Access Information
The best way I've found to get to the site is to park at the parking coordinates, walk along the old road, then go uphill at the trailhead waypoint (N48 30.791 W123 29.907). From here, continue uphill directly toward the cache coordinates. Be careful around the spoil piles (at the upper mine and down the hill below the lower mine), because there are a lot of loose rocks and footing is somewhat treacherous.
History
The history of copper mining on the south island started in 1863 when Captain Jeremiah Nagle discovered copper in what is now East Sooke Park. Between 1887 and 1902, there was a flurry of copper mining in the Skirt Mountain area (Bear Mountain). The Ralph Mining Company dug 600 metres of shafts in the west side of Skirt Mountain, but discovered the copper was contaminated with magnetic iron oxide and gave up.
Around this same time, some enterprising individuals attempted to find other deposits nearby in the Highlands. Not much was ever found, but some of the exploratory mine shafts still exist. There are two excavations still visible near the cache location:
- The upper mine (N48 30.738 W123 29.848) - This vertical mine shaft doesn't seem to have been dug very deep, so the miners must have quickly realized that there either wasn't anything there to mine, or what they did find just wasn't worth mining. The material that was removed is piled in a very obvious spoil pile directly in front of the shaft. When I was there, it was partially filled with water, so I couldn't determine its exact depth or how accessible it may or may not be.
- The lower mine (N48 30.761 W123 29.857) - This excavation is a nearly horizontal mine entrance, called an adit. It goes down at an angle for about 40 feet, and is easily large enough for you to get into. A drill hole on the back wall indicates the method used for excavation was a combination of drilling with a hand-steel and blasting with black powder. One miner would hold the steel rod in place while another would hammer it with a sledgehammer. A series of 1 to 2 inch holes would be drilled, then filled with black powder and detonated to blast out a chunk of rock. The pile of waste rock from this excavation is about 50m downhill.
UPDATE July 2025: Some rock and dirt has collapsed from the left side of the entrance, and the adit is now blocked about 15 feet in. You can no longer reach the end of the shaft unless someone clears out the debris.
- Another shallow cavern is located about 10m east of the lower mine, but I can't be sure whether this is natural or man-made.
If you venture into the lower mine, you'll likely see some cave crickets (of the family Rhaphidophoridae). These large, brown, long-legged insects are not actually true crickets, but a close relative under the order Orthoptera, which also includes grasshoppers and locusts. They live in cool, damp areas, and are commonly found in caves, but can also be found in hollow trees and under rocks. Since they tend to live in dark habitats, their extremely long antennae can be used to feel their way around.
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