The Myrtle occurrence in Lot 10501 on the summit of Barkerville Mountain is located about 2 kilometres northwest of Barkerville.

The Myrtle occurrence area lies within the Barkerville Terrane of the Omineca Belt. The Barkerville Terrane is in thrust contact with Triassic Quesnel Terrane rocks to the west and Hadrynian to Lower Paleozoic Cariboo Terrane rocks to the east. The Barkerville Terrane in this region is underlain by the dominantly metasedimentary rocks of the Hadrynian to Lower Paleozoic Snowshoe Group. In this area, the Paleozoic Snowshoe Group comprises limestone, phyllite and quartzite. These rocks have been regionally metamorphosed to greenschist facies.

Work History

In the early 1920s, intensive prospecting by E.E. Armstrong was conducted on the Myrtle group. In 1933, Newmont Mining Corporation did some stripping on the Myrtle group and Shamrock Gold Mines Limited drove the Shamrock adit 548 metres toward the downward projection of some veins on the surface of that group. The Shamrock adit was driven west from the portal on the outskirts of Barkerville. In 1941, Island Mountain Mines Company Limited purchased the Myrtle and that part of the Shamrock group which included the adit, and in 1941-42, drove the adit to the Martha (Lot 10508) and Cariboo (Lot 10512) claims, over a kilometre from the portal. The adit was driven toward the Martha (Lot 10508), Marie (Lot 10502), and Myrtle (Lot 10501) claims but did not reach the latter two. Many transverse veinlets were encountered on the southwest side of the Martha claim. In 1955, the Shamrock property included the Shamrock and Myrtle groups consisting of nineteen Crown-granted claims and fractions and was owned by Island Mountain Mining Company Limited.

The showing property, on option from Gold City Industries Ltd. by International Wayside Gold Mines Ltd., hosts an auriferous quartz-carbonate-pyrite stockwork within Snowshow Group rocks that yielded impressive gold assays from drilling conducted in 2002. In 2002, International Wayside drilled 5 core holes and reported assay results for three. A 17.68- metre intercept in drillhole M02-01 assayed 9.12 grams per tonne gold; drillhole M02-05 intercepted 0.18 metre of 61.79 grams per tonne gold (Press Release, International Wayside Gold Mines Ltd., October 24, 2002).

Late in 2003, International Wayside initiated a 15-hole diamond drill program that is expected to go into 2004. Several of the proposed drillholes will test the downdip potential of the new Ethel vein, where grab samples from a 2003 trenching program produced bonanza-grade assays.

International Wayside was reported to have drilled five holes on the Myrtle in 2004. Results of the drilling program indicate the of isolated, narrow, and weakly to moderately auriferous quartz veins hosted in metamorphosed and weakly altered, siliciclastic rocks of the Rainbow and Baker members.

In 2011, two diamond drill holes, totalling 211.2 metres, were completed on the area.