licenses in May, 1980, and named the property Falling Creek. During the summer of 1980, Esso Resources commenced preliminary geological mapping of the property and tested the stratigraphy with one rotary-drill hole. In the summer of 1981, a program consisting of mapping, trenching and drilling was conducted; three backhoe trenches and three diamond-drill holes were completed to test the stratigraphy and the extent of coal seams. A 1982 field program was two phased, comprising geological mapping and drilling; fifteen drillholes averaging 200 metres in depth were completed. Selected coal seams over one metre thick were sampled for proximate analyses and vitrinite reflectance. The 1983 program consisted of geological mapping and diamond drilling eight holes totalling 2018.8 metres. Selected coal seams were analyzed for vitrinite reflectance, maceral determination and coal quality.
