The Culkeen placer deposit is on Lardeau Creek, above the falls and below Ten-Mile. The Lardeau Creek area was explored for placer gold in the late 1890s and Peter Culkeen did a considerable amount of work in the Ten-Mile area prior to 1929. More recently, in 1957, Messrs. Hladinec and Bobicki held placer and mineral claims over the Rambler [082KNW019] and worked an area further downstream.
The Trout Lake area is underlain by a thick succession of sedimentary and volcanic rocks of the Badshot Formation and Lardeau Group near the northern end of the Kootenay arc, an arcuate, north to northwest trending belt of Paleozoic and Mesozoic strata that is now classified as a distinct, pericratonic, terrane. The arc rocks are bordered by Precambrian quartzite in the east and they young to the west, where they are bounded by Jurassic-age intrusive complexes. They were deformed during the Antler orogeny in Devonian-Mississippian time and were refolded and faulted during the Columbian orogeny, in the Middle Jurassic. A large panel, the "Selkirk allochthon", was later offset to the northeast by dip-slip motion along the Columbia River Fault.
The Badshot Formation is composed of a thick Cambrian limestone that is a distinctive marker horizon in the Trout Lake area. It is underlain by Hamill Group quartzite and it is overlain by a younger assemblage of limestone, calcareous, graphitic and siliceous argillite and siltstone, sandstone, quartzite and conglomerate, and also mafic volcanic flows, tuffs and breccias, all of which belong to the Lardeau Group. The rocks are isoclinally folded and intensely deformed, but only weakly metamorphosed. They occur as intercalated beds of marble, quartzite and grey, green and black phyllite and schist. Fyles and Eastwood (EMPR BULL 45) subdivided the group into six formations (Index, Triune, Ajax, Sharon Creek, Jowett and Broadview) of which the lowermost (Index) and uppermost (Broadview) are the most widespread. The Triune (siliceous argillite), Ajax (quartzite) and Sharon Creek (siliceous argillite) are restricted to the Trout Lake area. The Jowett is a mafic volcanic unit.
In the 1890s, some shafts were sunk in a bench on the side of Lardeau Creek, a short distance below Ten-Mile and placer gold was found. Peter Culkeen later did a considerable amount of trenching, sluicing and hydraulicking above the falls in the Lardeau River, below Ten-Mile. He found small amounts of gold but no profitable extraction was ever recorded (GSC MEM 161). The gold is presumed to be derived from local veins. In 1957, Messrs. Hladinec and Bobicki drove a diversion tunnel on the Rambler [082KNW019] claim, downstream, near Finkle (Seven-Mile) Creek, and used an old adit to reroute the creek. They then dammed the natural channel as part of a plan to extract placer gold from sand and gravel in a plunge pool.