Well I certainly have put in a lot of hiking time this weekend, really making up for a winter of sluggsville. I realy must commend the Rossland Trails Society and Teck Cominco for all the "new" great trails we have in the area, particularly those on Red Mountain. Cominco owns most of the property on Red Mountain and for years has put up fences and warning signs trying to keep people off the old mining trails and roads.

They didn't do this to be mean, but because the mountain was mined for gold between 1890 and 1929 during which it produced $165 million in gold (in historic dollars not present currency). There's still gold there too! During the depression they pulled an additional $1million dollars out of Red just by reprocessing the tailings!. All that mining activity has left certain faces of Red completely pockmarked with mine shafts. There are numerous places where if you step in the wrong place you might have a cave-in and well that's the last anyone would ever see of you as some of those shafts are a thousand feet or more deep. All of the main shafts have concrete caps on them but there are hundreds of exploratory shafts that don't.

For quite a few years people have been marking trails through there and making certain that they were safe. These trails are a mountain biker's heaven and one of the reasons Rossland is becoming a serious all season resort destination. In the past couple of years Cominco decided to get involved and help build the trails and put up historical markers.

Yesterday I started off just to do my usual 1 hour hike around "Larry's Loop" which has a long loop around the Rossland resevoir with one side being flat and the other going through the forest in a windy root bound trail that gains about 200 feet of altitude in a short stretch then levels off a bit before making a steep decent again. I hadn't been on "Larry's" for about 2 years so I was pleasantly surprised on some earlier walks to find some new marked trails branching off from it. I decided yesterday to check out one called Miners. That was an excellent decision!

Miners is a great trail, not only do you quickly gain a bunch more altitude but the trail winds its way through most of the major mine sites. Althoiught there are no buildings left there is still lots of evidence such as tailing piles, mine cars, old timber frames etc.. Wherever the trail went past the site of a main shaft Cominco along with the Rossland Historical Society Museum and the Trails for Rossland Society have mounted information signs with historical photographs. The signs are mounted as close as possible to where the photos were originally taken making it possible to see how much things have changed in the last 70 years. One treat was right near where a mine foreman's house used to be there were 3 cherry trees and an apple tree growing wild. The apple tree and one cherry tree look very ancient, the other two cherry trees are obviously offspring of the original. A nice treat for the bears :-) Another interesting site and also a reminder of how dangerous going off the trails could be is the main shaft at the old Josie mine site. It was capped by concrete along time ago but obviously there is still some kind of opening. Coming down a cliff face into the pit is a fast flowing stream. Although there is no obvious place for the water to go the pool is only about 10 feet across and a foot deep, it is all disappearing into the mountain through the shaft somehow.

Miners is a fascinating trail to walk and a good workout as well. It added a full hour onto my usual 1 hour but I think I'm going to make it my standrad walk most days. I really pushed myself pretty hard on Staurday and just as I was getting home I ran into Lora and Brian heading off on a walk up to KC Ridge. Brian asked if I wanted to join them and foolishly i agreed. KC Ridge from where we live is all uphill but once you get there is worth it as you get a panoramic view of upper Rossland (see photo likned above) and also of Trail and Warfield 3000 ft below you from another side of the ridge. I almost didn't make it to the top I was so tired :-) All told on Saturday I did over 3 hours of hard paced hiking. Today I did Miners again with Brian and Lora along this time. Grerat hike. I wish I had a digital camera.

Well if I keep this up i might be able to lose the weight I want to this summer and finally get back into shape. :-)