The provincial government has plans to demolish the long-abandoned teahouse, helipad and gazebo structures at the top of Mount Lady MacDonald this summer.
Officials with the department of Environment and Sustainable Resource Development confirmed this week that a contractor has been hired to remove all structures at the top of the mountain and reclaim the site by the end of August.
ESRD spokesperson Nikki Booth said the decision to finally remove the buildings on the mountaintop was made in the fall of 2012 after a fire was reported by hikers at the site in July.
“The public will continue to have access to the trail up Mount Lady MacDonald, but we are asking people on the trail to follow any directional signage to move around the site during demolition and reclamation activities, just for their own safety,” she said.
The lease for the site was issued in 1986 to a commercial operation for a helicopter-supported teahouse. However, by 2002 the company had abandoned the site and the Province cancelled the lease.
“The department cancelled the lease because the lessee failed to fulfill the requirements of their lease and did not complete construction within the stated timelines,” Booth said. “That lessee could also not be located and the site remained abandoned with a wooden helipad, incomplete wooden structure for the teahouse with a wooden platform and railings and gazebo.
“The structure was never removed or reclaimed due to the remoteness of the site.”
The site lies within the development approval boundaries for the MD of Bighorn. Development officer Jan Thompson said the contractor, Frontline Integrated Services Ltd., has submitted a demolition permit application to remove the infrastructure.
“The demolition permit has not been issued yet, we are processing it and we are waiting for a little feedback from the applicant on a couple questions we have,” Thompson said, adding she expects the permit to be issued in the next week or two.
Project manager Tyler Chizmadia with Frontline said he expects the demolition to begin in July after the long weekend and take approximately one week to complete.
It is estimated that 14,000 kilograms of wood and steel must be removed from the site. Chizmadia said all demolition work will be done by hand and bundles of material slung out by helicopter.
“Any type of clean untreated wood will be burnt on site and any treated wood that is not recyclable will be going to landfill or might have an option for reuse,” he said.
MD of Bighorn Fire Chief Rick Lyster said last July hikers on the mountain discovered a fire had been lit on the deck of the teahouse and extinguished it with their water bottles.
As the site is abandoned, only two sources of ignition exist: lighting and humans.
He said a large fire at the site could pose a serious public safety risk for the entire valley.
“If it did manage to get an inferno going there, the embers can go a long ways and cause a lot of problems,” Lyster said, adding ESRD would have to respond to the scene by helicopter to battle a fire if one was started. “A good fire up there could be very bad.”
Because of the original commercial nature of the site and its lease issued in the ’80s, it is not considered part of the surrounding Bow Valley Wildland Provincial Park.
Booth said once the reclamation work is complete, those lands will be officially added to the park.
“Once the reclamation is done the lands will be transferred to Tourism Parks and Recreation and become part of the surrounding Bow Valley Wildland Park,” she said.
