Pine Creek flows west from Surprise Lake into Atlin Lake about 3 kilometres south of the present townsite of Atlin. The creek is about 20 kilometres long and was the site of the initial discovery of gold in Atlin in 1898. The creek has been mined more or less continuously from that time to the present with both individual, and very large scale mechanical mining operations by large companies. Hydraulic mining was successful on this creek and relatively little underground work was done.

The creek is underlain by a belt of variably altered upper Mississippian to Permian ultramafic rocks that stretches from Surprise Lake to the town of Atlin. The rocks belong to the lower sections of the Cache Creek Complex. In the Pine Creek placer operation areas, the ultramafics are highly talc and serpentine altered.

The placer deposit is about 2 kilometres long and up to 350 metres wide. Like other areas in Atlin, the pay gravels are located right above bedrock. Mining ceased at the eastern ends toward Surprise Lake because bedrock became progressively deeper and pits were too deep requiring removal of too much overburden with insufficient room for all the tailings.

Approximately 4,017,917 grams of gold were removed from Pine Creek from 1898 to 1945, the second largest producer in the Atlin gold fields behind Spruce Creek (104N 034) (Bulletin 28). However, increased work more recently on Pine Creek allowed it to become the largest producer in the Atlin area from 1956 onward.

In 1995, a seismic refraction and reflection survey was conducted on portions of Pine Creek for Western Pacific Mining Corporation to determine whether a deep, unexplored channel might exist within the valley containing Pine Creek.

In 2011, D. Javorsky conducted a VLF-EM 16 survey over the Pine Creek placer claims in an attempt to find the continuation of the Surprise Lake fault.