Explore an abandoned coal mine? Me? Never!
I swore I’d never explore an abandoned coal mine. A so-called ‘hard-rock’ mine gouged from solid stone, maybe.
But long abandoned coal mines with their legendary terrors of cave-ins, flood and gas—never!
But, well, sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. For me, that sometime came 14 years ago when I heard that loggers working southwest of Nanaimo had exposed a fan shaft for one of the area’s leading coal mines of the last century.
My bushwhacking companions and I already knew of, and had visited, the ruins of another fan-house in the same general area. But this one sounded more intriguing as our informants mentioned concrete cribbing and a steel ladder descending into the shaft. They said a timber cruiser had successfully descended and, without a light, could see that the shaft ran for some distance.
Well, carrots don’t come much bigger for history sleuths.
Based upon accurate directions, we quickly found our quarry, a large, ungainly and rusting mass of metal which, on examination, was indeed a fan. Originally assembled on-site like a giant erecto-kit, it lay immediately alongside the concrete shaft, which was flush with the ground and about eight feet square.
As reported, a steel ladder was attached to one wall and, in the dim light at the bottom, there appeared to be the bones of a deer. A fire had consumed the building and toppled the fan onto its side.
Vowing to return with lights and a lifeline, we carried on a mile or so to another mine reported by the same informants. This one entered the cliffside almost horizontally. Dynamited shut, erosion had since re-opened it and, once inside, you could stand up. A sizable coal dump indicated that its operators worked here for some time and the skeletal frame and wooden-spoked wheel rims of a 1920s vehicle suggested that this was a gyppo operation during the hungry ’30s.
Inerestingly, the coal, rather than being the usual matte black we were used to seeing with Wellington Seam bitumenous coal, glistened like nature’s glass, obsidian, although much softer, of course.
Two weeks later, armed with ropes and fresh batteries for our flashlights and camera, we returned to the fan-house.
Having explored many Island caves in my spelunking youth, underground doesn’t hold many terrors for me. With a life-line, four able-bodied companions to haul me up should—heaven forbid—that become necessary, and heartened by the fact that the anonymous timber cruiser had already successfully descended the ladder, I gingerly lowered myself down.
By carefully testing every rung, I made it halfway down to where the ladder was joined at a ledge and was tight against the wall, leaving little room for footholds. This proved to be the result of the ladder no longer being secured at the bottom, which caused it to begin to sway with every step and I began to feel as though I were descending the side of a ship while it was underway.
There were 42 rungs in all, each about 14 inches apart, then a four-foot drop to the floor, for a total descent of about 50 feet. Happily, the deer bones we’d sighted on our first visit proved to be twigs. Unhappily, the mine didn’t go more than 35 feet because of a massive rock-fall. The only signs of previous humanoid activity besides some rotting timbers were several styrofoam coffee cups.
Just as well or I might have been tempted to push my luck.
After researching and exploring the Island’s abandoned coal fields since I was a teen, the opportunity to enter a Dunsmuir shaft before it could be bulldozed or dynamited shut as a safety measure, was more than I could resist.
I know, I know, I should have known better. A retired geologist later warned me about ‘dead air’ in mines—pockets without oxygen.
A single breath and you pass out—for keeps!
I was reminded of all this by a recent Associated Press article on the growing popularity of exploring abandoned mines in the U.S.
To what should be no one’s surprise, the number of related accidents and injuries has grown accordingly. To the point that the state of Utah is actively working to seal 10,000 abandoned mines with cinder blocks and metal grates.
Years ago, in the Harewood district of Nanaimo, two brothers and their dog got lost while exploring the abandoned Portal Mine. They couldn’t find their way out and it was years before another group of boys, who used string to mark their way in, found their remains.
The contractor who was commissioned by the RCMP to belatedly seal the entrance told me that his instructions were to encase the opening with cement. First, he was to get ready to pour. But before doing so, he was to wait 24 hours—just in case somebody or an animal was inside.
Today, the moss has so camouflaged the concrete seal that you can mistake it as being just part of the rockface.
This tragedy sparked the provincial government into a frenzy of searching out and sealing off other abandoned portals with bulldozers and dynamite. This was messy but effective, but also, in some cases, destroyed some of the last vestiges of Vancouver Island’s coal mining history. As a historical purist (as a Times-Colonist editorial writer once accused me of being), I couldn’t help but regret these losses although I accepted the logic.
In more recent years, another Exension shaft, this one in the Spruston Road area, opened up through erosion and became a target of adventurers who were able to access it with nothing but a short rope.
How far in it went, I don’t know, as, this time, I stayed out!
I often think of those lost brothers when I’m poking about in coal country. Knowing what happened to them didn’t stop me from entering not one, but two, abandoned mines in the Extension area when the opportunity afforded.
But I think it’s time to rest on my laurels.
