Visit to Ramore AS / RCAF Station Ramore / CFS Ramore

Ramore was first operated by the USAF, then the RCAF, and was operational from 1953 to 1974.  It was sold to a lodge, which failed as a business, and parts of the station still remain standing today.  On my previous trip I had only investigated the operations site at the top of Lava Mountain, but this time, with CE, camped overnight, did some light painting and low light digital photography (him, not me), and investigated the residential site below.  The dump is still operational at Ramore, so there is some light local traffic.  We saw some other trucks pass by while we were investigating the garages and maintenance buildings, but I have no idea where they were going.  It was the middle of hunting season, so I suspect several people have little back roads they like to frequent to find that "perfect spot" to hunt at which they keep going back to... legally or illegally!

I was surprised to find the barracks falling to pieces and and the parade square in fine shape.

To the West of the massive generator building, there was a covered concrete tank, very large, with vent pipes and an inlet of some kind going to it.  I'm not sure what it was, but we didn't go down into the darkness.

In the Southern-middle radome building (shown below) there were several square pools of water which seem to be openings into a basement of lower level.  Poking around with a stick indicated that they were quite deep (6ft-8ft+), draining them and getting down there seem like a good idea for next year; but I'm going to need a gas/diesel powered trash/semi-trash water pump!  I'll be passing the hat to see if anyone wants to lend me one, as I really don't need to *own* one.

Lessons Learned

• As before, bring more air photos and satellite imagry.  You can never bring too many air photos.
• Sleeping with the wind swinging creaky shutters on the generator building is crazy-spooky.

Post-Trip Research
As with the pictures from Senneterre, I did some more digging in the archives of the pinetreeline.org site (provided by my new friends! THANKS GUYS!) and below are pictures salvaged from the sadly now defunct site.  RIP Ren.

CE and I saw several of these locations, and the vintage pictures fill in a substantial number of gaps.  There was a lot of "what was this?"  and "why is there a hole here" - well lots of it is explained when you see the pictures of the time.

The view of the base from the south in 1959 shows the generator building, operations site, new radar and radomes on the far right and left.

Aerial photo of Operations site from Beaver aircraft, May 1959
Courtesy Ren L'Ecuyer

 The view of the domestic site.  You can see the garages, mess, H building and guard post quite well.

Aerial photo of Domestic Site from 4,200 feet, May 9th, 1962
Courtesy Department of Energy, Mines and Resources.

 

 Here we have the operations bldg at the top of Lava Mountain
Toward the top is the road that heads to the GATR (or perhaps TX/RX) site

Aerial photo of Operations site from 4,200 feet, May 9th 1962
Courtesy Department of Energy, Mines and Resources.

 This is a fantastic vantage point showing the entire layout of the base
Including the fuel tanks which are no longer there, but the berms around them are.

Aerial close up of Operations site, May 9th, 1962
Courtesy Department of Energy, Mines and Resources.

This greenhouse is no longer there, from the picture it was located beside the parade square near the "H" buildings

Greenhouse, August 21st 1999
Courtesy Bob Agar

Where this fireplace was, which I believe was in the combined mess, is now a hole. 
Yes, someone stole the fireplace!
Wish I'd thought of it...

Unknown remains in the domestic site - 21 August 1999
Courtesy Bob Agar.

Same spot, other side of the fireplace, and showing the mess kitchen in the background. 
The supports on the left, presumably for a roof, have fallen over since this picture was taken.

Unknown remains in the domestic site - 21 August 1999
Courtesy Bob Agar.

This picture shows the view from the shipping door across what is now a pool of water.
I think it shows fairly certainly that there is a lower level to the building.

Unidentified buildings in Operations site - 21 August 1999
Courtesy Bob Agar.

 The vegetation prevents any kind of picture like this from being taken today

That picture has been taken facing SW

Diesel Power House on the "Hill" - February 1956
Courtesy Ralph Gronlund.

 I think this picture has been taken facing West.

The radome building on the right has been levelled, the one on the left still stands (sans radome)

Search and height finder radar towers and radomes, February 1956
Courtesy Ralph Gronlund.

 I now know that this picture was taken at The Poderosa - the rec bldg by the lake

We drove by, but didn't take any pictures ourselves.

The Ponderosa is now being used by a camp, and looks to be in good repair

Cpl. Al Amyotte (without shirt) and unidentified Radar Techs at Ponderosa - June 1972
Courtesy Margaret Renaud.

 Notice the stone chimney?

Left rear is Cpl. Brian "Tex" Redden - June 1972
Courtesy Margaret Renaud.

 The stone chimney is clearly attached to this...

Karen and Joey Renaud sitting on the fireplace mantle in the Ponderosa - June 1972
Courtesy Margaret Renaud.

The same chimney can be seen on the left
This picture is recent, but since the fire, it has clearly been fixed up.

Remains of the Ponderosa - September 2001
Courtesy Ian Curran.

This picture was probably taken facing NW

Don Church in front of the entrance to the Operations building - July 1955
Courtesy Bob Miller.

 

 I believe this picture has been taken facing NE, and to the left of the picture you see a ~100,000 Gallon Diesel storage tank, which had a berm around it.  We found the berm, the tank is long gone!

(L-R) Iverson, Bumpus, Skkags, Jake Jacobs - August 1955
Courtesy Bob Miller.

 We did not head over to the GATR site, as it would have been too tight for the full-sized Suburban
Trees and plans have completely taken over the area, an ATV-sized trail remains of what was once a road.

Motorcycle parked at the GATR site (looking north) - June 1970
Courtesy Rick Lean.

I didn't see this building at all.

Unidentified building just across from the MSE 9 bay garage, on the left as you start to go up the hill to the Operations Site - August 2002.
Courtesy Bob Agar.

 This shows where the gas pumps used to be.  As the asphalt hasn't been disturbed, you can be sure the 2000 gallon gas tank and 1000 gallon diesel tank are still there under the surface.

The nine bay garage - 24 February 1964
Courtesy ADC Museum.

 This is the view shot East toward the combined mess, all the buildings pictured are now gone.
Only foundations and memories remain.

And the snow keeps piling up - 24 February 1964
Courtesy ADC Museum.

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Visit to RCAF Station Senneterre / CFS Senneterre

Mid-morning on October 20th 2012 myself and CE rolled up to the top of one of the peaks at Mont Bell, following Montee de la Tour, where the operations site of CFS Senneterre once scanned the horizon for Soviet bombers.  The site has been re-purposed by telcos and other companies that need the high ground for antenna equipment, and most of the buildings have fallen into disrepair.  The station was operational from 1953-1988, and the majority of the domestic site at the bottom of the hill is still very much in use today by the local population, the PMQs are in a very good stare of repair, and most sport new vinyl siding and new roofs.  The larger buildings (hospitals, schools, etc) are still intact, though it is unclear what some are being used for.  There seems to be a department of transportation and other provincial government usage of the buildings.  Following Chemin de Penetration we found one of the TX or RX buildings that I'm becoming familiar with, as the exact same design was at Foymount and Parent.  Surprisingly, it has been re-purposed by the local gun club as an indoor firing range - after all, it's a concrete building!  They have put a new roof on it, and walled up the windows.  In hindsight there was a 2nd building down Chemin de la Normick, which also looks to be a comms building, but we didn't head over there.  Down Rue Arthur Facteau there were garages and maintenance-looking buildings, that looked like they were occupied as well.  Unfortunately, it was foggy and raining, otherwise the view from the top would have been fantastic!  For other would-be explorers; there were no obstacles that a car couldn't drive over; no offroading needed to get to the top and tour around, it is paved all the way to the top!

Road to Senneterre GATR Site

After visiting the operations site and taking a spin through the rest of the station, we tried to get to the Ground to Air Transmit Receive site (GATR for short!), but had to turn around after a few Km walking through the wet grass and weeds because the road became too wet and muddy, we didn't even get to the mountain itself (but we could see it!)


Lessons Learned:

• Do not drink to excess the night before exploring a Canadian Forces Station. *groan*
• Bring offline satellite imagery on an iPad, Playbook, whatever to get a bird's eye view.
• Bring Air Photos from the period when the station was active to get a better idea of where things are.
• Do not expect cell coverage; while there may be, it may not be Rogers (my cell provider)
  (Telebec serves the Senneterre area, FYI)
• Bring tall rubber boots

Upon returning from Senneterre I went back to digging through the archives of pinetreeline.org, which I've mentioned before has become defunct since the original webmaster passed away.  Luckily, through some new found friends, I have a copy of the site - which is available via the Way Back Machine or other services, but extremely difficult to trawl through. (THANKS GUYS!)

Here are some pictures, with some of their original captions, and some of my own comments.

Below is the Senneterre GATR site, we did not make it up there, but I'm fairly certain there is little left of the original radio towers and am not sure if there is even a building up there anymore   Local reports say there isn't anything, I'm hoping to find something hidden in the bushes!

GATR Site - 12 miles away from station, 1963
Courtesy CFS Senneterre 25th Anniversary Album. 

Notice the poles and antennas in the below picture?  I believe that's the RX site, which CE and I didn't see

PMC accident by the Receiver site, December 6th, 1960
LAC Mike Bitten runs into LAC David Dunbar on the way to the Receiver site
Courtesy Mike Bitten

I wish I'd seen this map beforehand as it would have proved most useful.  Thankfully I'll have it for the next trip.

Composition of Roadways (drawing of roads and buildings), June 1st 1953
Courtesy National Archives of Canada

To the best of my understanding, this is the original configuration of the station.
Notice the large operations site in the middle, and two flanking buildings with Radomes.
This was 1956.

The radar towers and the radomes at the operations site, April 1956
Courtesy Bunny Gammon

You'll notice a new building has been added with a walkway between the buildings.  The rightmost radar is likely the same FPS-6 that is now on display in Senneterre as a monument to those who served.

This was 1959.

Combined Mess with Operations site on the hill
Note that the new FPS-6 Height finder does not yet have a radome, June 1959
Courtesy Sherman Esliger

You'll see that the height finder radar on the right has been covered by a radome, and the other radomes and their radars have been removed.

This was 1960

Operations site, April 1960
Courtesy Jeannine Lizotte

This was 1965

Barracks in Domestic site, March 1965
Courtesy Phil Frankland.

There seems to have been an annex added between the operations building and the next one over.  I'm unsure of it's purpose.
This was 1979

The Combined Mess (foreground) with the Operations site perched on the hill, December 9th 1979
Courtesy Jim Compton

This was what the inside of the operations room in the central building looked like

Interior photo of the Operations room, November 1958
Upper level (L-R) Sammy Fehr (later married Sid Bennett), Pat Bourke (Ops B), F/L Bourassa (Senior Director).
Middle level - Jim Cabell (Forward Teller).
Lower Dias - Bill Stewart (Ident), Doug Joy, Cpl Betty Doucette (later married Ray Zuback), Cpl Gil Pettigrew.
Courtesy Fred Hoskins via Bill Stewart

Unfortunately, the operations building burned ~1990, and only the foundation remains

Remains of Operations building, 1991 Courtesy Paul Ozorak

RCAF Station Senneterre / CFS Senneterre

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Investigating CFS Val D'Or

On the (extended) weekend of October 19th to 22nd 2012, CE and I went for a trip in my new 1999 GMC Suburban 2500 6.5L Diesel to do some Cold War sight-seeing.  Here is how things went.

Setting the stage; CFS Val D'Or was operational from 1954 to 1976, and essentially a forward operations base for ten years where AIR-2 nuclear air-to-air missiles were kept and at the ready for Canadian CF-101 fighter interceptors to use against Soviet bombers coming over the pole. 

It was October 19th, and by the time we had everything together we on the highway at ~0945-1000hrs, and had missed most of rush hour.  We took turns driving and made it to Val D'Or in ~5hrs.  We still had lots of light, so we set out to find where I thought the USAF stored the AIR-2 1.8KT nuclear air-to-air rocket between 1964-1974 for use by the RCAF in a time of immanent war to shoot down Soviet nuclear armed bombers.

We parked in the parking lot of what looked to be a shipping/receiving company at the NE end of the runway, near the Northern alert apron and went to the eastern end of a fence that at one time may have surrounded some warehouse-looking buildings in that corner of the property.  The fence now stops, and allows easy access to the outside of the airport perimeter fence.  If that sounded odd, you read it right - there were two fences, the "inner" barbed wire fence surrounding the current municipal airport of Val D'Or is still very much intact, but the outside fence reaches East and "ends".  Going east from where we parked, we found a manhole and stack coming out of the ground, in the direction the fence was pointing.  It looked like it might be for water, drainage or septic.  There was no smell, so if it was an underground septic, it wasn't active.  By referring to the satellite pictures and topo maps we could see a cut in the trees heading South which looked like a road.  Perhaps at one time there was a road beside and along the hydro poles which stretched South, but the terrain is now moist, full of weeds and weed-trees, and very difficult to pass through.  We discovered that following the barbed wire Airport perimeter fence, on the grass, was much easier, and reached the East-West road that went to where I believed the bunker was, since it was in a remote location on the base far from prying eyes, as I'd read that was how the USAF positioned such installations.  Much to my surprise we didn't discover a nuclear bunker, and as it turns out, the building I saw on the satellite pictures may be a partially above ground/partially below ground septic flush tank made by the Pacific Flush Tank Company.  The jury is still out on what it was and what it was used for, but if I recall correctly, they are used to flush sewer lines or perhaps it was a septic digester.  I'm really not sure.  I hope someone can identify what the unit was from the pictures.  Nearby (to the North) there was what looked like a cement septic tank with a manhole cover on the top, partially filled with what I assume was rain water.  Nearby to the North and East of that there is a derelict fence that has at least partially fallen over.  For future explorers it is absolutely best to park at the NE end of the air strip where we parked, and walk southward along the barbed wire fence along the Eastern side of the airport to reach the "flush tank" or whatever it is.

After finishing off exploring on the East side of the runway around the flush tank, we walked back to the GMC Suburban (which we have nick-named Angry) and headed around the North end of the runway by road, and went South on the West side of the runway.  We passed several buildings on the West and East side of the road which were clearly 1950s vintage; hangers, a garage, some residential buildings, etc.  At the SW end of the runway there is another Alert apron, which is now filled with parked float planes (and some regular planes).  There is a large steel hanger located at the end of the alert apron, exactly where I would have expected a military hanger would be to house fueled and armed CF-101 Voodoos.  25B and 25C were the two hangers' designations, I'm unsure if they were always called by those designations.  We discovered that we could go no further south than those two hangers due to a perimeter fence.  On our way back, we took the road heading west towards the current gun range, and found quite a bit of asphalt dug up and dumped in the woods, a wooden guard post discarded in the woods, and some unexplained clearings.  Could the current gun range have been where the nuclear weapons were stored?  The road is relatively direct, to go from there to the hangers to the gun ramge, so it could make sense.  I'd rather something more than a wild guess, as my track record for those isn't very good!


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Cold War Camping - Val D'Or, Senneterre, Ramore, North Bay

To update you on what I've been up to... The Val D'Or/Senneterre/Belleterre trip happened (October 19th - 22nd)!  But without Belleterre... There were a few on-the-fly changes to the camping trip; we couldn't get to the Senneterre GATR, and scratched Belleterre off the list after a major brake failure on the Suburban.  Both will need to be re-attempted in coming trips.

Here (below) is (more or less) where we went; I'm going to break out stories of the trip into multiple blog entries so they can be easily searched for down the road.


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Overall my impression of Val D'Or was much better than I expected.  It is clearly a booming town.  There is clearly money being spent there by the local workers, the local companies, and the local municipal government who's getting the taxes from everyone.  Good for you Val D'Or, you're not the armpit town I was expecting!  I mean that as a complement, honestly; from all the mining I was expecting a very dirty run down town - it was anything but!  Another surprising thing, to me, being from Montreal, Quebec - I was expecting at least some of the people in customer service to sneer, look down their nose, or otherwise be indignant to my traveling partner who spoke mainly English.  However, at no time anywhere in Val D'Or (or Senneterre) were we treated poorly, or given anything but welcoming smiles, when speaking English we were replied to in their best English.  I felt very much welcome.  Val D'Or was a picturesque town, with a busy main street, lots of parking, and clearly hopping with a booming economy driven by the local mining operations.  I'd go back again and again, I was very impressed with Val D'Or.  It surpassed all my expectations... and the food was *fantastic*.

As we failed to get to Belleterre, we headed to Ramore, and took a lot of pictures of what is left of Ramore AS / RCAF Station Ramore / CFS Ramore.  It was my first time checking out some of the domestic site, as the last time I concentrated on the operations site.

CFS Senneterre's buildings have has some holes punched in them, but generally they are intact, minus the Radomes, and provide a good idea of the footprint of a base.  The sloppy fence line allowed us to take pictures of things we shouldn't have on Telebec property.  No harm, no foul, I say...

On the way past North Bay (with 50% of the Suburban's brakes blown...) we stopped at CFB North Bay's BOMARC site to take pictures.  If we'd had more time, I would have talked to the owner and gone through the front door, but as it was I approached from the back and took pictures through the fence.

Here are all the pictures I have, I haven't excluded any, they are not very artsy, they are meant to document the trip :)

The loss of CF-101 Voodoo #17480 in March of 1968

CF-101 Voodoos on the ground at RCAF Station Val D'Or

On March 15th, 1968 the RCAF lost a CF-101B Voodoo flying with 425 Squadron, from Bagotville... or was it?
You see, CFS Val D'Or didn't have it's own planes; planes from several squadrons flew out of CFS Val D'Or on rotation, and logistical support was provided from the nearby CFS Senneterre.  So, while researching CFS Val D'Or I found mention that a CF-101 Voodoo crashed in 1968, with a tail number of 17480 (previously USAF F-101B-120-MC s/n 59-480), but some sources say Val D'Or, others Bagotville - easy, I went looking for an "authoritative" source; there are many air plane crash databases online.  Unfortunately, there's a lack of info on that one.  How... Interesting.  I can't find the names of the pilots or any details at all.  That's weird, as I can find the names of everyone else who's ever used the ejection seat.  The accident is documented as a "Category A", which I believe means a complete write off - but that was only ascertained a month after the accident.  Isn't that odd?  Maybe they had to wait for an "official" assessment, which took time for someone to do, or be flown in.  Operations out of CFS Val D'Or are at least partially shrouded in secrecy because it was one of the few sites where "Canadian" nuclear arms were stored, and those "special weapons" were meant to be used by CF-101 Voodoos.  Nuclear accidents are very well documented, as far as I can tell, whenever they happen and no matter how minor, so I don't really expect that there was a nuke-armed-crash, at Val D'Or, of a CF-101, armed with nuclear AIR-2 missiles... but as the base was shrouded in secrecy, it is interesting to contemplate.

I think I need to consult the Archives and Air Photo Library again...