The Greenhill Mines

Located in the Crowsnest Pass, the Greenhill mine is a place that first grabbed my attention several years ago when I was passing by on a motorcycle trip. The giant tipple is visible from the highway and stands proudly, overlooking the town of Blairmore.

The Greenhill Mine was first opened for operation in 1913, and had peak production in 1946, employing 500-600 men. The mine closed in 1958.

While on a large exploration trip with my friends Bobby and Jeremy, we stopped here on the second day. It was a simple entry with only one fence to hop. The structure was solid steel and concrete with the beginning sections made of wood, that had now partially collapsed. Walking through the rafters of the collapsed roof, we made our way inside the tipple. The inside was amazing with thus far, the coolest coal car track system I have ever seen. It was one of those buildings that you had to first explore and then later take the camera through because it was too exciting to just simply begin photographing. It was the kind of place that you walk through and can't help but imagine what it was like in its heyday.

The top level had a main track leading into a car tipper, which inverted the coal cars one at a time and dumped the coal below, where it would be sorted and processed. After the car was empty, it was ejected from the tipper and rolled down a slope either to the left of right, up and down a return ramp, and then to a towing conveyor that pulled the cart back to the top again so it could be returned to the mine.

The structure was quite old and already had many signs of decay. You had to be careful walking around on the wooden boards near the beginning and sides of the structure. Much of the wood was rotting. On my second visit to the structure I saw an owl take flight after noticing me. The most startling thing about the owl flying away was that where it was perched, the parallel wooden railway supports, were crumbling merely from the owl taking flight. Not exactly the best place to climb for that 'perfect shot.'

The giant tipple had enough goodies inside it to keep a photographer busy for hours, but the rest of the property also had its share of fascinating buildings. The old shower house was also a storage building for core samples. Literally tons of core samples were all staked on top of each other, filling a room about the size of a community hall. The building was cold, moist and had water dripping from its roof and running in small rivers around the rows and rows of stacked core sample boxes. Beautiful. The building was unlike any place I have been before. It was interesting to be inside a dead-still building with nothing but tiny creeks of water dripping and flowing. It seemed a prime example of something I have grown to learn with each adventure. Over time, nature always wins. The persistence of wind, water and sun can bring any building to its knees.

Walking around the property, there were random small buildings everywhere. A lot of them had great signs of vandalism and many were so scrapped and destroyed that they were neither recognizable in purpose, or worthy of a picture. I would have to say the buildings most worth seeing are the tipple, the wash house and the mine entrances. Exploring any of the other buildings went something like this... "What's in there? (peek inside) ...Huh. (leave)." Of course there were a few slight exceptions, as some of the buildings had hidden gems.

The mine entrances had covered roofs that ran about 1000' along where the coal car tracks used to go in and out. The roof had hundreds of holes through it that almost felt like a disco when you walked through, because of the sunlight spilling into each hole and casting tiny dots of light over your body. The floor inside the entrance shelters had a small creek flowing through it that's source was the mine entrance. Water seemed to be a persistent theme in most of the buildings.

The Greenhill mine is a site that I wouldn't consider 'risky' to explore. It obviously had it's physical risks like collapsed roofs and exposed sharp things, but no-one seemed to care that we were there. A curious photographer once approached the main building while we were inside, getting some exterior pictures but not entering. There were also some teenagers shooting off pellet guns near the mine entrance, who quickly packed up and left as we came by. Aside from that, nothing gave us the notion of consequence for being there. Signs warning against trespassing were broken or paintballed and the drive up to the site was extremely worn from people being there.

A pair of steel-toed boots, a camera and a friendly smile will keep you safe from almost every hazard you should encounter... ...unless you're afraid of getting dirty ...and abandoned places ...and owls.

Caution Radiation!

I was looking at the radar station at CYYC (Calgary International) one day while driving home from the airport and was intrigued by the structure. Looking online, I was curious to see what the inside of a primary radar station looked like. Some Google searches led me to a random site dedicated to the Pinetree Line, a series of military radar stations that were set up across North America to give early warning of a missile attack during the Cold War. The radar station is one of the only ones still standing and is, I believe, the most preserved one (mostly because it's truly in the middle of nowhere).

The drive was long and boring. Three hours across open prairies. When I first saw the massive structure on the horizon, I didn't realise it was still 30km away. haha. I drove up to the front gate and parked. The fences were guarded by razor wire, but the gate was quite plain and was bent up enough to allow me to squeeze through it.

Stepping in it for the first time, I noticed that it was already quite trashed on the lower level. I was already worried that the inside of the dome would look like crap from loads of graffiti. Luckily, there was nothing more than some smashed boards. The first floor gave me a startle as I came within close proximity to an owl. I soon noticed that there was absolutely nothing inside the room. Everything cool that likely used to be inside was stripped out. No mapping tables, no screens or even machines that go 'Bing!' were inside. I guess it makes sense because it was a military building.

The second floor was similar to the first; open, bare and kind of disappointing. I made my way of a crazy ladder which led through a foot of concrete flooring and into the radar dome. The inside of the dome was staggeringly huge. Every step I made was followed by a crazy echo from the dome walls. The radar was missing its dish, but was still really big. Again, not a whole lot of stuff inside the room, but it was still amazing to look at. The dish (or.. what's left of it) was mounted on a rotating base that you could actually move by hand. This proved handy for repositioning the radar during pictures.

I poked around during the day, took some photos and later went into the nearby town to have a quick meal and wait for it to get dark. The town's only restaurant looks like a copy of Corner Gas. A gas station-restaurant that served Chinese-Western food. They make a great burger, although the place was kind of odd because there were nearly a dozen cats wandering around outside the gas pumps (seriously).

Night came slowly and I returned to the radar station for some classic light-painting. After a few hours and many pictures, I left. I felt a great deal of accomplishment as I drove away. Not only did I know what the inside of a radar dome looked like. I was in one.