Exploring Some of the Ruins of Ocean Falls

January 17th (Friday)

It felt like a busy day in Ocean Falls, a helicopter came and left twice through the day, a floatplane came and left, and when we were out in the afternoon we saw several people in town. The helicopter apparently was a repair crew going out and coming back from working on the power lines. Hopefully that will have fixed our recurring power issues. They did have the power out for about an hour during the morning while they were away, so hopefully that will be a good sign.  

The floatplane was the weekly mail pick up and delivery. It is supposed to come in on Wednesdays, but like everything else around here, it is weather dependant, and due to the wind, today was the first day this week that it had been able to come in. The unusual busyness in town was due to the mail delivery, and was focused around the post office.  

We went out for another lovely exploration hike. Every day we have been going up along the river from the dam, and it has been amazing to see how much it has been changing with the ice build-up and the water level dropping in the lake.  

As the water coming over the dam slows, the ice has begun building up across the top of the dam, and forming around the pillars that go up along the top.  From these build-ups it has started growing below it, and today there were two sections where the ice had formed almost all of the way down to the river. The ice in the river is ever changing as well, and keeps growing and growing.  

Today we climbed down from the road to the rocks that run along the river. We kept our distance from the edge, and avoided snowy and icy sections, but we were easily able to make our way down along the river on dry rock. It was so neat to see the freezing river and ice formations from a better angle. Flowing water, and beautiful curtains of ice connected each level. Each pool on each level was so different, and one pool had formed and contained “lily pads” of ice.  

They were almost perfect circles, floating disks, drifting around at one end of the pool. It looked as though ice frogs should be there hopping from one pad to the next. The whole area with its bare rocks dusted in snow, levels of flowing water, and endlessly diverse ice formations, was beautiful. 

As we made our way back up towards the dam, we went into an old concrete building. The door had been blown open by the wind and mini snowdrifts filled the entrance. Inside was an old, large, gas engine connected to a pump and a whole piping system. Everything was flaking paint and rusting away, but as we explored around and got clews from old papers, we figured out that it was the pump building for the old water treatment system. 

There were two machines that “printed” out data about the chlorine levels of the water, and we found papers with records dating back to June 1967. It was very neat to look around at all of the old equipment. 

Chlorine Parts Per Million Printouts.

Old Wooden Pipe.

We followed one of the old roads, which we had been told was 10^th Street, along the upper hill. We saw something in the woods, and it turned out to be an old teeter-totter; the classic blue and red playground-colour paint was still obvious.  One of the trees that had grown up, almost right against it, was surprisingly big for only 50 years. It is amazing to think of the children that used to play on that teeter-totter, and where they may be now. 

Teeter-totter buried under trees and snow.

We continued along the old road and found the collapsed ruins of an old structure, a large, old, cast-iron frying surface, and the remaining water pipes that came down from the water tower. Perhaps one day we will try to make our way up to the water tower to see what is left.  

Two old pianos in an old structure.

Yesterday afternoon the clouds began to break up, and last night we could see the moon. This morning, through the thinner clouds, we actually got a little bit of sun on our boat. It is amazing how much the angle and height of the sun has changed, even just from when we got back here last Sunday. I do not think it will be many more days before we may have some true sunshine. That will be nice!  This afternoon it has started to cloud up again, so we are hoping for more snow.