The Parcel 82 Mount Taylor occurrence is located approximately 25 kilometres east-northeast of the town of Fernie, British Columbia. The Parcel 82 block also includes MINFILE 082GSE023 Parcel 82 Flathead Ridge.
Parcel 82 comprises an area of 18,211.5 hectares, extending approximately 28 kilometres in a southwest to northeast direction, and is 8 kilometres across at its widest point. Parcel 82 straddles an area between the Elk River and Lodgepole Creek valleys in the southwest and the Michel Creek valley in the northeast, and is cut by the valley of Leach Creek and Flathead River. It is partly bounded by Morrissey Creek on the southwest.
As part of the Crowsnest Pass Agreement, in 1905 the Canadian Pacific Railway transferred ownership of two freehold coal land parcels (Parcels 73 and 82, together comprising the Dominion Coal Block) to the Government of Canada. Exploration and development of these parcels has been prevented due to federal-provincial jurisdictional issues. In August 2013 the Government of Canada announced that it is considering an open competitive sale, which would open the Dominion Coal Block for development. Portions of Parcel 82 that overlap with the Flathead Watershed Conservation area would not be included in the sale.
The Crowsnest coalfield, formed by the Fernie basin, is a complex synclinorium in the Lewis thrust sheet. The major compressional features of the basin are a series of synclines, the most notable being the McEvoy syncline. Parcel 82 Mount Taylor is on the east side of the Fernie basin. Coal-bearing Mist Mountain Formation of the Jurassic-Cretaceous Kootenay Group crops out in the northeastern part of Parcel 82 in the vicinity of Mount Taylor.
The structural geology is complex in the area of Mount Taylor, and exposed coal-bearing strata lie east of the Flathead normal fault. The dominant structure is the north-trending, locally overturned Taylor syncline, which is flanked by converging fold structures. The most important of these flanking folds is the Barnes anticline or anticlinorium, with its axis trending northwesterly to where it disappears under the East Crop normal fault. Within Parcel 82, the East Crop fault has the effect of thinning the exposed Kootenay Group on the east limb of the Taylor syncline (Paper 1989-4).
The Mist Mountain formation at Mount Taylor is approximately 400 metres thick and contains 10 coal seams: M, L, U1, U2, U3, U4, U5, U6, U7, U8, U9 (U8 and U9 are close enough together to be considered one seam). The major seams are M, U2, U4, and U6, which range in thickness: seam M ranges between 5.5 to 11 metres, seam U2 ranges between 4.3 to 16.7 metres, seam U4 ranges between 1.5 to 8.5 metres, and seam U6 ranges between 4.6 to 6.7 metres. Two very thick sandstone units occur in the lower part of the Mist Mountain Formation, the more prominent of which occurs between the M and U2 seams. Coal rank at Mount Taylor varies from medium to high-volatile bituminous, with one small zone of low-volatile rank (Paper 1989-4).
Coal licenses were granted in the Dominion Coal Block beginning in 1964 and were later revoked in 1972 at the request of the Government of Canada. Licenses at Parcel 82 Mount Taylor during this time were held by the Fernie Coal Mine Co Ltd. The property was operated by Marubeni-Iida Co. Ltd. who conducted exploration in 1966 and 1967. One adit was driven in each year and work also included trenching, mapping, and road building. Exploration at Mount Taylor never advanced beyond the preliminary phase (Paper 1989-4).
Computer modelling of the potential resource at Parcel 82 Mount Taylor was published by the BC Geological Survey in 1989, which calculated that the 5 thickest seams contain in situ coal resources of 613 million tonnes. The study identified no sties with significant open-pit mining potential (Paper 1989-4).
