Day 30, Squamish

2 nights of vacay left. Sigh.

Gorgeous day in Squamish today but it started off needing the heat on this morning. the rains yesterday really cooled things off and they need the rain so bad, fire potential is rated at extremes up here. The forests are bone dry.

Let’s start with yesterday. Had awesome downpours for most of the morning and afternoon yesterday. Kellan and I had booked a tour 15 minutes south on 99 at Britannia Beach to tour the massive Britannia Copper Mine. The perfect thing to do on a rainy day.

Tyler, Eme and I had toured this on a trip up to Whistler when I was pregnant with Kellan. She was so much smaller then and we could carry her up the many stairs to get to the train ride into the mine entrance. Not so much at 108lbs. It’s one of the first things we’ve encountered over the last 4 weeks up in Canada that’s been partially non accessible. It’s okay, they do many loud demonstrations of old equipment that she would hate anyway.

Okay, this mine is AWESOME. It shut down 1 November 1974 after running since 1904. I can’t imagine working up here in the dark, wild wilderness for those many decades before electricity powered everything. Winters here are no joke and being right on Howe Sound (which goes into the Pacific Ocean) has got to add an extra layer of chilly winds during winter.

Plenty of trees to burn and build though.

This mine is one of the worlds only gravity fed mines. It’s ingenious. Rocks with cooper were blasted and hand hauled out in mine carts on top of the hillside. Each level of the processing mill was built, stair-stepped, into the mountainside. In the photos you’ll see the actual granite sides of the mountainside were on the mill. It’s so cool and massive.

The blue is copper in the granite oxidizing.

Each row of windows behind in the big white building was another processing level for the rocks to get the copper out.

View of Howe Sound across the street from the mining campus. The little red building in front was the Acetyl shed. Acetylene welders may be familiar sounding tools but the miners graduated from candles inside the mines to acetyl head lamps. Nothing like an open flame in a mine.

Little known fact about acetyl is that it has an airborne sedative effect so it has to be worked with in an open air setting otherwise the workers would fall asleep on the job, literally. A little acetyl mixed with a tiny bit of water plus a flame to start the reaction would allow the headlamp flame to burn for around 4 hours. They were outlawed after a (shocker) coal mine explosion, locally, but since the new tech was a huge 10 gauge cord thickness wired headlamp with an 8lb ‘hip worn’ battery pack, many of the miners said to hell with that and continued to use the acetylene headlamps for decades after.

Anyway, the process… First the rock was hand drilled by tapping the bit with a hammer. My elbows hurt just thinking about 8 hours of that for years on end.

Then technology came blazing in with some awful 300lb tripod dry drill death tool that often tipped over on the 4-6 miners handling it. If that didn’t maime or kill you the fine silca dust in your lungs would.

Next came something called a jack-leg. A revolutionary, lightweight 100lb, one anchor ‘leg’ machine that was a wet, air driven drill. So, smaller injury potential and no dust because the water created mud with the dust.

Jack leg. The ‘leg’ is the left part, it wedged against the tunnel. The drill, in this photo, in the right rod in the ground. The drill bit was hollow for the water the flow through it.

They drilled holes to get core samples to follow the copper. Telltale signs of copper in granite is chalcopyrite – shiny gold looking sparkles.

Shove dynamite in the holes that had the good core samples taken from and blast with dynamite. Manually the workers had to clear the ‘muck’. Eventually someone invented a little mechanical mine cart shoveler to clear it out. Holy cow is it LOUD. These guys must have lost their hearing early in their youth with all the noise and no ear protection.

Then off it went to the processing mill to crush the rocks to get the copper, gold and other things out.

Thousands of core samples acted with proof of profits and credibility to investors.

This chain driven cart inclinator brought tools (and I’m sure some lunches) to workers on all levels of the mill. 367 stairs follow it to the right.

We are certain this truck post dates the mine closing in 1975 by a few decades. But it’s a cool bit of roadside advertising for the mine.

Mountainside rock on the right. Kellan is walking over top of one of the three huge vats that the crushed fine rock powder was ‘boiled’ in with pine oil. Apparently copper is lighter than pine oil (and there’s an endless supply of pine trees here) so it floated to the top and was scraped off. it must have smelled good.

Control central

Mine train

5km higher up the bill from the Mill, was a settlement where 200 families resided called the Mt. Sheer Townsite. It had restaurants, a hotel, a community swimming pool, sounded really cool. It’s abandoned for decades and Kellan and I are dying to checking out but it’s not accessible (so they say)…. If we were staying here longer we’d find a way, I LOVE stuff like that. Can you imagine all the cool artifacts you’d find up there?

After the mine tour Kellan and I stopped in town for lunch. You guessed it, Asian food. Japanese udon and bubble teas to be specific. I may never need to go home although I would miss our Mexican food around Seattle. dood, in general, all throughout Alberta and British Columbia has an extra zing to it, they clearly like some heat in all their foods and sauces. I overheard a retired couple ordering food at our last campground and she was saying ‘don’t worry I just bought some more Tums’.

We also went bike apparel shopping for him at a huge bike store called Corsa. All these shops have super friendly shop dogs, love places like that.

Rainy afternoon and e-bikes get the umbrella treatment.

Eme and Bella hanging in the rain. The cat actually watched the rain for some time up there.

We thought of heading to a movie theater but there’s none, not even in Whistler, which is just a 40 minute drive back north. Nearest is Vancouver and I’m not ready for a city just yet. it’ll give us something to catch up on when we get back into town and an AC escape as well.

The rains do all stopped and it smelled amazing here in the forests despite the frequently intermittent toking sessions next door. Honestly, I was hoping it would help my knee, secondarily but so far, no.

The boys headed out on the trails soon after.

Cool mushrooms on a log on the trail.

Kellan was desperate to show me ‘the coolest store – ever’ down the road. He wasn’t wrong. If you haven’t been to a Canadian Tire, you haven’t lived yet. Picture Fred Meyer without any food plus Les Schwab Tires. You can get your new tires, dog food, hunting knives and bed sheets all under the same roof.

As for today, sigh. We have 2 nights left here and on vacation. We’re only 3.5 hours north of home – plus border crossing. So on Thursday when we pull out (when Tyler expertly backs out of an entire campground) it’ll be an easy 1/2 day drive.

The truck has been acting up, some error about voltage being off to the turbo charger in the truck.

We haven’t had many road problems this trip in the trailer or truck, as long as this one stays a secondary problem we’ll be fine getting home to address it there. compared to last years 7 days = 7 medium sized issues to fix – this trip has been easy. The bugs have also been really manageable. Jasper/Hinton and Banff were the only summery bug areas. Could be because it’s normally consistently windy on this side of BC through the mountains?

The sun shines down beautifully today. Tyler and Kellan did lots of bike maintenance this morning then headed out to put sticky shoes and chalked hands on this amazing granite rock. Kellan is and always has been a natural climber. Unlike Garden of the Gods last summer where many hand and foot holds are clearly defined – the granite is usually more of a ‘see if you can stick’ on tiny features.

As with the biking trail ratings, climbing is seriously true rated stuff. A 5.7 outside climb here could easily be a 5.8 gun climb. It’s important to not overestimate your skills out here with either sport.

Tomorrow should be more of today. We’ll head out of here late morning on Thursday. With any luck, that is, otherwise I’ll send you our new address. 😁