The Upper Tau showing is located 500 metres west of Skookum Lake, 13 kilometres north of Hyder, Alaska.

Located in the Intermontane Belt, the area, bounded on the west by the Coast Crystalline Complex and on the east by the Bowser Basin, is part of the volcanic arc assemblage of the Stikinia Terrane. The showing is hosted by the Upper Triassic to Lower Jurassic Hazelton Group, Unuk River Formation metavolcanics. The Hazelton Group is a northwest trending steeply east dipping belt of folded andesitic lapilli tuffs, flows and breccia containing a thick sequence of argillite and siltstone infolded along a synclinal axis. The sequence is intruded by the Early Jurassic Texas Creek granodiorite, Eocene granitic Hyder intrusives and lamprophyre dykes.

This occurrence is most likely associated with mineralization at the Alaska-Premier (104B 064) workings located 1.2 kilometres north of this showing. A sample from a tuff xenolith in a Texas Creek granodiorite dyke contains pyrite, arsenopyrite and minor pyrrhotite and chalcopyrite. This sample assayed 0.48 grams per tonne gold over 1.5 metres (Houston Oil and Minerals Corp., 1979).