Palcoprep in Drumheller, a company that I am involved in, got a contract to take molds of a Dinosaur Trackway in a coal mine in Southwestern British Columbia. We proposed this idea last year, following a visit to the site by my business partner Frank. This fall the operator of the mine, Teck, decided to go ahead with the project before the site suffered any further damage due to erosion.
Teck's Line Creek Operation, north of Sparwood, British Columbia, is approaching the end of it's operating life. Teck has made application to expand the mine onto two ridges north of the existing site. If approved, this expansion would add 16 years to the life of the existing operation. In advance of that application Teck constructed some rough roadways onto Burnt Ridge and Michel Ridge. They bored some exploratory holes at various locations to determine the amount of coal available to be mined. It was at one of these bore hole locations that a sloping rock face was exposed. Actually "rock" is probably not the right term as it is more like hard shale. This shale face was once the shore of a river, lake, or perhaps the ocean. In it are preserved the tacks of numerous Dinosaurs. There are the tracks of some large Sauropods [plant eating dinosaurs] walking along what would have once been the edge of some sort of water body. These are the large long-necked, long-tailed dinosaurs that were amongst the largest creatures to ever live on earth. At one point on the site the tracks of one of these individuals stops and circles back, before continuing on. Was this creature alarmed by a predator... or did something else catch its attention? There are also the tracks of several raptors [meat eating dinosaurs] on the same site. It is impossible to determine if the raptors were there at exactly the same time, 150 million years ago, as the sauropods, but something made that big creature stop and circle back...?? Today, what was once a near horizontal surface, is tilted up at a pitch of nearly 12:12, by the uplifting Rocky Mountains.
Teck hired Palcoprep to take a mold off of a section of this site to preserve what had been exposed by the exploration work at their mine. I decided that I needed to take part in this project as I felt it was a once in a life time opportunity. So, I bailed out of my day job at Mac Plastics for three days to take part in this exciting project. This was the reason that the weekend camping trip of September 22/23 got cut short to a day trip. After taking the girls out for a day of horse-back riding at TL Bar Ranch, I headed back home to get ready for this trip to the Trackway site. I got up early on the morning of September 23rd and found myself back on the road to the badlands. This was my third trip over this stretch of pavement in less than 24 hours. I arrived in Drumheller just after lunch, to meet up with Frank, and our employee Jim. By mid afternoon we were ready to go, and headed off towards British Columbia. We arrived in the Elk Valley late in the day and stopped for a bite to eat, and checked into a local motel. We were staying in Fernie, just down the valley from Sparwood and Teck's Line Creek Operation. The next morning we put our gear together and headed up to Teck's office in Sparwood. After checking in with the staff that had coordinated this project, we made our way up to the mine. In addition to the online orientation training that all three of us had taken prior to our departure, we had to check in with security at the entrance to the mine. Here we had to take another orientation course specific to this site. We all passed with flying colors and soon we were driving up the canyon into the operating mine...
We had all of our proper safety equipment in place, and had checked in with Security, we drove up to the office on the site. Here we met with one of the company Geologists, that would escort us up to the site. I was in awe at the size of this operation, and the equipment that Teck has on site. And this is one of their smallest operations! They are basically starting at the top, and cutting down the mountains to expose the coal. The rock overburden is removed, exposing the coal. This is a grade of coal that is well suited to steel production, and a lot of it is exported overseas. A series of drill holes are made, charges are set, and the mountain is blasted open. The overburden is removed and piled out of the way as the coal is exposed. The sheer scale of it all is something to marvel at.
I was expecting that the trackway site would be within the mine, but I was wrong. We cautiously drove up through the active haul roads of the mine, and eventually made our way to the upper levels. From here we proceeded on some much rougher, narrower and steeper roads onto to the upper levels of adjacent Michel Ridge. We wound along eventually getting up to an elevation of over 7650 Feet above sea level, and near the top of Michel Ridge. Here we came upon the exposed shale face and the trackways. At first we were all somewhat disappointed... Jim and I because the tracks were not all the obvious, and Frank because there had been so much weathering and deterioration of the trackway since his last visit about a year ago. But, we unpacked our gear and set to work. The more time we spent looking at the surface, the easier it became to pick out the tracks. The raptor tracks that Frank originally planned to mold had become quite weathered, and were not worth our effort. So, we set to work clearing away some of the scree that had accumulated at the lower edge of the exposed slope.
This slope is larger and steeper than it looks. It is at an incline of nearly 45 degrees. We were not permitted to work too far up onto the slope due to the safety regulations of the mine. We probably could have made application for some equipment or safety lines to be put into place, but it would have taken weeks or even months for this to be organized. By that time it would be winter, and by the following spring, erosion may have permanently eliminated portions of this trackway. So, we made the best of it, and set to work. The area that we decided to work on included two large oval shaped sauropod tracks that were oriented in a left/right direction. These large indentations were about 1-1/2 by 2-1/2 feet in size. Running up the slope across these large impressions were a series of three-toed raptor tracks. There were at least four of them that were obvious, and they continued up beyond where we were permitted to work. We set up our compressor and our spraying equipment and after clearing this portion of the site of debris and cleaning out the tracks, we set to work to spray them with a layer of silicone rubber. This process took most of the afternoon. Later we used some silicone rubber in paste format and troweled it in to some of the deeper portions of the trackway impressions, following this up with another layer of sprayed on silicone.
The large oval shaped Depression just to the right of Franks' head, in the above photo, is one of the Sauropod tracks. Approximately three feet to the left of Franks' face there is an obvious three-toed raptor track.
The following photograph is one of the raptor tracks just beyond the area in which we took off the mold. As the sun began to set and the light got lower, more and more of these impressions became obvious all over this inclined shale face.
By the end of that first day we were tired, but satisfied with what we had accomplished. We decided to let the silicone rubber cure overnight, rather than attempt to peel back the mold that day. So we drove back down off of the mountain, and out of the mine, and made our way back to Fernie. We went out for a couple of beers and something to eat in the pub at the historic Fernie Hotel. We knew that we needed to get up early to be back up into the mine the next morning to peel our mold. So, we didn't make it too late a night and turned in moderately early.
