Life of Dave

Life of Dave

Monday, September 5, 2016

The Ruins (of Deertrail Destination Resort)

The second half of our Island motorcycling adventure got interesting. Upon leaving Fort Rodd I set the GPS for a coffee shop in Sooke, with Sooke Potholes actually in mind as our destination. Feeling perhaps over-confident regarding direction-finding however, I still missed the turn off.

We found Sooke Potholes eventually after winding around a paved lane for about 5 km. Past the first parking lot the road wound further up the hill. Knowing that next weekend we'd be on bicycles having cycled from Colwood, still with the prospect of a return trip we decided to venture up the road considering that today we had the benefit of motorized assistance. And were we ever rewarded for that decision!

At the top of the hill was a fenced-off area containing a strange unfinished stone compound of some sort. We walked the perimeter of the chain link marveling at the structure and wishing we'd known about if years earlier so we could have gained access to explore. There was one area where the chain link was obviously bent up from the ground where someone had crawled under, but neither one of us was up to that challenge. Maybe it's an age thing. I suppose at 20 we wouldn't have thought twice about it.
Can you imagine roasting marshmallows in that fireplace?
Another massive fireplace.
The place sits right on the edge of a steep embankment overlooking what I'm guessing is the start of the potholes, because directly adjacent to the little ponds is a large waterfall. We had walked around all three sides of the fence perimeter and were becoming resigned to the fact that we'd have to be content with having seen the building remains from outside the fence when we heard voices approaching. Two girls appeared from the direction of the ruins on a trail we hadn't even seen from our vantage point at fence height. Their heads bobbed up and down with the undulations in the trail elevation until they passed us without even a glance and disappeared down a trail, presumably to the river below.

With an entrance now introduced to us we couldn't possibly pass up the opportunity to explore from the inside. It was kinda like stepping through the looking glass. We'd been able to tell from the outside that most of the stonework had been spray-tagged, but we weren't quite prepared for the quality of artwork that exists inside, especially on walls that are weather-protected.

A ten-foot long Black Widow spider? Oh yeah!
I'm glad there'd be some light in here after dark...
Jeff's testing some threaded steel embeds. They failed, BTW.
Needless to say we were completely stumped as to what this structure is/was. We're both involved in the building industry and we were both quite determined to find out at least something about this mysterious structure before resorting to Google later on. Age seemed to be about the only thing we'd be able to evaluate. Still on the outside of the fence we'd noted that two huge columns had modern ridged reinforcing steel protruding from them, so at least we knew going in that parts of this development had occurred in recent decades. Upon gaining inside access it became clear from existing steel I-beams, suspended concrete slabs and concrete block in-fill walls that this place indeed probably dated from no farther back in time than the 70's.

And sure enough, once home I learned that Deer Trail Destination Resort, as it was to have been named, did begin in the early 80's. It had apparently been the dream of Albert Yuen to create a world class resort and convention centre in a spectacularly natural setting. In 1982 it was expected to become a $50 million development. However, somehow, financially it went sideways and never recovered. I also read that several years ago all the wood beams were removed because they'd begun to deteriorate, plus people (i.e., drunk people) tended to fall off those beams resulting in injury.


This a page from the original promotional brochure that I manged to to find online.
This is another view of the architect's rendering of a finished Deer Trails Resort.
As you may have guessed, I enjoy exploring old structures such as this one. It was especially fun because we happened across it completely expectantly. I think the last similar structure I stumbled unknowingly upon was the Alexandra Bridge over the Fraser River near Yale. Of course it was a bridge, not a building, but I came across it in exactly the same way. We'd been walking the dogs down the hillside, rounded a bend, and there it was; a bridge I hadn't even known was there!

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