Jul 052010
 

The Rocky Mountain Coal Mine is an amazing place to visit.  It is a heritage property and if you can find it – it is very easy location to see.  The expansive facility includes at least 15 buildings.  There were bunkhouses, power plant, heating plant, core sample warehouse, a couple clerical buildings, several maintenance / shop buildings, and a very interesting and dangerous load out building.  The load out building was half collapsed but has the interesting setup for dumping the mining cars and then returning them to the mine.  There are several mining cars laying around the facility and the main mine entrance is still in place; however it was blasted shut when the mine closed.

 

I assume the plant closed sometime in the 1970’s however that is just an educated guess by the amount of decay and the type of electrical equipment that was on site.  Time has been tough on this place, but it must have been amazing to see when it first closed.  Even now it offers everything you would expect to see in a mountain coal mine.  It’s too bad it wasn’t turned into a museum as places like this are fairly rare.  However it is pretty far gone now and I expect it will continue to rot until it is gone all together.

Coal Mine 1

The old mining carts outside the mine entrance

Coal Mine 2

The mine entrance – blasted shut when the mine closed

Coal Mine 3

Some interesting machinery in one of the buildings.  I have no idea what this would be used for.

Coal Mine 4

Generators in the power plant

Coal Mine 5

A warehouse full of thousands of core samples

Coal Mine 6

Unloading structure – the mining carts would be dumped here and then sent back to the mine

Coal Mine 7

Looking back to the entrance of the unloading structure

Coal Mine 8

There was a cart still in this in place.  The coal would be dumped to the level below and then loaded onto rail cars.

 Posted by at 15:23
Jul 052010
 

I have come to the point in the past 6 months where I am bored with Saskatchewan.  We have explored everything interesting that this province has to offer.  That doesn’t mean we have stopped exploring in Saskatchewan and that doesn’t mean there isn’t more to see here.  The locations we have around here are either rather small or we have already seen them several times.  We are just craving new large locations to see which means we have to look a little further from home.

 

So over the past 6 months we have been focussing on exploring outside the province.  So far we have been focussed on southern Alberta, the BC interior, and North Dakota.  In the very near future we will be doing a multiday trip through the north west United States and I am planning on getting into parts of Manitoba sometime this fall.

 

So the next few updates will not be for Saskatchewan locations however they are very interesting and I am sure you will enjoy them.

 

Below was our drinking locale while exploring in BC.  It’s tough to beat a Saturday night spent sitting on a beach at Kootenay Lake with a few good friends, some beverages and some fireworks.  Oh yeah and a really plastered CaptainCanada lol.

Silver Mine 2

 Posted by at 11:12