The Whitehorse Copper Belt is located west of Whitehorse and contains 30+ mines, deposits and showings. By 1900, most of the important deposits had been discovered and the first small ore shipment was made that year. Many of the occurrences in the Copper Belt are skarns. The skarns form on or near the contact between the Whitehorse batholith and the Lewes River group. The Whitehorse batholith is commonly a grey coarse-grained hornblende granite and ranges from quartz monzonite to granodiorite to diorite. The Lewes River group contains numerous different rock types, most importantly of which is the limestone group, which is essential in the formation of skarns in the area.  A small number of occurrences within the Copper Belt are vein and/or replacement and occur within the Whitehorse batholith granite.

The Carlisle mine is located within an irregularly shaped roof pendant of limestone and skarn, some 600 feet in diameter. The pendant is enclosed to the north, south and east by the Whitehorse batholith hornblende granite. Towards the west is the larger limestone section, which contains the Copper King deposit. The contact zones in the vicinity are marked by an intense alteration of the Lewes River limestone to brown garnet (andradite) and epidote. The principal ore at Carlisle is bornite and chalcopyrite with a tremolite-rich gangue. When the dump was tested with a UV lamp, a minor amount of white scheelite was present in the quartz rich specimens, in silicified garnet, and in siliceous skarn. A quartz rich specimen with scheelite was assayed and showed 0.005 ounce per ton (0.16 g/t) Au and 0.75% WO₃.

Production from the Carlisle mine totalled 907 tonnes of ore at 3.58% Cu, 0.34 g/t Au and 51.4 g/t Ag.