Stepping into the Past (and eagles!)

Hullo! Today we are at the "real" Morden Colliery! A few weeks back, we were on the other section of the Morden Colliery Regional trail, which had a replica of the pit head... but now we are at the real one.

Impressive, no? It had some restoration work done a couple of years ago.

"It is fascinating! As a budding archaeologist, I am always interested in these sorts of things."

There's a miner's memorial here too because lots of miners died down in those tunnels.

And back in behind, in the bush, is part of the old smokestack from the pump house.

It's pretty cool back here.

There are old building foundations...

And stairs to nowhere...

The forest does claim back it's own very quickly...

We're going to hike down to the river... the trail here is beary black... all from coal stuff!

This trail used to be an old railway... that went from the mine, along this route, over the river, and then over to the ocean. We saw part of it on that last adventure.

There are even old bits of rail track in the bush.

We are almost at the river... wait... are those eagles we hear??

Ah-hah... the river!!

And... OMG... do you see them???? In the trees back there!

Here's a zoomed in shot... eagles!!!

And there's more over there!

So cool!

Every direction we looked, there were eagles in the trees.

It's the tail end of salmon spawning season and we don't see any on the shore... but there must still be some around.

And more eagles over there!

Let's just zoom in... oops... 

I've got a big nose!

Well, that was fun! An archaeological hike AND eagles!!

A Fall Hike with a Fox

 Hullo! We are going on a hike today! First... we go through the tunnel...

And then by the waterfall. Do you remember this waterfall? It was the Stuffie Olympics waterfall from several summers ago... when it had hardly any water in it... much nicer now.

"Hey Sandy's human... can you get an in-focus shot of us??"

"Much better!"

We don't get a tonne of gorgeous fall colours here... leaves tend to go brown in late summer from drought but... we do have a few!

"That is a big-leaf maple... beary pretty"

It is, isn't it?

We found a new trail system to explore down here... there are a lot of mountain bike trails...

And they have built some bridges...

We think this area might have had some coal exploration back in the day.

Along the base of this escarpment... whoops...

"Sandy, your balance is atrocious!"

Beary true... I got too excited talking about the coal mining.

It's along the base of the conglomerate escarpment that a lot of coal was discovered.

But then... they closed off all the tunnels in the 1960s after those two teens went into an old mine tunnel and never came out again.

That is a beary sad story.

The problem with digging along the base of the escarpment is you tend to undercut it and... this huge block detached and fell at some point.

It's like a big abyss... don't slip!

Lots of cool stuff here!

Oh right, I will have to take LF to see the real Abyss!!

So pretty in the fall!

And there we go. Another successful adventure! We are going to have to hunker down for a bit though... the rains are coming!

More Coal Mining Remnants

***Editor's note - this adventure took place before Navy Beanie! (And Cocoa was in England)

Hullo! Our tour of the old coal mine continues. We went on the other side of the power lines to see what we could find there.

So far not much!

Oh, some old bit of metal... 

Might be from coal mining or might just be junk!

Hmmm... interesting...

If the boot doesn't fit... don't wear it!

This looks more like an old bit of car...

More car... maybe people dumped their garbage here. Back in the day, people would just drive their old cars into the woods and leave them to die...

That doesn't look like cars... but might be coal mining related.

Something that got crushed down so people wouldn't go into it and get hurt!

More cars!

Oooh... and there's some water shining through the trees...

But it's hard to get down there...

But you can see the black soil showing through...

A slab of concrete!! That's definitely something coal mining related...

Still no way down to the lake!

But don't worry.. .this little bear is persistent!

Yep, a lot of coal detritus here...

Don't sit on the ground... you'll get a black bum!

Ah... finally!!! A way down to the lake!

And an old rail... 

Wow! This is beary pretty!

Don't you think?

These old stumps tell me that this is a man-made lake - so there's probably a dam at the other end. The old coal mining era made a lot of dammed lakes here...

Alright... well... we didn't find a lot of exciting stuff... although online resource said there was something over by those trees but the brush is too thick... maybe we'll check in the spring when the brush is low!

Maybe...

And as we were heading back under the powerlines... we saw this!!!

It's bear poopies!!! And it wasn't meeeeeee!!!

***A short while later***

OK... no bears. Whew! We went to the far side of the lake just to check out the dam...

Yep... there it is...

Oh... well... that's a really effective barrier but I guess it's more... "you were warned!"...

No fence or anything!

I wonder when this was built? Probably in the early 1900s...

A little sluiceway... beary pretty

There's lots of cool old stuff like this around... if you start looking for it.

We were waaaayyy over on the other side before!

And just to show I am an intrepid bear... I'm going to sit on the dam!!! 

But I'm not intrepid enough to walk all the way across...