Limestone of the Cambrian Ottertail Formation is intruded by nepheline syenite of the Devonian or Carboniferous Ice River Complex. The limestone separates lower calcareous shales of the Middle Cambrian Chancellor Group from a thick series of cherty slates of the Upper Cambrian-Middle Ordovician McKay Group.

The limestone beds at the Shining Beauty occurrence strike 325 degrees and dip from 68 to 72 degrees southwest. A lens-like mass of white granular quartz about 60 centimetres thick lays in a bedding plane, some 60 metres from the contact with nepheline syenite. The quartz is veined with minute stringers of calcite which frequently contain small greenish fibrous aggregations of zeolitic material. The lens is constant in width and has sharply defined walls; it closely follows the strike of the limestone, and in vertical extent is readily traceable for about 304 metres up the almost vertical cliff to the top of the ridge (Geological Survey of Canada Memoir 55, page 230). A little pyrite, galena and minor chalcopyrite occur in the lens, but the ore is found as irregular segregations in the surrounding limestone, consisting of massive arsenopyrite-quartz pods surrounded by disseminated pyrite, sphalerite, argentiferous galena and arsenopyrite; bornite has also been reported. The surrounding rock is highly stained with limonite.

Mining operations from 1908-1911 produced an unspecified amount of silver and zinc ore. The development by the Labourers' Co-operative Gold, Silver and Copper Mining Co. Ltd. consisted of 3 almost parallel tunnels about 60 metres apart, one above the other, following the quartz lens. The upper tunnel is 114 metres long, the middle one is 137 metres long, and the lower tunnel is only a couple of metres long. The amount of ore actually shipped is unknown, but the reported value was $20 per ton in silver and zinc (Geological Survey of Canada Memoir 55, page 231).