The Coal Creek project is located approximately 8 kilometres east of the town of Fernie, British Columbia, within the northwest trending Front Ranges of the Rocky Mountains.
The Jurassic-Cretaceous Mist Mountain Formation (Kootenay Group) (564 to 1097 metres thick) contains up to 24 seams greater than 0.9 metre thick. The formation is thickest in the Michel area (1097 metres), thins to 629 metres in the Fernie area, thickens towards Morrissey to 654 metres, and thins rapidly to the southeast from Michel (564 metres). The seams from oldest to youngest are 1, 0, 0 Upper, 1 Lower,1 Middle and 1 Upper, 2 Lower, 2 Middle, 2 Upper, 3 Lower, 3 Upper, 4 Lower, 4 Upper, 5, 6 Lower, 6 Upper, 7, 8 Lower, 8 Upper, 9, 10 Lower, 10 Upper, B Lower, and B Upper.
In the Morrissey Ridge area, the total number of coal seams encountered (greater than 0.9 metres) and the total thickness of coal vary from 8 to 16 and 47.8 metres to 91.9 metres respectively. Many of the seams can be correlated over long distances, however, only the basal and 6 upper seams can be traced without interruption from Coal Creek to Morrissey Creek. In the latter area, seam thicknesses and ash contents increase going down the sequence, good coking characteristics and volatile content increase going up the sequence, and ash contents can change rapidly over short distances laterally. Upper coal seams are medium volatile bituminous while coals below the 5 seam are low volatile bituminous. Ash contents vary from 6 to 64.3 per cent in unwashed coals and sulphur contents (washed specific gravity 1.55) vary from 0.29 to 0.88 per cent. Volatile matter varies from 17.94 to 27.11 per cent.
Estimated reserves of good quality coking coal in the Fernie Ridge and Morrissey Ridge areas are 128.8 million tonnes recoverable raw coal or 113 million tonnes of coking coal under 762 metres of cover. Early reserve estimates for the entire area have varied from 93.3 million to 20.5 billion tonnes of coal (mineable).
Previous mining operations were located at Morrissey (1902 to 1909 - production of 440,850 tonnes), Coal Creek (1898 to 1958 - production of just over 20 million tonnes) and operations in the Michel area which began in 1899 were still in operation in 1960 and had produced more than 25.4 million tonnes up till then. Mining has mainly concentrated on the upper seams which are better quality, lower ash and good coking coals, however the lower seams tend to be thicker.
The dominant structural element in the area is the close to north trending McEvoy syncline. It is doubly plunging, approximately 7 degrees from the south and approximately 11 degrees from the north, towards the centre. The limbs of the fold dip between 20 and 45 degrees, and several minor folds are present parallel to the main axis.
Major thrust faults also occur predominantly along the eastern edge of the synclinal basin. Of these, the Lewis thrust fault has the largest displacement. To the west are several normal faults including the Pipeline fault and some thrust faults such as the Lookout thrust fault and the Morrissey fault. The faults tend to strike north-northwest to north. Thrust faults dip mainly to the west.
Crowsnest Pass Coal Mining acquired the Coal Creek property from Rio Tinto in 2010. Work programs between 2011-2013 included reverse circulation drilling and partial core drilling, targeting 3 seams of the Mist Mountain Formation (B, 10, and 9) to evaluate underground room-and-pillar mining potential. Coal quality testing indicates high quality coking coal and pulverized coal injection are present in the upper seams at Coal Creek. Environmental baseline studies including water quality data gathering were also undertaken.
