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Mine Exploring at Mt McKinnonRevelstoke areaAugust 21/04 Written and photographed by Kootenaycat On the August 21 weekend, we went to Trout Lake, south-east of Revelstoke, and explored some old mines. The area we rode was up the Fish (Incomappleau) River. We rode to the base of Mt McKinnon (approx. 9000' elevation), and checked out the old Teddy Glacier Mine (7600' elevation). The trip up was on an old pack trail through alders so thick I could just make out the trail in front of the quad. We rode through creek crossings, up narrow switchbacks and rockslides, finally emerging above the trees to a barren, rockstrewn area just below an icefield. The mine entrance was still about 75% covered by snow, so we had to shovel a bit before we could go in. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough air movement to make it safe, so we just explored in a short ways. We found several cases of ketchup dating back to 1932, and the bottles still had the lables intact! There was also an ore cart along with some cases of canned goods and a case with what looked like HP sauce. 
After exploring the adit, we did some hiking around the hillside above the mine, and walked for a bit across the edge of the icefields until I saw the first of many crevasses! It was only about 8' deep, but if you slipped in, there was no way out without help. Finally we decided to make our way down the narrow trail to the valley bottom. We had a couple of mishaps with one of the inexperienced riders. He was riding over an off-camber part of the trail when his quad went up on two wheels; it would have tumbled several hundred feet to the bottom of a rockslide if he hadn't stepped off in time! Shortly after that, one of his quad box straps came undone, and while traversing another off camber slide, his box flung off the rack only to be held on by one rubber bungie cord! I could just picture the box cartwheeling down the slope, spilling it's contents if the existing cord had broke! 
Safely at the bottom, we explored the old townsite of Camborne and checked out what we thought was another old mine. It turns out that this adit was used just to transport ore to the mill. The ore would come off the tram which ended about 300' above the mill, dump down the vertical shaft, then workers would carry the ore by cart out the adit and into the ore mill at the townsite. 
The next day we awoke to a downpour which had continued through the night. We put on the raingear and ventured out anyways, checking out a few more old mines above Camborne, as well as an old ore mill complete with two three-stamp mills and a large pelton wheel which was laying in the creek. 
Shortly above the mill, the trail crossed a creek, which was raging from all the rain, so we decided not to attempt a crossing. Last year we had continued on to the top of this trail and found lots of abandoned equipment, ore carts, and few adits which we wanted to check out this year. It will have to wait until next year now. 
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