Cool Underground Tunnel and Nanaimo's Old Mine Shafts

[yogi bear]

Hi all,

Spent a fun afternoon out Extension way today.....visited the pitheads of the Prospect, The #1 and I think #3 Mines as well as having a peek at the airshaft up on top of the hill behind Extension....beautiful day for a hike and got to watch some fallers doing what they do best....The thunder those big Douglas Firs make when they come down...wow! With all the logging and roadbuilding that's going on up there, it's getting hard to make out the landscape from my boyhood memories....

Talked to my uncle afterwards, he told me about a few open adits in the area where my Grandad worked the coal towards the end of mining in the area in the"thirties"...

I was kinda bummed out to find that the old drum winch that sat across the road from my Dad's place is no longer there...I think it was used to drag the cars out of the Prospect mine (or so local legend had me believe Apparently one of the neighbours hauled it out for scrap...woulda made a few bucks, that thing was pretty big.. : )

Cheers,
Al

[seaman]

would love to know more about that air shaft, is it filled in or still open? and those open adits sound very interesting, would be fun to find. sounds like yogi had a fun day!
And I'd like to have a look at some of Gwyneths reports, those maps would be cool to see. Gwyneth do you happen to know where the Benson mine was? trying to find out but it's not in the atlas. HAVE A GOOD ONE.

[gwyneth]

Hello, Seaman:

I don't recognise the name 'Benson' from any of my mine index reports; it's just possible that it refers to one of the three old adits that were driven into the No.2/Little Wellington, No.3 and No.4 coal beds of the Northfield Member coal measures, as exposed on the southern and eastern sides of Wolf Mountain. We sealed all three of the adits after finding them, since they were on the verge of collapse and their air was bad.

As well, there's a Benson copper mine up-Island, but I'd expect you knew about that one already.

Back in 1984, I worked out how close the old drillers of the Western Fuel Company had come to discovering the outlier of Wellington Seam coal atop Wolf Mountain, back when they drilled two diamond-drill holes up there in the 1930s. It turned out to be 17 feet -- if their deeper hole had gone just 17 feet deeper it would have hit the roof of the Wellington coal bed, which at that point (as we saw it when we mined through there in the 1980s) was a bit over 11 feet thick.

Of such near-misses is good history often made!

All of which reminds me that I really ought to scan and post a few more of my underground pictures from Wolf Mountain; I'd like to remind folks here that old mines are really **not** good places for wandering around. I wouldn't do it, and I **do** know my way around the pits. I continue to be haunted by the story of the two young lads who died in the Furnace Portal mine, most likely from blackdamp inhalation. Not a nice way to go, that: you don't really notice what hit you until it's too late to do anything about it. Looking at pictures is much safer than ending up being in a picture (at the coroner's office) yourself.

--gwyneth

[GR74]

Very interesting reading, Gwyneth. I'm glad that you decided to join this forum and share some of your knowledge on coal mining.

Although I am totally aware of the dangers surrounding abandoned coal mines, I can't help but become fascinated by them and want to explore further. From the time I first learned that my home town Nanaimo was a coal town, I always wanted to find an old mine. Today I know the whereabouts of a couple and will continue to search for more.

It is true that photos are a safer alternative to the real deal, but nothing compares to the genuine experience of being inside an old coal mine. I envy you for your experiences and opportunities linked to coal mining and being fortunate enough to work in close proximity with them. I wish that would have been me.

[BigMac]

Hello, Seaman:

I don't recognise the name 'Benson' from any of my mine index reports; it's just possible that it refers to one of the three old adits that were driven into the No.2/Little Wellington, No.3 and No.4 coal beds of the Northfield Member coal measures, as exposed on the southern and eastern sides of Wolf Mountain. We sealed all three of the adits after finding them, since they were on the verge of collapse and their air was bad.

As well, there's a Benson copper mine up-Island, but I'd expect you knew about that one already.

Back in 1984, I worked out how close the old drillers of the Western Fuel Company had come to discovering the outlier of Wellington Seam coal atop Wolf Mountain, back when they drilled two diamond-drill holes up there in the 1930s. It turned out to be 17 feet -- if their deeper hole had gone just 17 feet deeper it would have hit the roof of the Wellington coal bed, which at that point (as we saw it when we mined through there in the 1980s) was a bit over 11 feet thick.

Of such near-misses is good history often made!

All of which reminds me that I really ought to scan and post a few more of my underground pictures from Wolf Mountain; I'd like to remind folks here that old mines are really **not** good places for wandering around. I wouldn't do it, and I **do** know my way around the pits. I continue to be haunted by the story of the two young lads who died in the Furnace Portal mine, most likely from blackdamp inhalation. Not a nice way to go, that: you don't really notice what hit you until it's too late to do anything about it. Looking at pictures is much safer than ending up being in a picture (at the coroner's office) yourself.

--gwyneth

I would just like to say, Thank you for your input here. I have read your Wolf Mountain article & found it very interesting. I always thought that entering old coal mines was very dangerous, and having someone back me up on this is good. I work with a fella that survived an accident at the Quinsom mine in 98. Talked a little about it here . He was adamant that no one should enter an old coal mine. He told me stories of accidents that happened regularly in a fully operational mine, never mind one that hasn't seen the light of day for 70 yrs. Do you have any stories of accidents, Wolf Mountain etc. to tell? Speaking of the Furnace Portal mine, I know the brothers that found the people in that mine, scary. Thanks for your info

[Harewoodian]

BigMac would it be possible to get the folks that found the two boys to post their memories of that day here?

[seaman]

that's incredible to hear from someone that was actually down there, I must admit I'm jealous too. the part about missing the wellington seem by 17 feet is fasinating.
so in this mine atlas on page 10 there is a story of the benson mine, from what I've read here there were multiple openings the main seam was the wellington, there were five other seams of poor quality. sounds like it was Alfred Bensons first mine when he moved to Nanaimo before the harewood mine. I'm going downtown today for lunch, I'm going to pick up three dollar dream, there's a quote from that book so I'm going to keep looking.

[gwyneth]

Thanks for the kind words, Seaman.

Colliery geology, in the end, is like a dirty and exhausting game of 'jigsaw puzzle', where Mother Nature only lets you see a few of the pieces at a time, and you never get to see all of the pieces (except, maybe, if you visited a longwall face every single day).

I'll take the example of Quinsam 3 North/5 South mines, where I was for most of the past five years. The most often I /ever/ got underground was one shift per week, usually the Saturday or Sunday overtime shift, and since there were three or four sections operating in the mine at any given time, I'd only get to see each heading once every three or four weeks. What that meant was that I missed a lot, simply because the time I got there to measure-up the seam sections, half of the places would already be stone-dusted and very very hard to decipher what was actually going on.

I'd like to think that having posted some pictures online would at least assuage some of the more intense desire to go poking around. Wolf Mountain in particular is a concern of mine, as even two years after its closure, when we re-opened it briefly to have a look at the condition of the mine and its equipment, the majority of the workings were filled with blackdamp and appreciable levels of CO; that made it very risky to even go down the mains let alone into the panel roads. That, and the timbering was already in an advanced state of decomposition, with some of the cribs and packs already having fallen in. Not nice, not nice at all.

I will see if I can find more pictures; I am out-of-country at the moment and so it must wait upon my return to Canada.

--gwyneth

[BigMac]

the 2 kids were found in the late 70's early 80's in the furance portal mine by the bolt brothers the trail to the mine is right across from the animal shelter on harewood mines rd it made the paper and if someone knows of newspaper archives to access you will find the story there

there are tons of mines around and i myself have ventured into the wolf mountain one years ago and spent hours in there exploring it is a recent one for around here and is full of cave ins and disrepair it also fills with water to the ceiling every winter so the mine is very unsafe and only closed in 87 or something so the other ones would be insane to go in at one part half hour or so in the mine the roof had came down and the only way to carry on to the next tunnel was to climb up and squeze between the cave in and the roof , we did it and now i look back stupid stupid stupid but you get caught up in the moment and before going in the mine i was the big hipocrite to stay out of the mines til i tried it so try to have some self control !!! easier said than done LOL , stick to rock mines up island !!!

one of the old mines around here a buddy of mine went in years ago probley 15 years and he said wow take a 6x6 wooden beam support and ring it out like a wet sponge like most nanaimo mines they are deep and you never know what your walking on . the floor in the one mine was wood covering an extremly deep elevator shaft and the roof has caved so much you would never know til you fell there are still many open entrances to mines all over nanaimo and casidy so if you do find one just admire it and stay out there to old ! cheers

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[BigMac]

There were actually 4 kids who found the bodies. The two Bolt twins and two of their friends. One of them stepped right on one of the dead bodies and sunk right into it. After 10 years in that cold shaft, the bodies were, for whatever reason, still well preserved. They all got pretty frightened when they discovered what was stepped in was a dead body. And they high-tailed it outta there and jumped in one of the Bolt brothers' purple Gremlin car and drove at about 75 miles per hour to the Nanaimo RCMP station.

Search and rescue got the bodies out of the mine and shortly after they were identified as two kids who went missing in about 1969. They lay dead in that shaft for 10 years. The parents had no idea where they went. They figured it was coal gas that killed them. The kids were found in their sleeping bags. It looked like to investigators that the kids were planning on staying the night in the mine shaft. Little were they aware of the dangers, I suppose. The parents were very distraught, so I was told. I suppose they had hoped to one day discover their kids alive. But that was not the case.

That particular shaft was blasted shut after the investigation was finished. You can no longer go in there.

--
TH

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