Sparwood Mine Tours

Useful Information

Location:	141b Aspen Drive, PO Box 1675, Sparwood, British Columbia V0B 2G0. (49.730993, -114.885436)
Open:	Sparwood Museum: MAY to SEP daily 10-18. SEP to MAY Tue-Fri 10-16, Sat, Sun 12-16. Greenhills open pit mine: JUL Sun 11. Fording River Operations: AUG Sun 11. [2026]
Fee:	Sparwood Museum: unknown. Greenhills open pit mine: free. Fording River Operations: free. [2026]
Classification:	Coal Mine Open Cast Mining
Light:	n/a
Dimension:
Guided tours:
Photography:
Accessibility:
Bibliography:	Willem Langenberg (2021): Coal Geology of the Crowsnest Pass, . pdf
Address:	Sparwood Chamber of Commerce, 141a Aspen Dr, Po Box 1448, Sparwood, British Columbia V0B 2G0, Tel: +1-250-425-2423. Sparwood Museum, 141b Aspen Drive, PO Box 1675, Sparwood, British Columbia V0B 2G0, Tel: +1-250-425-0560. E-mail: Elkford Visitor Centre, 750 Fording Dr, Elkford, British Columbia V0B 1H0, Tel: +1-855-877-9453. E-mail:
As far as we know this information was accurate when it was published (see years in brackets), but may have changed since then. Please check rates and details directly with the companies in question if you need more recent info.

History

late 1800	begin of underground coal mining.
1969	sSurface mining at the current Elkview location begins.

Geology

During the Jurassic Period about 150 Ma ago, there were swamps which created thick layers of carbonate rich peat, which were then covered by sand and mud. These sediments were buried beneath younger sediments and exposed to higher temperatures and pressures, creating sandstone from the sand, shale from the mud, and coal from the peat. The coalification was a little different from other coal deposits and so a special kind of coal formed, called bituminous coal which has a high content of bitumen. This requires specific temperatures and pressures during the coalification. It is also known as metallurgical coal or as coking coal. This coal is especially valuable because it is optimal for the use in furnaces producing high quality steel. There are 14 mineable coal seams around Elkview, which vary in average thickness between 2 m and 15 m.

Description

The city Sparwood has numerous mine related sites which are well worth a visit. Generally we list underground tours, or at least open cast tours, but it seems those tours, which were offered every year during Summer three times a week, have been discontinued. We recieved an email that mine tours running from the Sparwood Chamber & Visitor Centre have been cancelled indefinitely due to operational changes. It seems this has not yet been published on several related websites, while the tours are gone from the official website. On the other side, nearby Elkford Visitor Center offers tours of Greenhills open pit mine in July and Fording River Operations in August. The tours take place on Sundays and reservation by phone or email is mandatory. Tours are free of charge. Please contact them directly for details.

At Sparwood, right in the middle of the village stands a truck in a small park, which is known as Titan Truck or The Titan. It’s not a common truck, it’s the Terex Titan, the world’s largest dump truck which weighs 260 t. It is 6.9 m high, 20 m long, and 7.6 m wide, which makes it actually unsuitable for normal roads. Being able to transport 350 t of coal or rock, this truck was used in the nearby Sparwood open pit coal mine, which is operated by the Elkview Coal Corporation. It was built by General Motors of Canada in 1974.

The Sparwood Museum is located nearby and is dedicated to the history of the town, its surroundings, and the mining. Pictures and artifacts are spanning over 115 years of local history. This includes both underground and open cast mining. Unfortunately their website is quite uninformative, and so we have only vague details.

There are numerous open casts in the valley and around Grassy Mountain, which still produce coal. In 2020 Teck’s Elkview Mine produced 7 Mt/a and had reserves of 250 Mt which is sufficient for 36 more years at the current rate. The other three mines in the valley produced 25 Mt/a with a reserve of 625 MT/25 a. The coal is blasted every 2-3 days, then the loosened material loaded by electric shovels into haul trucks. They transport it to a hopper facility where it falls onto a conveyor belt, which moves it 3.5-km overland to a crusher. The crushed coal is conveyed another 1.5 km through a tunnel to raw coal silos at the coal wash plant. After screening and sorting it is loaded on train and shipped to the markets, which are four differn ones for for different types of coal. The metallurgical coal is transported by train to Westshore Terminals at Roberts Bank (Delta) and to Neptune Terminals in the Port of Vancouver, the shipped to oversea markets. The mine employs almost 1000 people which makes it the major employer in the small town.