Sunday May 29 was the last day that Chris and Connie and I spent down in the Red Deer River Valley. We decided to take a short walk up into the hills above East Coulee. There were at least eight mines in the immediate vicinity of town, back in the day. One of the land owners that we had spoken to earlier in the weekend had told us about some of these mines.
We found the entrance to what was once one of the mines. Back in the day there had been a huge wood tipple here, similar to the one that still stands at the Atlas Mine. The entrance was badly collapsed and looked to be on the verge of failure. The concrete was not of particularly good quality and the reinforcement consisted of whatever scrap metal they had around... wire mesh, roller chains, etc. We didn't venture inside but could see that about 15 feet in the entrance was fully blocked by old steel rails.
There was lots of evidence of the mine scattered about.... old railway ties still in the ground, chunks of steel rail, and lots of debris. Nothing of any value, but there were timbers, concrete footings, nails and bolts and various bits of scrap metal all over the place. It made for some interesting exploring and I made a few photographs with my big view camera that I painfully lugged up there.
Once we got back down we packed up all of our stuff from the stay at the shop. Then we had lunch over at the Birdland food trailer run by our friend Jason. Chris and Connie hit the road back to Calgary after lunch and it wasn't long afterwards that I was on my way back to Edmonton.
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