The Ironclad property is located in the vicinity of Mount Richards, about 2.0 kilometres southwest of Crofton. Access is easily attained by roads from Crofton, or from the Westholme road to the west.

The area is underlain by metavolcanics of the McLaughlin Ridge Formation (Sicker Group). These are intruded by quartz-feldspar porphyries of the Late Devonian Saltspring Intrusive Suite (formerly the Saltspring Intrusions) and gabbro (informally called the Mount Hall Gabbro) that is coeval with the volcanics of the Karmutsen Formation (Vancouver Group). The Sicker rocks are in unconformable contact with the Cretaceous Nanaimo Group to the north, and cut off to the south by the northwest trending Fulford thrust fault. A younger, left-lateral strike-slip fault, trending north-northeast, offsets the generally east trending rocks on the west side off Mount Richards (Massey, N.W.D., 1988).

The Ironclad workings consist of two shafts and an incline. The main working is a 30-degree incline 36 metres long. The material on the dump shows heavy pyrite mineralization in a strongly sheared and silicified gabbroic country rock, with minor patches of chalcopyrite.

Talc is found in shear zones, with the sulphide mineralization in the schists where they are cut by quartz-feldspar porphyries. The talc is up to one metre thick and contains calcite and quartz as impurities. One of the Ironclad shafts is claimed to have intersected a one-metre thick band of talc at the 10-metre level (Geological Survey of Canada Summary Report 1909, page 101).

A quartz vein, up to 30 centimetres in width, occurs in gabbro a few hundred metres to the west of the Ironclad workings. The vein is reported to contain malachite, chalcocite, tetrahedrite and minor bornite (Assessment Report 7233, page 4, Figure 2).

In 1969, Canpac Minerals explored the area as the Sirius claims. A program of geological mapping and a ground magnetic survey was completed. In 1978, the area was staked as the Croft 2 claim and a program of geological mapping and soil sampling was completed. In 1983, the area was staked as the West claims by R.J. Bilquist and a program of prospecting was completed. In 1984 and 1985, Falconbridge optioned the property and completed programs of geochemical sampling and an airborne geophysical survey. In 1987, Falconbridge completed a drilling program of 10 holes, totalling 3170.7 metres, in the vicinity of Breen Lake on the West 1 claim. In 2010, Westridge Resources completed a program of geological mapping and geochemical sampling on the Breen Lake area.