Tumbler Ridge is fertile ground for dinosaur hunters
Credit to Author: Dave Pottinger| Date: Mon, 07 Oct 2019 18:25:38 +0000
I had heard of Tumbler Ridge but had no real idea where it was, other than “up north.” After paying my deposit for a group nature “camp,” I thought I had better check a road map to see where I was going. Yikes! It was a fifteen hour drive north of Vancouver. But it was worth it!
Tumbler Ridge is located in the northern Rocky Mountains about 1200 km from Vancouver – about 92 km south of Chetwynd and about 117 km south-west of Dawson Creek.
The road from Chetwynd to Tumbler Ridge is a beautifully-paved scenic drive with next-to-no traffic. It was established in the early 1980’s for coal mining in the area and at that time there were four companies mining there, but that has changed – only Conuma Coal is operational now with three mines open. (The mining history of the area and of the electric rail line is nicely set out in a cute caboose museum.)
Having been a planned community, it has a well-laid out townsite complete with a town hall for the mayor and council, a well-stocked visitors’ centre, a medical clinic, a community centre with a pool, arena and curling rink, and the district seems to have all the necessities you might ever need all in the middle of beautiful forested mountains!
We were all interested in hiking, botany, birding – anything to do with nature. It was such a treat to read about and experience some of the hiking trails in the area. The Mount Spieker hike was my kind of hike – you can leave your car at the end of a well-maintained gravel road (make sure your tires are in good shape) then you hike up an old coal exploration trail banked by beds of colourful wildflowers to an alpine ridge and a “million-dollar” 360 degree view. You can continue on along the ridge or just drink in the magnificent scenery and clean air from there.
On another day we took a chartered-boat ride up the Murray River to the Kinuseo Falls – a falls higher than Niagara Falls – and in a pristine setting. We enjoyed the barbequed-beef luncheon cooked by our boat driver while marvelling at the scenic beauty. There are forty waterfalls in this area, some are quite easily accessible.
The forest around Kinuseo Falls.
The extraordinary highlight of this trip however was our journey back in time to see 93 million-year-old dinosaur footprints.
It was eerie to see the three toed footprints of a theropod and dinosaur skin impressions in the stone by a river. It is no surprise that this area was designated a UNESCO Global Geopark in 2014, one of three such parks in Canada.
In town we had an informative tour of the Dinosaur Discovery Gallery with well-laid out displays of dinosaur footprints and full scale paleontological exhibits.
The area around Tumbler Ridge is prime for fossil finding.
We also had a very special tour of the backroom by one of the local doctors (whose sons were the first discoverers of dinosaur footprints in Flatbed Creek rapids in 2000) to see workstations for new dinosaur finds. Apparently thousands more footprints have been discovered including the only known tyrannosaur trackways in the world.
And on two evenings, one of our colleagues, a geologist, gave us illustrated presentations on the topic of fossils, a topic that I and others knew next to nothing about but we learned a lot.
We began slowing down our hiking pace during the days to turn over stones to looks for fossil imprints of leaves and other creatures. And we found some! Apparently this area was between an ancient ocean and mountains.
During our five day visit here, the hospitality from all in the community was second to none – personal service at our motel, very knowledgeable visitor centre workers, help to fix a flat tire, and very homey friendly locals. We were sorry to leave as there was so much more to explore.