Akimina, not No.1 but......... Traditional Cache
Akimina, not No.1 but.........
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(micro)
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Parking and picnic tables are located near to the Fernie Visitor's Centre and Chamber of Commerce building.
The cache is somewhat micro in size, not hidden in/on a tree or on the ground. It is however, hidden above the knees.
There is room in the cache for just the log, you must bring your own writing stick.
The following description is taken from the Fernie Information Website.
The blackened wooden derrick standing tall on the grounds of the tourist information kiosk is an accurate reconstruction of a cable tool oil rig and is based on the remains of the Akamina No.2 which worked in the Flathead River valley to the east of here in the years prior to W.W.I. The tools and iron work scattered around the tower’s feet were all collected from several well sites which dot the Flathead and the Waterton area in Alberta.
The Flathead and Waterton areas are geologically associated, and complex. Tectonic forces have shoved Precambrian rock eastward, over-riding later Pæleozoic and Mesozoic strata along what is called the “Lewis ovethrust.” Forced up from reservoirs in the Paleozoic deep in the earth’s crust, petroleum seeps out through the Precambrian rock and pools in places on the surface of the Flathead’s valley. Long known and used by the Natives as a water-proofing and, particularly a clear amber deposit in the Sage Creek valley, as a medicine, this crude oil was sought out in late August of 1891 by the Dominion geological surveyor, Dr. Alfred Richard Cecil Selwyn. His optimistic report was the reason that Baker, Fernie and their associates reincorporated their Crow’s Nest Coal and Mineral Company as the British Columbia Coal, Petroleum and Mineral Company Limited in 1893. With their energies apparently absorbed by their coal interests, the associates seem to have made no move to develop Flathead oil deposits.
In 1901, John Lineham, A.P. (Allan) Patrick, and Geo. Leeson formed the Rocky Mountain Development Company and began drilling their Discovery No.1 well on a likely prospect near Waterton Lake in the very south-western corner of Alberta. Probably hearing of this play, that October, R.G. Leckie, an mechanical engineer from Vancouver, and one Hugh Baker staked about 25 square miles of oil-bearing rock in the Flathead’s valley. Rocky Mountain Development struck petroleum in September of 1902, the well briefly running some 300 barrels per day, considered a fair flow at the time. This find heightened interest in the Flathead, especially after the B.C. Provincial Mineralogist, W.F. Robertson, published a detailed essay in the Annual Report of the Minister of Mines for 1903 on the potential of the Flathead valley oil show, centering his attention on the “Big Oil Spring” and its dark green flow. Doubtless Robertson’s report, and finds of oil in the adjacent territory in Montana, drew the owners of the Akamina No.2 over the Divide and into the Flathead. Their efforts, unfortunately, went unrewarded: if there was oil in the Flathead, it eluded them. A.P. Patrick himself staked a couple of claims along the Boundary, but found them so ultimately disappointing that he never paid the fees to register them.
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