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 Hike through History

A few weeks back we went to the farmer's market in Cedar. That same day (I know... posting delays!)... we went to Morden Colliery Regional Trail. We've been to the old Morden Colliery site before.... Oh... hang on... I have not taken LF there!!!! How is that possible??? Ok... we are going to have to rectify that... and soon!

Anyhow... this is a replica of the pit head at the Morden site... there is a an old rail right-of-way that goes from Morden to where we are now, and then continues to the ocean.

There used to be a bridge for the railway across the river, but there is no bridge now.... so you can't walk from one end to the other. But... there is a nice interpretive display here.

And a map that shows all the coal mining sites all the way up to Cumberland.

Let's seeeee... where are we...

There we are!! See those two orange dots just above, and between, our heads... the lower one is the location of the pithead... and we are at the upper one.

There is talk of building a bridge across the river to connect the two trail bits... but there has been talk for years!

Alright, let's walk!!

I have to say, the fall colours are beary pretty... can you even see LF though?

Fall is his camouflage time!

Beary pretty...

This is Hemer Lake... there are all sorts of trails around here...

It's beary pretty and peaceful here.

It's good to get in a good hike!

We went about 30 minutes down the trail and then turned around to head back to the car. Maybe we'll come back another time and explore farther.

We found some painted rocks on the trail! This looks like a bat...

Cute!

This bank is covered with licorice ferns....

We could get lost in here!

The cottonwoods are so pretty at this time of year.

There were some farms along the way and a few horses.

They didn't come to say hello... we need to keep carrots in our pockets...

Sandy's Coal Mining Tour - Granby Mines

 Ah hem... Sandy Bear here... tour guide extraordinaire! Or shall we say extraordibear! anyhow... Today we are going to explore something that we spotted off the road ages ago! Do you see it? Looks like an old ruin.

Having seen the Morden Colliery tipple... we know that this is something similar! A bit of research and... this is the old Granby mine site!

It's pretty cool!! It's up on a hill, made up of old coal crumbles, so has obviously been buried to seal off the entrance.

You can see some of the old gears and gizmos inside this structure.

And this tree made it's way around the concrete!

See here... all of the ground here is black, full of coal bits...

Anywhere around here... if you see black soil, you know there was a coal operation nearby!

There are bigger chunks here as well... we pocketed a few.

It kind of looks like the ruins of a cathedral...

We were here early before the sun came up and now that it's up... cooler photos!

This bit is more likely the tipple (you can't see it, but it's angled)...

 

 

 See... this is the Morden mine one... So that angled thing... that's the tipple... and that's the bit above. The other stuff with the tree hugging it... that would be the same as on the right side of the photo at Morden... (We did a tour of Morden here...)

See... this bit...

And then... across the road, we found all sorts of huge chunks of concrete... there was apparently a whole TOWN here back in the day... (you can read a news article about it here).

When the mine closed for good, they moved a bunch of the fancier houses into the city... but a lot of the other stuff just got knocked down. We might have to do some more exploring later and see what we can find.

Then we poked around further down from the old tipple and found an old dam and reservoir... probably connected to the mining operation.

See... lots of black soil here!

There's this wooden contraption in the middle of the old reservoir area... maybe an overflow regulator? Or... that's the water outtake...

And we found this cool footbridge!

And beyond that is the old E&N Railway bridge. There's been talk for AGES about resurrecting the rail corridor but... nothing ever comes of it. It would need a bazillion dollars!

We walked across the footbridge...

It's a pretty creek...

I wonder if there's salmon in this creek in the fall?

Then we deked up to the old railway...

See... lots of the railway ties are rotted... I tell ya... $$$$$$$$$ to get this up and running!

There's the bit that goes over the creek... do we dare?

Do we???

Ahhh... !!!! Ok... that's good enough!!! Let's go back the way we came!

This railway likely carried some of the Granby coal down to the harbour... cool!

Hope you enjoyed the tour!! We have some more coal adventures coming up... including a story about two teens who got lost in an old coal mine...