The Hope or Hope of Discovery showing is located on a steep mountainside 0.5 kilometre east of Dark Canyon Creek, the first south-flowing tributary of Akokli Creek east of its mouth. The showing lies at about 1450 metres elevation, 4 kilometres east of Boswell on Kootenay Lake; the exact location is shown on a map in Assessment Report 17527.

Hostrocks consist of thinly bedded, white to blue-grey limestone of the Middle Proterozoic Dutch Creek Formation (Purcell Supergroup); in the vicinity of the showing, these rocks are tightly folded. A galena bearing quartz-calcite vein ranges in width from 2.5 to 70 centimetres over an exposed length of 60 metres. The vein strikes 348 degrees and dips 77 degrees east; at the north end the vein pinches to a fracture, where the white limestone merges with the less thinly bedded blue-grey limestone. Galena occurs as bands and pockets in the quartz and in minor concentrations in the bedding planes of the limestone adjacent to the vein; scattered disseminations of galena occur in the blue-grey limestone beyond the end of the vein. Assays indicate that sphalerite is likely present. The description in Assessment Report 17713 of malachite and azurite (plus manganese staining) indicates copper may be present. This report also suggests the hostrock may be dolomite.

The best sample over 0.7 metre assayed 387 grams per tonne silver, 19.0 per cent lead and 18.7 per cent zinc; an average of three samples over a width of 0.5 metre and strike length of 20 metres was 263 grams per tonne silver, 13.4 per cent lead and 14.9 per cent zinc. All assays for gold are nil or trace. A shipment of 11 tonnes in 1957 yielded only 302.5 grams per tonne silver, 16.2 per cent lead, and 8.95 per cent zinc (Minister of Mines Annual Report 1957). Recent work by Forbes Resources Ltd. in 1990 confirmed recorded assays ranging from 0.14 to 0.47 gram per tonne gold (this would have been nil to trace in earlier assays), 77.5 to 1213 grams per tonne silver, 2.04 to 71.2 per cent lead and 1.83 to 18.1 per cent zinc.