The popular Tumbler Ridge Museum Foundation dinosaur trackway tours will resume on Monday 16 May, and will continue through August. B.Sc, student Jennifer Becker, who pioneered these tours in 2004, will return for another year, and is very excited about the possibility.

“ I love Tumbler Ridge and the people who make this community such a special place”, Jennifer says. “I enjoyed meeting wonderful people on the tours last year, and learned a lot myself. I enjoy hiking, running, being in the outdoors, and working with people, so this job is a great way for me to enjoy my summer.”

Tours are offered to two sites via hiking trails: the Flatbed trackways and the Wolverine tracksite. The Flatbed tour takes about two hours, and the Wolverine tour is shorter. One unique feature is the Wolverine lantern night tour – nothing like it is offered anywhere else in the world. The low angled lantern light brings out footprints which are hardly visible by day, and the ambience is ethereal, with the Wolverine River rushing by, and dinosaur sounds (or scientists’ best guesses at them) playing in the background.

This year the tours will be enhanced with information on trailside plants which were around in the time of the Tumbler Ridge dinosaurs, which are the oldest known from western Canada. Rates are kept low, so as to encourage maximum participation, e.g. $10 per adult and $5 per child for the lantern tour, with special family and school group rates.

It is recommended to combine the tours with a visit to the Museum Foundation’s exhibits in the Community Centre (no charge) which include the dinosaur story and fossil, as well as a high tech interactive display. The book “Daniel’s Dinosaurs” by Charles Helm tells the story of the initial discoveries, and is on sale in Tumbler Ridge for $10 – all author’s proceeds go to the Museum Foundation. Over the next few years, with the input of its palaeontologists, the Tumbler Ridge Museum Foundation will expand the options for the dinosaur-minded tourist.

To make a booking for a footprint tour, please call (250) 242 3123 or email trinfo@pris.ca

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