Planning a Trip, Need Information:

[CalgaryJeeping]

Greetings from Alberta,

While out searching the net looking for information on close to home trails, for a 12 day trip we are planning next Year (Late Spring/Early Summer) with some friends from Calgary, I came across this awesome website.

The thing that caught my eye on this site and was the ultimate reason for me joining, were the stories in the Trail Repots section; mainly the ones about exploring old mines & Jeep trails…

So here I am in search of information for our planned trip……...

I'd like to incorporate a little bit of everything into this 2 week long trip… Some Wheeling, Camping, fishing & Exploration of abandoned mines, caves in the BC area. Not really concerned about how far we have to drive, but ferry's may be a problem with my rig from what I have read.

Currently I have some information about mines in Hedley British Columbia (Nickel Plate, Moscot Mines & French Mines, but not enough to plan a trip with yet, and the people (Jeepers) I plan on going with know about as much of BC as I do. Which is very limited.

While trying to register here on the site, I started talking to the site Administrator (Great Guy!), and he told me kootneycat dose some wild exploring trips…. Well this guy dose not lie, after looking at kootneycat's yahoo album I was left speechless, and wanting to see with my own eyes some of these interesting places!!!


Kootneycat are you out there?

Would you be willing to give me some more details about these mind blowing Mines/Caves you have explored and have the pictures of?

I would really appreciate any information you could offer about the area & location of the mines in your "Beaton Arm Aug21 2004" album.

Also are there any good wheeling trails in this area to break in my Soon-to-be semi-finished rig?

Anyone else feel free to chime in and list some Mines/Caves or Jeep trails you think Jeepers from out of province would like to visit and explore.

Thanks,
Andrew

[lars]

Andrew, how far west would you be willing to come, and roughly when would you be making this trip?

...lars

[CalgaryJeeping]

I just figured out how to work the forums, and reset the browser to allow me to view older post. So I have finally been able to view some of the older posts. And have dug up a lot of information about the Kootenays thanks to some members here.

Andrew, how far west would you be willing to come, and roughly when would you be making this trip?
...lars

Well we are still undecided as to where we are going, but really distance isn't much of a concern as long as there is some fun at the end of the road.

Time of our trip is still undecided since it depends on where our group is going to head. We were planning late May early June but we may wait till late July since some of the places would be unreachable till then form what I have read.

What kind of interesting mines/caves do you have out on the far west to explore?

After having figured out how to work the forums, I was able to view all the old post from members here, about the Kootenays. And now the group and myself think we would have a lot of fun exploring the Kootenay area. I'm sure we could find lots to explore over the 12 days there. Some of the mines Kootenaycat has posted are very interesting, and I'm sure some of the old road/trails to the mines would be fun to play on with the Jeeps.

Any information about mines or Caves in the Kootenays would be greatly appreciated or even Ghost Towns...

[lars]

Andrew, I've re-indexed all the messages so I'd recommend, just in case, that you try doing a search one more time. You see, after I upgraded the board software, I discovered that the search engine only seemed to be searching messages from a few days ago. So I spent a few hours rebuilding all the search indices and now the search engine is retrieving data from ALL posts, ever since the beginning of this board.

If you did your searching on Friday afternoon or before, this information isn't applicable to you since you would've been using the older software with the older, complete search indices.

...lars

[CalgaryJeeping]

Andrew, I've re-indexed all the messages so I'd recommend, just in case, that you try doing a search one more time. You see, after I upgraded the board software, I discovered that the search engine only seemed to be searching messages from a few days ago. So I spent a few hours rebuilding all the search indices and now the search engine is retrieving data from ALL posts, ever since the beginning of this board.

Thanks you very much lars, you have been very helpful . I have been busy following up on all the leads I have acquired now that you have rebuilt the search engine to allow searches from the beginning of the board. I'm off to a good start, and have lots of leads I have found here that I need to follow up on.

Well we have our rough route planned out, went out the other day and grabbed a few copies of the "Backroad Mapbook" Series and have been spending a lot of time, studying them. Have been able to locate the general area of a few of the mines that were mentioned here on this site.

Since this trip will be mainly exploring of old mines, I thought what better way to knock off the trip, than checking out some mines/towns by the Alberta/BC border. Along the 940 Forestry Trunk there appears to be 6 abandoned mines that appear to be relatively close and on nearby roads in the close proximity of Coleman. We plan to make a leisurely trip down the 940 Forestry Trunk, and try to locate these 6 mines that are shown on the map. We will also take a short side trip to visit the information site at "Frank Slide", and view the devastation & destruction left when turtle mountain came crashing down on the Town of Frank on April 29, 1903.

From here we will make our way down the #3 towards Fernie and eventually end up in the Salmo area where we will spend a week & a half exploring the surrounding towns & area. The Salmo area seems to be covered with old mines. This is where our group will be spending a majority of our time. Trying to locate some of the mines kootenaykat has talked about & photographed will be part of the fun. From the looks of it, we will have no shortage of things to search for and explore on this trip.

[kootenaycat1]

Hi Andrew, I haven't been on here for a little while, so didn't notice this post 'til now!

Have you checked out the BC government's website on all the mines? Great site once you get the hang of it. Lots of info on all the old abondoned mines all over BC.

http://webmap.em.gov.bc.ca/mapplace/minpot/ex_assist.cfm

Just zoom into the West Kootenays general area, then check off the items you want to view from the list on the left. Start with communities and MINFILE finder, then go down to roads and rivers to make the map easier to read. The closer you zoom in, the better the quality gets (very defined old roads, creeks, etc need to be checked off after you zoom in to around 1:20K level). Then double click on a particular mine to get the latitude/longitude, production reports along with history of the mine including previous owners and details like how far each adit went in. I lose track of time on that site very easily!

Drop me an email if you want some more info on any of the mines/trails in my area. And check out the forum on funinbc.com for more pics of our trips, we try to get out every weekend on the quads, then hit the sleds once the snow flys!

Cheers,
Kevin

rks442@hotmail.com

[alpestrine]

YEP! MINFILE and be sure to check out ARIS reports they give even more infomation on the area. If you have google earth there is even plug ins for it. Mapplace will have areial rasters and it will give you a rough idea of what to expect as far as ground cover washouts and basic terrain but they are not recent. Check the dates on them. Hundreds of sites to explore in Kootneys and some in the west but public access is at times a s.o.b. due to private land ownership and crown leases etc.. And yes when you get on minfile and mapplace you tend to spend a lot of time on it.

[Lone Ranger]

It mentions that I need an additional plug-in to view the site but list no suitable plug-ins. You tech guys know which ones are needed? Thanks

[kootenaycat1]

It mentions that I need an additional plug-in to view the site but list no suitable plug-ins. You tech guys know which ones are needed? Thanks


I had that once when I bought me new computer, I think I had to download a "flashplayer" program. Adobe Shockwave rings a bell. Can't remember what fixed it, will try to find out.

[lars]

It mentions that I need an additional plug-in to view the site but list no suitable plug-ins. You tech guys know which ones are needed? Thanks

Matt, you need Autodesk Mapguide. You can download it from here:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=5303526

Any of the Windows versions should work. You might find the ActiveX version to be simpler since it doesn't require a Java Runtime Environment to be installed on your machine.

...lars