The Nation occurrence is situated near a small creek which flows northeast into West Kwanika Creek at its confluence with Kwanika Creek. It was discovered in 1988 as a result of efforts to locate the source of a significant arsenic-gold silt anomaly outlined by a 1983 regional geochemical survey (Geological Survey of Canada Open File 1001, Map 66-1983).

The area is underlain by Carboniferous to Jurassic sedimentary and volcanic rocks (and derived schist) assigned to the Cache Creek Complex. To the east, a narrow, linear band of ultramafic rocks formerly assigned to the Middle Permian to Late Triassic Trembleur intrusions and now termed Mississippian-Triassic Oceanic Ultramafites, occurs along the trace of the Pinchi fault zone which separates the Cache Creek rocks from the Late Triassic to Early Cretaceous Hogem Intrusive Complex.

At the Nation occurrence, blue-grey coloured limestone occurs in contact with quartz sericite schist, chloritic schist and a "jasperoid-like" unit. Quartz feldspar and feldspar porphyry sills have also been emplaced parallel to stratigraphy. Foliation in the schists strikes 160 degrees and dips steeply west.

Mineralization exposed to date occurs in several forms: 1) stockwork quartz-carbonate veins in limestone adjacent to jasperoid-like rocks, 2) ankeritic carbonate-rich siltstone hosting greater than 5 per cent combined pyrite and arsenopyrite, also adjacent to jasperoid-like rocks, 3) auriferous porphyritic dacite and 4) auriferous sideritic latite porphyry hosting fine-grained veinlets of quartz-albite-calcite-pyrite.

One sample of dacite porphyry rubble assayed 0.590 gram per tonne gold, while ankeritic siltstone analysed 0.305 gram per tonne gold and 7917 ppm arsenic (Assessment Report 19373, page 3).