Touring an OLD MINE + COWBOY Lunch! | Exploring Crowsnest Pass in ALBERTA, Canada
so we are all checked in for our tour we're doing the bellevue mine tour cheers guys i picked the right thing here let me show you what we got this is basically a mountain that fell apart and destroyed the town beneath it it was called the town of frank and you can see it's been since 1903 and the nothing has grown it looks like it happened yesterday yeah it's just surreal walking here well hello hello everyone good morning good morning good morning people today we've got the team assembled we've got my dad daniel sam in the back me hello and we are going on our first little adventure here in southern alberta canada as you may already know my parents moved to this province a month ago see you later southern ontario yeah so we have a few adventures planned and today we're going to be exploring around crow's nest pass and we're going to be visiting a few different communities going into an old mine and yeah just learning a bit more about the history the mining history of this place so come along we'll have a good day i dermis okay guys so we are back in the car because today is one of the windiest days we have yet experience here in southern alberta you wouldn't be able to hear us if we were out there it's a good thing nobody brought a hat huh yes yeah i did by the way but yeah we just finished visiting the famous burmese tree which lived to be over 700 years like it's a type of pine what kind of pine is it who remembers a limber pine limber a limber pine so it's a type of pine that really thrives in this harsh windy climate that you find here in this region and yeah it lived for seven centuries until finally in the 1970s the pine needles fell to the ground and they lost the battle against time i lost the battle it stood dry like dead for two more decades until the wind toppled it over but now they've like propped it up again and there's like anchors holding on to it no this was like a landmark it was a a landmark that it was the the entrance the uh uh eastern entrance to the crow's nest pass and this three marked where it actually the past begins right so that's why it was it was famous because it was like a like a beacon there like people would uh you know know that when the tree when they reach this tree they reach the past yeah and we're talking about uh not yesterday or the day before we are talking about centuries ago yeah so in those days there were no street names or markers what would you say for orientation like yeah like uh like a marker a landmark that everyone would understand that's really of the crow's nest to go into british columbia so okay today may look like okay it's just a dead tree but if you go back in time you know a few hundred years it could have been something of real importance back then you know so okay we go to the next one we go to the next one so there you have it guys that was the most photographed tree in canada Burmis Tree Burmis Tree beautiful history what's the park please go by there over there yeah next stop we maybe drove 45 seconds it's the collieries which we're gonna we're gonna learn all about this is a new word for us a new term my oh my we are searching for a little reprieve from the wind so we can tell you a little bit more about this place but basically i learned a new word today so collieries refers to the buildings related with coal mining and there's a whole bunch of them to visit here we're actually in a provincial park and yeah you've got these historic structures left over from the mining era that you can visit also hardly anyone here there's only two other people walking around exploring the place so not very well known because we're here in the middle of summer and we've basically got the place to ourselves look at that already several people from my village here had wrote me come plenty verb so i work first on temple but i want to go underground uh that's very real man verbs i say to myself so i go underground first i take in horses and we bring out coal then taking timbers i was young it was good job then my friend joseph fez he was nearly killed when his lamp make explosion after that i worry so much cold dust in there some nights i could not sleep for coughing so i joined union maybe they will help us in there so we're learning lots what have you learned today i've learned tons so right now we're visiting the manager's house of the hamilton family and it's just fascinating it was a three level home it had hardwood floors it was fully equipped like it was absolutely spectacular when you look at the photos and now it's just in ruins but to think that such a beautiful home is now reduced to rubble like this it just shows you that even the the most fascinating structures of your time may not last into the future yeah this would have been a very very nice house for the time they even had indoor plumbing that says a lot three fireplaces so yes the manager of the coal mine lived very very well and today all that remains is basically the the outside walls like four walls that's it okay so here we are escaping the wind once again a little corner here you have to uh don't look at our hair because today is a crazy hair day yeah here we are in uh what's left of our coal mine this was called the uh colliery it was a mine that was uh operational in the uh mid to late 1800s it became very active when the railway was finished you know the one that goes all the way to british columbia so yeah this is mostly where uh the immigration from europe used to come to this area to work in these places and new immigrants right working these mines this one in particular was uh the only full own canadian mine owned totally by canadians uh finally went bankrupt and uh it's funny because up there there is a sign that it says if it is broken we can fix it and he talks about how they had to solve problems uh on on the plays they could not wait for parts to come from far away don't forget we're talking about the mid-1800s so if you needed a part to fix a machine it could have taken a month if not a year so they had to do everything here fix everything use uh inventive and genius and they they got it going and the pictures that you see here around the walls well it says it all they it says the whole story of these people that worked here it's amazing with such a rudimentary and crude machinery they could do so much but the mine really flourished in the late 1800s when the railway was built finally to british columbia through the past that railway uh you know to build the the section from calgary to vancouver which is about 600 miles they say that it took 600 lives 600 people died building that stretch of uh railway which was the most difficult to build out of the whole the canadian pacific railway line and uh in all to build the whole railway uh system is estimated that about four thousand people perished in those days and a lot of the people were coming from china they brought about a 15 000 chinese uh mostly men to come and work on the tunnels and digging and you know mid-1800s it was pretty crude technology so when they were digging the tunnels uh the explosions and stuff like that is not what it is today safety was not a concern back then life was expendable let's put it that way so yeah they built the railway and finally they were able to export the call from here to different uh centers and uh well sadly with technology and the pass of time this mine went bankrupt so this is all we have left today to show but uh it was built to take it and you can see these walls it's all the stones and mortar and uh it's it's is solid i mean it can take a punch in this construction and the proof is that it's still standing okay so we are now heading to our next stop we're gonna be driving over to the bellevue mine for our tour so sam what else did you want to tell us about this park i wanted to mention that it has my favorite price point it's free whoa and the other really nice thing it has really nice washing facilities so you can go and use the washroom and you can visit at your own pace yeah there's obviously no tour guides here so take as long as you want to kind of thoroughly explore the grounds we did just that and yeah it's a really interesting place highly recommended two thumbs up beautiful all right so we are all checked in for our tour we're doing the bellevue mine tour and in terms of prices it is 25 for adults 20 bucks if you're a senior like my dad and yeah it's gonna be i believe a one hour tour with 45 minutes spent underground in the mine okay let's look for a quieter spot guys hang on hang on we're also right by the highway so here we go in between two walls what else was i going to tell you oh the temperature when you go into the mine it's around zero to two degrees so it is very cold and you have to dress accordingly we brought winter clothes that we have in the car so we're gonna get into those now pants leggings what's your shirt i have a winter jacket i can't sit here i'm not gonna be cold for an hour that's my worst nightmare building called the temple slip down okay so we are out of the mine we finished the tour so it's time to give you a little update because you can't actually film the tour experience you know you have to come here see it for yourself but we got a few clips of just like what it looks like inside so first of all we learned there's over 240 kilometers of tunnels down there it is huge essentially we go all the way from here to calgary yes which is far yeah yeah that's a several hour drive and the mine operated from 1920 1903 1903 till 1961 yeah they removed 17 000 tons of coal and apparently there is another 70 000 tons waiting out on the ground for maybe one day yeah they used to supply the the the railroad yeah the canada pacific exactly yeah yeah and then they switched obviously to a different fuel they switched to diesel easily diesel and they didn't need any more coal and the mine just wasn't profitable anymore yeah the value of coal went down yeah and it's a type of coal that they call it number two grade so it's not the best of uh very brittle yeah so but it was uh a good experience if you have the chance to come and visit yeah don't miss it because uh very well explained yes you can really feel the conditions on how these people used to work down there like uh you feel sorry for yeah the most interesting part for me was they tried to simulate the lack of light you would have had as a co-worker yeah and i mean you basically were in the dark and the your light could go out and if that was if that happened you were expected to just stay where you were until someone discovered you not for anyone claustrophobic no way that's for sure normally and really cold down there like imagine working there every day and it feels like winter like zero degrees and you're stuck down there for your full shift before i forget that you they had the the clydesdale horses to help pull some of the carts yes yeah they could apparently pull up to what six cards was it yeah three tons of gold in each card on rails okay they were on rails so but yeah there was a nice uh stream running down the side of the mine with the more i never seen crystal clear water like that ever it was amazing no yeah it was running really heavy and and constantly and the water was just totally totally you know clear yeah i mean it felt like there was nothing running there you looked and it was hard to see the water actually yeah the overall was a fascinating tour approximately just under an hour 20 dollars for seniors and kids 25 for adults reasonably priced and um well worth it i mean it's our first time to have ever done anything like this so uh yeah i i think it's highly recommended yeah for sure it was great it's a good piece of adventure yeah and now i want to show you guys the the sculpture of the coal miner right there and i just realized it has a little bit of black because they were mining for coal yeah that's the thing when we came out of the mine i looked at it and i was like oh it all makes sense and right below it there is a commemorative plaque oh yeah people that die here on uh on a fire an explosion explosion in 1910 1910 the strange thing is that you see some names last names and they're the same like some of them with an older age like that would be the father and then the other one a younger age so that would be a son a real tragedy family members perish together yeah you know so yeah yeah so yeah that was it that was the tour and now we're going to take you to lunch yes let's go eat in the ring is a dream in my heart yeah this is just climb to the top of a mountain fly around the world all right summer boy time for beer yeah cheers so they had a few different things on tap we both decided to go for the rickard's red and the best part about it it's ice cold that's cold on a summer's day you can't get better than that and so we've decided to go for the special burgers you and your dad ordered that and basically it's it's a it's a normal burger and then it has the addition of pulled pork and then i got something really interesting called the frank slide which is named after the mountain slide they've had here and apparently that's going to have regular fries onions sweet potato fries ribs and two special ingredients at the chef's discretion so i'm pumped for that and apparently i was challenged to be able to finish this from from the server so it's going to be big we're going to eat meal hope we brought our appetites big meal for the big boy start digging again that's good stuff guys i picked the right thing here let me show you what we got a side of onion rings look at that we've got the sweet potato fries deep fried jalapenos jalapenos ribs try something try something i tried this one i'm gonna oh this is so good i've got a smoky peppery toast garlicky too very garlicky and then we also have don't choke there don't die don't die don't die on this i deep fried uh tempura and spring rolls with five different sauces yeah i ain't gonna stop it you're losing your voice i ain't gonna starve over here i'm but i'm losing my voice not available all right guys so it's kind of windy here i hope you can hear me okay but we have arrived at our next stop today which is the frank slide and i'm just gonna show you that because i have it behind my shoulder over there right there but yeah this is basically a mountain that fell apart and destroyed the town beneath it it was called the town of frank it had about 600 inhabitants and about 100 of those perished in the accident thankfully the whole town wasn't in the path of the slide so parts of it were spared but yeah now you just have this valley of giant boulders of rock like it's crazy it kind of looks like a like a lunar landscape it just it looks out of this world so we have my dad here we're struggling with the wind yeah what a struggle but this is southern alberta the wind is not helping no but uh yeah the accident happened in 1903 and there are a couple of versions about it well why did it happen one says that because coal mining was allowed to be exploited in the in the mountain there is a seam of coal running through the mountain and some people said that uh and some specialists said that that was a contributing factor of the mountain collapsing other people said no that had nothing to do with it that it was a matter of uh you know like uh hundreds of years of freezing rain and uh the rain getting into the mountain and freezing and you know like creating cracks and expanding and that was a factor why why it happened they're all debating about it i guess we'll never know and you can see it's been since 1903 and the uh nothing has grown it looks like it happened yesterday it uh it is in the same state wow it get windy up here other than opening the road and the railway track for the for the train to be able to keep on going the rest remains like the day that uh it happened so very interesting huh how uh a whole mountain like that could collapse it's amazing so aside from the lookout we just showed you you also have the frank interpretive center where you can watch a movie about the frank slide how that all unfolded and the stories of the survivors and things like that but we're not allowed to film the video um so instead we're going to show you some of the trails that you can do from this very spot so this is where we are right here super close to the border with bc croziness pass frank slide interpretive are we center close to bc we're super close yeah and then we've got a trail marker here there's a whole bunch of trails going off in different directions and you can enjoy a hike and also get to see the slide from a few different vantage points so lots to choose from we're probably only going to do part of one to give you a feel for it after that meal i don't think we'll be able to walk very very far i feel like we're in need of a siesta but yeah here we are it feels like what sam it feels pretty historic oh prehistoric like a land before time i'm waiting for the t-rex to just appear from behind a random rock and kind of bite my head off sort of like my slightly morbid huh you know the landscape really does look out of this world it's just crazy yeah it's just surreal walking here the giant sizes of the rocks and the way they're all scattered it's obviously really tragic what happened um my honest thoughts are that this this area looks prehistoric like this looks like something it looks like a different planet it really does like i've never seen a landscape like this of just rock but at the same time you really feel for what happened to the community all right guys so we are all back in the car we wrapped up a really fun day of adventuring here in southern alberta canada and this is where we're gonna say goodbye because we're heading home now we're tired okay audrey's driving driving we had a couple of brews so we don't drive we got a new designated driver here hello she only had a iced tea so yeah if you like the video don't forget to put a like subscribe subscribe your friends your family members and the channel will keep on growing and there is a lot a lot of more interesting things happening so yeah thanks thank you thank you for the promo one quick thing to say um this just shows what you can explore in your own backyard this is our new backyard we're exploring and what a fantastic day so adventure doesn't need to be in a far off corner of the world it can be nearby your house yes keep that in mind too and we have more local trips coming up around alberta all summer long we're going to be exploring so stay tuned and we'll see you soon myself
2022-08-28 21:15
