tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-283577192024-03-07T01:23:59.877-06:00Urban DecaySpazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172137362684433408noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28357719.post-55689749450868834252012-07-29T21:07:00.002-05:002012-07-29T21:07:42.763-05:00Pillsbury Mill<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/">http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/</a></div>Spazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172137362684433408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28357719.post-49048983674036433332008-02-09T22:57:00.001-06:002008-12-09T08:06:39.666-06:00Phalen Drain-BoardingMouser Week IX is coming to a close (officially), so its time to head back below ground.<br /><br />Drain-boarding in Phalen Creek (underneath St. Paul) with Benagain, his girlfriend, and her roommate.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwwvfPmAO70gobuCXy-3kdoAKvY0Qs6BUXA5LRA8QooNnx60ftutKeXefwn5JgK2IjG-Sx14O5s69kVJNbytGheqKpuyVPEB8e0UCfGNYMbTZa-lF6VRhHMOGKwbUEEfl26pdufQ/s1600-h/0913425.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwwvfPmAO70gobuCXy-3kdoAKvY0Qs6BUXA5LRA8QooNnx60ftutKeXefwn5JgK2IjG-Sx14O5s69kVJNbytGheqKpuyVPEB8e0UCfGNYMbTZa-lF6VRhHMOGKwbUEEfl26pdufQ/s400/0913425.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165213097817458226" border="0" /></a><br /><br />It was cold! Really cold! We parked near some rather shady industrial/commercial offices after driving through some shady St. Paul streets, and walked down a shady-ass road to jump into the drain. and we was COLD! 33 below cold!<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPrkl9LAeRWvYcF_jnzXyWN8M3uBpI6zQt2M8Yc2ZOJeQTjKVPpHa4dhrx51E8WYd_610yUOBLeAXDIe2KqTExB8ofMwLKnH4aR_ujfv_WaIUU1OUmm16g_8zB29N_4IaEN08wrw/s1600-h/0913430.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPrkl9LAeRWvYcF_jnzXyWN8M3uBpI6zQt2M8Yc2ZOJeQTjKVPpHa4dhrx51E8WYd_610yUOBLeAXDIe2KqTExB8ofMwLKnH4aR_ujfv_WaIUU1OUmm16g_8zB29N_4IaEN08wrw/s400/0913430.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165213102112425538" border="0" /></a><br /><br />The drain was warm though, once we got through the silt sludge shit that just about ate our boots.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrIyOFn2NChg4FngPQK89vzhq8TPwTJxJgbbNK4qlvVrIeSEf4EHpvFKEucNuOkut1rFxRQu-du_aXT_THkzVhSrim_upepkE5C23aOyM1uwf7XS6rqkwWWpsw1lGLwiSqAQUoUg/s1600-h/0913431.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrIyOFn2NChg4FngPQK89vzhq8TPwTJxJgbbNK4qlvVrIeSEf4EHpvFKEucNuOkut1rFxRQu-du_aXT_THkzVhSrim_upepkE5C23aOyM1uwf7XS6rqkwWWpsw1lGLwiSqAQUoUg/s400/0913431.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165213102112425554" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Our objective was to find the dry round-concrete-pipe section of drain for drain-boarding, which is a long way from where we entered.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPqzz-iBQzrciTmVczyJnwTljQ9jQ_TY3hGJ4JesXOEMUwNgvY6WOf7ehFrS56KaRWOP23D03fvn4jvYihfoYzSNDK9Vz_dKPv823Ypdu4IbluZhiFBegRjIKIg8UvSODzh4RUkQ/s1600-h/0913433.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPqzz-iBQzrciTmVczyJnwTljQ9jQ_TY3hGJ4JesXOEMUwNgvY6WOf7ehFrS56KaRWOP23D03fvn4jvYihfoYzSNDK9Vz_dKPv823Ypdu4IbluZhiFBegRjIKIg8UvSODzh4RUkQ/s400/0913433.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165213106407392866" border="0" /></a><br /><br />The drain is what used to be Phalen Creek before it was buried, bit by bit over the past 100 years <a href="http://www.actionsquad.org/phalen1.htm"><span style="font-size:85%;">(more on that)</span></a>. The fact that the drain was not built all at once means that walking upstream feels like walking through a scrambled time-capsule. Construction ranges from a concrete box, brick, a section of massive stone tunnel, and the more common eggish RCP. The walls a covered in mineral formations of many different colors, icicles, and stains. In some sections tiny holes on the floor make mini drain-geysers that shoot up several feet.<br />We even saw a frog float by us down stream.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjnctnAhE80qH0_hwpuMo3cYS5d8M5jVM0RdCiOe02EEbi7GGhYfDMbRBP-d7XTaQozOUTn925bpkdJVxoFdwuqP3NNTUzliPKYMex5QfKWnyyy4hYs5h_zlt5f3fhF0cqLawP3Q/s1600-h/0913438.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjnctnAhE80qH0_hwpuMo3cYS5d8M5jVM0RdCiOe02EEbi7GGhYfDMbRBP-d7XTaQozOUTn925bpkdJVxoFdwuqP3NNTUzliPKYMex5QfKWnyyy4hYs5h_zlt5f3fhF0cqLawP3Q/s400/0913438.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165227322749142722" border="0" /></a><br /><br />We finally got to the dry section and hung around for what must have been a long time trying to get some bad-ass drain-boarding shots.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc6kyZo2NzErfb-7MnGXSw4xDoqiBpwAK-prk4fY8mV-GWQOt0m9eHwftBBPT5ZgT14yJojhQG_Rj4VtLax5f0aDtjGaYch3YyYhilwOF9KBc4YfUMQTDzq7XomVXApIcal1I3bA/s1600-h/0913441.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc6kyZo2NzErfb-7MnGXSw4xDoqiBpwAK-prk4fY8mV-GWQOt0m9eHwftBBPT5ZgT14yJojhQG_Rj4VtLax5f0aDtjGaYch3YyYhilwOF9KBc4YfUMQTDzq7XomVXApIcal1I3bA/s400/0913441.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165213570263860866" border="0" /></a><br /><br />On the way out I dropped my brothers mini-mag that I 'borrowed' in the silt-sludge-shit. Reaching in and grabbing it, and then having to deal with keeping my hand warm was not the kind of thing I wanted to deal with, so there wasn't allot I could do but watch the light slowly sink and fade into the abyss. <i>requiescat in pace</i><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikOvWEfCgTmHIRBDPiQpBeF0_X9aVadjmmxpHmSOMXeb56U46xIDf0vCz2B4x01224liRgXtnYkLmP9EAxD6OQorGaKlESoPf1c1wdvuDzg8dijXK1DstRcOsAYOK-RXwjwrEFMA/s1600-h/0913442.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikOvWEfCgTmHIRBDPiQpBeF0_X9aVadjmmxpHmSOMXeb56U46xIDf0vCz2B4x01224liRgXtnYkLmP9EAxD6OQorGaKlESoPf1c1wdvuDzg8dijXK1DstRcOsAYOK-RXwjwrEFMA/s400/0913442.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165213574558828178" border="0" /></a><br /><br />We had a bit of the scare on the way out with a Park-Police vehicle driving along our stretch of road, but we just laid low and didn't waste all of time climbing out.<br /><br />Dinner was at the Riverside Perkins again, and we ran into what was left of the rest of the Mouser Week crew, and ate Perkins food.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq-gjHc13GtJ6vkZSHqlWWlE4UJVjUqUWzZt6S3l_Wwonn8rajpomP18yjCf_yeTwHx_LwmYGFO53H-PeWvT4u2-qwQC8SBVl0MBd3JY75soCwZ3W7u4HJI0zu08Pmt4BNpB3cUg/s1600-h/0913447.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq-gjHc13GtJ6vkZSHqlWWlE4UJVjUqUWzZt6S3l_Wwonn8rajpomP18yjCf_yeTwHx_LwmYGFO53H-PeWvT4u2-qwQC8SBVl0MBd3JY75soCwZ3W7u4HJI0zu08Pmt4BNpB3cUg/s400/0913447.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165213574558828194" border="0" /></a><br />Group photo<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2175/2254815867_9a1f40586b.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px;" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2175/2254815867_9a1f40586b.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />This one is from Ben<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Update:</span><br />So apparently Freak found my light when he and the Perkins crew went to Phalen later that evening, shining from the bottom. Crazy.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/">http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/</a></div>Spazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172137362684433408noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28357719.post-43704922108974208552008-02-03T00:35:00.000-06:002008-12-09T08:06:39.962-06:00MW IX Update<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCZFGKV0WBt1nxmZAIBvf6QkpeHQT1e8dqik2KnYCGMA8OFegbTIjJfzdYABeP2XPrWur0h8jQ7jfWzRwP4Ah5-w2Eqghn_mxPa9UNa1WNDg_pfhxK1XvjJqk7F6kStmqXpvVUtg/s1600-h/0211343.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCZFGKV0WBt1nxmZAIBvf6QkpeHQT1e8dqik2KnYCGMA8OFegbTIjJfzdYABeP2XPrWur0h8jQ7jfWzRwP4Ah5-w2Eqghn_mxPa9UNa1WNDg_pfhxK1XvjJqk7F6kStmqXpvVUtg/s400/0211343.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5162641666878035346" border="0" /></a><br />Everyone + Junkyard at Perkins.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2213/2238681348_9f05d3f188_o.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px;" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2213/2238681348_9f05d3f188_o.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />[almost]everyone (photo by Ben). Click to view it bigger.<br /><br />Fun evening, got to meet everyone at Perkins, drank a few cups of coffee and a malt, chilled, and then headed to West Kitts. Ben and I hooked up with <a href="http://urbanwanderers.blogspot.com/">GoxKok</a> and his crew and we made it to the top of the third helix. Ben and I wanted to check out some other stuff that evening, so we left them there to wait for everyone else to show up. We both slipped and fell in on the way out, Ben got his leg hurt, and I had to head home, so that pretty much ended the exploring for us that evening. Totally worth it though, I got to meet allot of really cool people that I need to go exploring with more often.<br /><br />Update (2/7/08):<br />Ben just sprained his ankle, nothing terribly exciting.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMzyxpMYBvssbAlnevvSFyi5mN2yVi5mCDat83ECWc1RHAAXpk5sxd5gfiXyg8uAgsCPhb7sS3Aq_CiXmlW-p-XorSSH_OV77gMWXBz2qmcdinM_wis-pi5wsfUJU1miWQJR7nOQ/s1600-h/0211344.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMzyxpMYBvssbAlnevvSFyi5mN2yVi5mCDat83ECWc1RHAAXpk5sxd5gfiXyg8uAgsCPhb7sS3Aq_CiXmlW-p-XorSSH_OV77gMWXBz2qmcdinM_wis-pi5wsfUJU1miWQJR7nOQ/s400/0211344.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5162644377002399138" border="0" /></a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/">http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/</a></div>Spazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172137362684433408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28357719.post-89681411273940831972008-02-01T17:50:00.000-06:002008-12-09T08:06:40.160-06:00MW IX<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP298w_tFAj_5CI_2gugCdXhYQ9_BGk8MilzJH_v5c6Vemv2exLbQAsFjsBAz4LOSRNBU33G6__xyS_WbzD_rdYBz7LI6NkVcu_UJWLGslx_trwn94LYciNnAf9DciMQCjwadEeA/s1600-h/2233437909_6fddf50d0a.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP298w_tFAj_5CI_2gugCdXhYQ9_BGk8MilzJH_v5c6Vemv2exLbQAsFjsBAz4LOSRNBU33G6__xyS_WbzD_rdYBz7LI6NkVcu_UJWLGslx_trwn94LYciNnAf9DciMQCjwadEeA/s320/2233437909_6fddf50d0a.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5162163886126093698" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/goxkok/2233437909/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/goxkok/2233437909/</a><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Photo by Ben (aka </span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span class="nickname"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/goxkok/">goxkok1</a> over on Flickr)</span></span><br /><br />Some Mouser Week infos here<br /><a href="http://urbanwanderers.blogspot.com/2008/01/this-upcoming-week.html">http://urbanwanderers.blogspot.com/2008/01/this-upcoming-week.html</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/">http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/</a></div>Spazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172137362684433408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28357719.post-16317898562452715102007-12-06T22:26:00.001-06:002007-12-06T22:28:16.943-06:00Urban Explorers: into the DarknessI made it to the show at the Riverview tonight, very cool. So there are actually other people out there who are more than just internet posts then right? DVDs were $15 each, but only if you were there (you can still order them from the <a href="http://urbanexplorersfilm.com/merch.htm">film's website</a> for $35). Its worth watching for sure, even if its just for kicks.<br /><br /><a href="http://urbanexplorersfilm.com/">http://urbanexplorersfilm.com/</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/">http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/</a></div>Spazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172137362684433408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28357719.post-35402353534113521702007-11-14T00:00:00.000-06:002012-07-22T22:10:38.116-05:00Into the Pit<span style="font-family: 'courier new';"><span style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms';">I've been pretty busy lately, otherwise I'd have posted much more content recently. Archery and theater tech have been taking up all my time after school, and working Saturday and Sunday kills my weekends. Enough complaining though, time for a story...<br /><br />I signed up for the light crew this year to get myself introduced into the South High Theater. It was a good choice, cool people, fun stuff. One of the best parts is getting to know the theater. I'm not going to go into too great detail about things, but above all the seating is "the grid", catwalks and wooden planks techies walk on to change house lights and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">CCTs</span>, Parcans, Fernels, and all variety of theater lights. It is an awesome place to be, and provides access to the pits. There are three pits, each located over the three sets of doors that provide access into the theater. To access them from above, you must squeeze under and between cables, pipes, and burning hot house lights. The pits primary purpose is to hold massive folding walls that expand like an acordian to divide the auditorium. They also hold a variety of equipment, dead rodents, and other oddities. Here are a few of the photos taken over the past few days "working" as a light tech and just trying to explore the theater.</span></span><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/1600/DSC04143.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/400/DSC04143.jpg" style="cursor: pointer;" /></a><br />
<span style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms'; font-style: italic;">A shot of the grid.</span><span style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms';"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/1600/DSC04175.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/400/DSC04175.jpg" style="cursor: pointer;" /></a><br />
<span style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms'; font-style: italic;">Opening the hatch into the commons.</span><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/1600/DSC04179.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/400/DSC04179.jpg" style="cursor: pointer;" /></a><br />
<span style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms'; font-style: italic;">This got us a few surprised looks from bemused administrators and janitors.</span><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/1600/DSC04181.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/400/DSC04181.jpg" style="cursor: pointer;" /></a><br />
<span style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms';"><span style="font-style: italic;">The bottom of the Pit.</span></span><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/1600/DSC04182.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/400/DSC04182.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a><br />
<span style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms';"><span style="font-style: italic;">On the edge.</span>Eventually though, my luck ran out. When I was sliding down a rope, I wasn't watching what I was doing close enough, and slammed my knee into a metal pipe. It hurt like hell at first, but I managed to get out just fine. Soon after I noted a large blood stain soaking through my jeans. Fortunately, we were pretty much done for the day anyways. I went home, and when several hours later it was still bleeding, and I realized how deeply the impact had split the skin, I went in to get it stitched up. The problem was that every time I bent my knee, it would pull open, and start flowing blood. Messy. I had to go to work the next day and be able to move, so something had to be done.<br /><br />Three stitches and 6 hours later I'm sitting here typing this with one sore knee seeping blood, and some <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">aspirin</span>, just what the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">doctor</span> ordered.<br />I can't wait to go back.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/">http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/</a></div>Spazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172137362684433408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28357719.post-36360963608901754822007-11-11T23:25:00.000-06:002007-11-13T21:00:43.036-06:00Nicollet Island IV <font style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;" size="2">Its been a while. Have you noticed that it seems like I'm saying that every time I post after I've been exploring? Anyways though, a few days ago Scout asked me to go back to Satan's Cave with him so he could show it to a friend who was interested, and I said that'd be awesome.<br> <br> <i>[fast forward to the weekend]</i><br> <br> We met in a parking lot next to the Hennepin Ave. Bridge in the late afternoon at the back of Scout's unmarked white </font> <font style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;" size="2">Econoline</font><font style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;" size="2"> van, and I got introduced to Kanskje. From there, we had to do a bit of calling around to let someone know where to find us if we never came back, then down we went. We used an entrance on the side of the Island, trying to make sure we didn't get seen by any of the people out in the 60+ heatwave we had, damn Americans trying to be fit and healthy. After we crawled through the collapsed "room", under the sewer, and into the tunnel, we decided to just head for the "cave", all the side tunnels were were pretty wet, and we were already going to have to walk through allot of black sewer sludge as it was.<br> <br> </font> <div id="zk-g" style="padding: 1em 0pt; text-align: left; font-family: Trebuchet MS;"> <div id="itsp" style="padding: 1em 0pt; text-align: left;"> <font size="2"><img src="http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_83ddbvx5g2" style="width: 267px; height: 400px;"><br> Kanskje behind a fire-hydrant pipe<i><br> </i></font> </div> <font size="2"><i><br> </i></font> <div id="hovu" style="padding: 1em 0pt; text-align: left;"> <font size="2"><img src="http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_84hsvg8zfw" style="width: 267px; height: 400px;"><br> </font><font size="2">Scout and Kanskje in the brick water-main tunnel that roughly runs-around the north half of the island<i><br> </i></font> </div> <font size="2"><br> </font> <div id="wwlj" style="padding: 1em 0pt; text-align: left;"> <font size="2"><img src="http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_85fqzj7mc3" style="width: 400px; height: 267px;"><br> Flow-stone at the base of a hydrant<br> </font> </div> <font size="2"><br> </font> <div id="vb8m" style="padding: 1em 0pt; text-align: left;"> <font size="2"><img src="http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_86f28shdcg" style="width: 400px; height: 267px;"><br> Math<br> </font> </div> <font size="2"><br> There isn't really a whole lot to see in the brick tunnels, except for some very interesting white fluffy looking mold that we passed by pretty quickly.<br> <br> We made it all the way to the "cave", took a look at the tags and carvings, met a few bats sleeping upside-down in niches on the walls, but didn't stay too long. The air this time was particularly bad, the worst I've ever had down there yet, really thick and lacking real oxygen. It got to the point that Scout and I were really starting to notice it, so we decided to book before we got to take a look at the shrine again. We ended up going straight for the manhole that opens into the middle of the field.<br> <br> I popped it without anyone seeing us, about and hour and a half after we went down. Just as soon as we slid the cover back in place, a police car pulled up about 60 yards away. I'm pretty sure they never saw us, but we got out of there pretty quick. We took our time getting back to the parking lot, and split up.<br> <br> </font> <div id="h9wn" style="padding: 1em 0pt; text-align: left;"> <font size="2"><img src="http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_87d8fxcsff" style="width: 400px; height: 267px;"><br> The river was like glass<br> </font> </div> <font size="2"><br> It's fun exploring with awesome new people, so hopefully, we'll all go do something like this again soon, but somewhere besides Nicollet Island. Its kinda starting to get old now, and conditions down there don't seem likely to get better to soon, so its time to find somewhere new, maybe a grain elevator, we'll see...<br> <br> </font> <div id="q848" style="padding: 1em 0pt; text-align: left;"> <font size="2"><img src="http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_88cvj92ncb" style="width: 267px; height: 400px;"><br> Me on top of a light tower next to the Hennepin Ave. Bridge<br> </font> </div> <font size="2"><br> </font> <div id="vtks" style="padding: 1em 0pt; text-align: left;"> <font size="2"><img src="http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_89vp5bcsf3" style="width: 400px; height: 267px;"><br> Preacher or dictator?<br> </font> </div> <font size="2"><br> </font> <div id="zn7d" style="padding: 1em 0pt; text-align: left;"> <font size="2"><img src="http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_90fsfpnjdz" style="width: 267px; height: 400px;"><br> <i>rise!</i><br> </font> </div> <font size="2"><br> </font> <div id="zl-d" style="padding: 1em 0pt; text-align: left;"> <font size="2"><img src="http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_91dx756jhs" style="width: 267px; height: 400px;"><br> Making a point<br> </font> </div> <font size="2"><br> </font> <div id="k19y" style="padding: 1em 0pt; text-align: left;"> <font size="2"><img src="http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_92dwk2jpfh" style="width: 267px; height: 400px;"><br> Meh?<br> </font> </div> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/">http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/</a></div>Spazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172137362684433408noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28357719.post-44227036744389586172007-11-07T22:51:00.000-06:002007-11-07T23:00:38.792-06:00"Urban Explorers: Into the Darkness" DVD Release Party<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">December 6<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">th</span> at the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Riverview</span> Theater, 7pm.<br />The fun plan includes a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">screening</span> of the film, possible live music, and very interesting people watching!<br /><br />The details<br /><a href="http://www.slugsite.com/archives/617">http://www.slugsite.com/archives/617</a><br /><br />Official Film Website</span><br /><a href="http://www.urbanexplorersfilm.com/index.htm"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">http://www.urbanexplorersfilm.com/index.htm</span></a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/">http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/</a></div>Spazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172137362684433408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28357719.post-51064041948686605722007-07-27T23:30:00.000-05:002007-07-28T00:46:42.949-05:00Tradgedy in St. Paul Storm Drain<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I don't mean to over-hype the incident, but it hit very close to many in the local <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">UE</span></span> community and deserves at least some mention.<br /><br />Two contractors working for the City of St. Paul were killed Thursday when they were swept away after the storm sewer they were working in flash-flooded (flooding being a normal occurrence) during the afternoon storm around 3:00 pm. A massive rescue attempt was launched after emergency services were notified <span style="font-weight: bold;">four hours later</span>. Teams entered drains and covered outfalls to try and recover the lost workers.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><blockquote>When it rains, no drains.</blockquote></span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">This should never have happened. </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">There is <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">somewhat</span> of an international motto among explorers and the like, considered even more paramount than the <span style="font-style: italic;">"Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints".</span><br /></span><ul><li><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Never enter a drain if there is even the <span style="font-weight: bold;">possibility of rain in the days forecast</span>.<br /></span></li><li><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Examine side tunnels and shafts to determine possible <span style="font-weight: bold;">emergency exits</span>.<br /></span></li><li><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Know what is down stream</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">of you</span>, so if all else fails, you can try and work with the flow to get you to an outfall.<br /></span></li><li><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The most important thing is <span style="font-weight: bold;">not</span> to find a place to hold on to or hide in, but <span style="font-weight: bold;">get the hell out</span>.</span></li></ul><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The following like takes you to a page with a first hand account about when things in a drain get out of control, and this wasn't even during a flood. <span style="font-size:85%;">Attempting to follow these guys yourself is </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >highly</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> discouraged (if I say </span><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" style="font-size:85%;">something</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> like that on this site, it has to be something I wouldn't consider doing myself).</span><br /><a href="http://www.aberrant.org/%7Esand/drain/archive99.html">http://www.aberrant.org/~sand/drain/archive99.html</a><br /><br />I can't recall ever hearing of the death of an explorer in a local drain. A private firm that claims to have had <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">monitoring</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">deceives</span> and weather spotters in place should have <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">bean</span> able to avert this tragedy.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I think it's fair and accurate to say the hearts of the entire TC <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">UE</span></span> community are with the victims' friends & families, and they share their <span style="font-style: italic;">frustrations</span>, some, more than they may ever understand.<br /><br /><div class="thepage"><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Story</span><br /><span class="postbody" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><a href="http://www.startribune.com/462/story/1327616.html" target="_blank" class="postlink">http://www.startribune.com/462/story/1327616.html</a> </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Update</span><br /></span><span class="postbody" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.startribune.com/462/story/1328116.html" target="_blank">http://www.startribune.com/462/story/1328116.html</a><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Map of the storm drain/sewers in the search area</span><br /><a href="http://www.startribune.com/10072/rich_media/1327723.html">http://www.startribune.com/10072/rich_media/1327723.html</a><br /><br /><br /></span></span></span></div></span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/">http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/</a></div>Spazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172137362684433408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28357719.post-24498491424815502742007-07-13T19:29:00.000-05:002007-11-13T21:00:48.982-06:00Nicollet Island (3rd Times the Charm)<SPAN STYLE="FONT-FAMILY:Trebuchet MS"><B><I> Weer'e baack!</I></B> No more silly reports stolen from other sites, its time for some <B>super</B> bad ass urban exploring! I was chatting with a friend I hadn't seen since school ended (Sparkling Wild Berry) and she brought up the idea of going exploring with another friend (Scout) that I had talked about doing something like this over the summer with. Long story short, Thursday morning we were on the way to Satan's cave. Yeah, I know we've been there half a half dozen times before, but there is still plenty of it I haven't seen, and its sort of like a good place to get back into shape.<BR> <BR> Every trip we had made before this, we had used a manhole located on a hill in the middle of a field to get into the tunnels, and we were more than lucky no one ever saw us. A few days before this trip, I had spent an afternoon walking around the island, trying to find a better way in. I found one.<BR> </SPAN><BR STYLE="FONT-FAMILY:Trebuchet MS"> <DIV STYLE="TEXT-ALIGN:left; FONT-FAMILY:Trebuchet MS"> We crawled our way up into a partially caved-in "room" littered with slabs of limestone and sleeping bags, then down a length of sandstone tunnel before emptying into another large space, this one bisected by a branch of the large brick sewer tunnels found under the island. We has two choices, over or under. Scout and I took the high road, and SWB managed to get through underneath. We had to take turns tossing packs and gear back and forth to fit through some of the tight spots, but it wasn't long before we ended up in a brick water main tunnel. We followed that for a long time. We didn't take any side tunnels this time, it was wet, heck, our main tunnel was flooded enough in parts that even by walking on the top of the water main pipe, our shoes were sinking into about an inch of nasty smelling black sludge shit.<BR> <BR> Eventually we got to the cave. Out came the cameras, we admired the artwork, and moved on. We took the long way out and headed through the "other cave" that loops into the brick tunnel again closer to our old entrance.<BR> <BR> <DIV ID=k9d6 STYLE="PADDING:1em 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN:left"> <IMG SRC=http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_95f76sfwg9><BR> Scout in Satan's Cave<BR> </DIV> <BR> <DIV ID=nudr STYLE="PADDING:1em 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN:left"> <IMG SRC=http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_96g8rm6bm6 STYLE="WIDTH:400px; HEIGHT:267px"><BR> Lick Nuts. If ya haven't figured it out by now, yeah, we're weird<BR> </DIV> <BR> <DIV ID=qcs0 STYLE="PADDING:1em 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN:left"> <IMG SRC=http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_97fmxwwxpw STYLE="WIDTH:267px; HEIGHT:400px"><BR> Scout, art aficionado<BR> </DIV> <BR> <DIV ID=s:oy STYLE="PADDING:1em 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN:left"> <IMG SRC=http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_98hgjstzhs STYLE="WIDTH:267px; HEIGHT:400px"><BR> Sculpture in the cave<BR> </DIV> <BR> <DIV ID=wjae STYLE="PADDING:1em 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN:left"> <IMG SRC=http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_99fmcwx7dq STYLE="WIDTH:267px; HEIGHT:400px"><BR> SWB documenting<BR> </DIV> <BR> <DIV ID=j0da STYLE="PADDING:1em 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN:left"> <IMG SRC=http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_100cxdznwdt STYLE="WIDTH:267px; HEIGHT:400px"><BR> In the belly of the beast.<BR> </DIV> <BR> <DIV ID=r:m4 STYLE="PADDING:1em 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN:left"> <IMG SRC=http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_101c69w3ng8 STYLE="WIDTH:267px; HEIGHT:400px"><BR> Check that?... err, still here<BR> </DIV> <BR> <DIV ID=x1od STYLE="PADDING:1em 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN:left"> <IMG SRC=http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_102f8bvbhc7 STYLE="WIDTH:267px; HEIGHT:400px"><BR> Not even alcohol<BR> </DIV> <BR> <DIV ID=tebj STYLE="PADDING:1em 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN:left"> <IMG SRC=http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_103hc3s37cx STYLE="WIDTH:267px; HEIGHT:400px"><BR> The shrine<BR> </DIV> <BR> <DIV ID=oxjj STYLE="PADDING:1em 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN:left"> <IMG SRC=http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_104g5qf339n><BR> Hugh?<BR> </DIV> <BR> <DIV ID=ya.r STYLE="PADDING:1em 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN:left"> <IMG SRC=http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_105dx6mbxqn STYLE="WIDTH:267px; HEIGHT:400px"><BR> Light writers<BR> </DIV> <BR> <DIV ID=crkt STYLE="PADDING:1em 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN:left"> <IMG SRC=http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_106gjkr4zft STYLE="WIDTH:400px; HEIGHT:400px"><BR> Artists<BR> </DIV> <BR> <DIV ID=umkb STYLE="PADDING:1em 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN:left"> <IMG SRC=http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_107cpggk4fb STYLE="WIDTH:400px; HEIGHT:267px"><BR> Maybe<BR> </DIV> <BR> <DIV ID=j95b STYLE="PADDING:1em 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN:left"> <IMG SRC=http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_108269bngds STYLE="WIDTH:267px; HEIGHT:400px"><BR> Scout BW<BR> </DIV> <BR> <DIV ID=fmk0 STYLE="PADDING:1em 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN:left"> <IMG SRC=http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_109fkv2d28q STYLE="WIDTH:267px; HEIGHT:400px"><BR> Sparkling Wild Berry<BR> </DIV> <BR> <DIV ID=oapp STYLE="PADDING:1em 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN:left"> <IMG SRC=http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_110cdvdjwdg STYLE="WIDTH:267px; HEIGHT:400px"><BR> Me (thanks Scout)<BR> </DIV> <BR> <DIV ID=yisw STYLE="PADDING:1em 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN:left"> <IMG SRC=http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_111gtvfxmfc STYLE="WIDTH:267px; HEIGHT:400px"><BR> SWB again<BR> </DIV> <BR> <DIV ID=w:vb STYLE="PADDING:1em 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN:left"> <IMG SRC=http://docs.google.com/File?id=d7d5sqm_1129znjj2cf STYLE="WIDTH:267px; HEIGHT:400px"><BR> Back into the brick tunnel<BR> </DIV> <BR> It was actually open when we got there. Weired. At the top we found a flashlight someone had left. Double weird. Call us lucky or Scout's got mad skilz, cause no one saw us this time either! Afterwards, we stopped by the Aster Cafe' on the mall there for some lunch and a few rounds of Jenga. Great place. Got to go back there some time when I'm not covered in clay. </DIV><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/">http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/</a></div>Spazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172137362684433408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28357719.post-70819551988984546882007-06-27T12:18:00.001-05:002007-07-03T14:46:51.065-05:00FEAR ME, Giant Sewer Rodents, for I Am VADIM, Lord of The Underground!<p><span class="CenterSectionTitle"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> Here is an amazing report from a 1997 issue of <span style="font-style: italic;">Outside</span> magazine. I wish I lived in Russia.</span><br /></span></p><p><span class="CenterSectionTitle"></span></p><blockquote><p><span class="CenterSectionTitle">FEAR ME, Giant Sewer Rodents, for I Am VADIM, Lord of The Underground!</span><br /> <br /> <span class="CenterBodyText">Deep beneath Moscow a crew of urban spelunkers frolics, hunting Stalin's secret hideaway, Ivan the Terrible's torture chamber, bootleg nuclear weapons, and a little fame and fortune</span><br /> <i class="CenterBodyText">By Erin Arvedlund</i></p> <hr /> <table align="right" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" width="158"> <tbody><tr> <td class="CenterBodyText"><img src="http://outside.away.com/outside/magazine/0997/images/underclimb.jpg" border="0" hspace="10" vspace="5" width="138" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td class="CenterBodyText" align="center" valign="top"> <b class="CenterBodyText">Vadim Mikhailov emerges from Moscow's netherworld </b><hr width="80%"><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b></td> </tr> </tbody></table><b class="CenterBodyText">Beneath the onion domes of the Kremlin, at the foot of crumbling Lomonosov University, Vadim Mikhailov crouches along a sidewalk ventilation shaft and aims a conspiratorial eye into the void. He wears a dirty yellow fireman's suit, a storm trooper helmet of chintzy gold affixed with a headlamp, and a pair of ludicrously oversize rubber fishing boots that smell distinctly like vomit. Mikhailov grips a crowbar in his large, pale hands. A worn rope is coiled through his jacket's metal clasps. </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">"Here, take one of these," he tells me, handing over some sort of mystery megavitamin pill. "You'll need this. Your metabolism's not used to the underground."</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">As I choke it down, Mikhailov methodically scans the streets for policemen and, once satisfied that the coast is clear, orders his young sidekick, Vadik Burov, to pry open the metal grate. Mikhailov pokes his head inside. There's a whoosh of cool air, a hiss of sewage, and an ancient, sulfurous stink. "Poshli, poshli, poshli!" he barks impatiently. Mikhailov and I clamber down a carbonate-encrusted ladder, down into the cellar of Moscow, with its rats and drug dealers, its toxic seeps and proto-capitalist gangland thugs, its squatters and prostitutes and fat albino roaches: untold thousands of miles of clammy tunnels and underground rivers that Mikhailov has spent the last 20 years obsessively exploring and where he still spends at least a few hours every day, burrowing into Moscow's past. A native Muscovite with a bodybuilder's physique, a permanent cloak-and-dagger air, and the gothic vaingloriousness of a comic-book villain, the 32-year-old Mikhailov is chieftain of a celebrated band of urban spelunkers known as the Diggers of the Underground Planet.</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">Burov hops in last and shoves the grate back into position with a clunk. Eyes blink, pupils widen. Mikhailov's helmet bobs ahead of us in an arched brick sewer, our only beacon in the black. "We're in the reverse world, friends," he says with a grin. "Aboveground rules no longer apply."</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">Mikhailov bounds ahead, negotiating sharp corners with SWAT team precision, hopping over pipes with little Jackie Chan flourishes that show off his years of aikido training. Suddenly he halts. There's a suspicious noise, maybe footsteps. "Shhh!" he says. "Could be a biological!" (Digger slang for "unidentified human being.") We stand completely still for five minutes or so, Mikhailov staring intently at the moisture beads on the ceiling — but we hear nothing, biological or otherwise.</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">"Before we go any farther, let's check for fumes," he says. He flicks a butane lighter and inspects the flame for a slight tinge of orange that might indicate trace levels of natural gas. "No, we're all right," he says merrily. "Onward!"</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">We slip and slide along the sewer's slim walkways in the general direction of the famed Bolshoi Theater, and before long we hit a tunnel that's layered with a viscous black goo that sucks at our boots and releases a horrific stench. It's literally the excrement of elite Russia: spindly ballerinas, government deputies, Maly Theater thespians, fat-fingered "New Russians" from the Hotel Metropol. We crane our necks and peer up a thin, 50-foot brick shaft topped with a plastic toilet seat.</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><table align="left" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" width="171"> <tbody><tr> <td class="CenterBodyText"><img src="http://outside.away.com/outside/magazine/0997/images/underguys.jpg" border="0" hspace="10" vspace="5" width="151" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td class="CenterBodyText" align="center" valign="top"> <b class="CenterBodyText">The Digger chieftan inspects another priceless relic from the catacombs </b><hr width="80%"><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b></td> </tr> </tbody></table><b class="CenterBodyText">A few tight turns later, we're shambling down a seemingly endless, six-foot-wide tunnel lined with spaghettilike green cables. "See these tubes?" Mikhailov says. "All special security service lines, you know." Property of the FSB, postcommunist Russia's version of the KGB. Then we hit what appears to be an impasse: a large rusted grill blocking the passageway. "Not a problem," Mikhailov says. He quickly manhandles it, and with a "ching" the middle bar breaks loose from its moorings. We slide through and press on, down more dim corridors festooned with wires. In a dank corner, behind some rusty pipes, are a pile of human feces and several vodka bottles, detritus from the large vagabond culture, thousands and perhaps even tens of thousands strong, that inhabits much of the city's netherworld, especially in the bitter months of a Moscow winter. </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">We edge past a giant turbine and descend two metal ladders, which take us down to the third level. The heat is intense under our plastic helmets and crinkly resin coveralls. We round a sharp corner and begin trailing the network of gas and water mains that leads directly underneath the Kremlin. I'm thinking, It shouldn't be this easy. A Chechen terrorist with a fertilizer bomb could practically bring the nation to its knees. Mikhailov, apparently, is thinking the same, for he's grown suddenly flustered, tentative, his mischief-maker's face washing over with solemnity. "Uh, we really can't go any farther," he says. "Not with a foreign journalist. After all, we're patriots here."</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">So Mikhailov turns our little expedition around, taking a slightly different route to the surface. Going on instinct, he hangs a right, a left, another left. Twenty minutes later we spot a tiny crawl space above, with shafts of mote-flecked daylight spearing through. We shimmy up through the hole, pop open a grate, and emerge right at the front door of the Hotel National, one of the few bastions of European poshness in this notoriously drab capital. A perturbed doorman in a starched green gabardine suit and black bow tie swiftly walks over to the grate to behold us, three suspicious characters in begrimed space suits.</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">"And who, may I ask, are you?"</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">"We're the Diggers, at your underground service," says Mikhailov. He eases the grate back into place. "We'll be leaving now."</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">But not so fast. Just around the corner we're accosted by three fuzzy-chinned teenagers who, oddly enough, have been leering at a brass manhole cover in the street, flashlights in hand, contemplating their own underground exploratory. They recognize Mikhailov instantly. Yes, they've heard about the Diggers. They saw him recently on a Moscow talk show, and in Russian Playboy, and on CNN. And how do they become Diggers, anyway?</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">"Why don't you swing by the base later tonight and we'll talk about what you need to do," Mikhailov says, always happy to indoctrinate fresh recruits. Burov tries not to look excited, feigns a busy frown, adjusts his battery pack. Mikhailov nods at the manhole cover and says to the boys, pooh-poohingly, "That only leads to the first level. You should have seen where we were just now. We could take a short trip if you like." The three boys shoot one another gleeful looks. Mikhailov, pied piper of the underground, strides back to the ventilation shaft we found earlier by Lomonosov University. The black grate lifts, the golden helmet descends, and the novitiates follow.</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">The city of Moscow, which this month is celebrating its 850th anniversary, was built on alluvial soils along the swampy banks of the Moscow River. It's the sort of pliable, sandy substrate that easily yields to a shovel. And so, as the village of Moscow grew steadily outward over the centuries, it also grew downward. Paranoid czars built subterranean bunkers, supply depots, and enormous vaults in which they stored their most treasured maps and books and jewels. In the 1580s, as he plunged into madness, Ivan the Terrible dug down hundreds of feet to construct his prized torture chamber and then, as legend has it, murdered all the laborers who had constructed it, presumably so no one would know its whereabouts. In the late 1700s, Catherine the Great hired Italy's finest architects to channel the inconveniently situated Neglina River into a vast underground network of brick-lined canals. Over time, sewer systems and subways were installed, not to mention gas lines, electric lines, telephone lines, the full latticework of modernity. The Soviets burrowed even deeper, building secret tunnels and subway tracks, KGB listening posts, and fallout shelters for the political elite, hundreds of meters below the surface.</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><center><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5"> <tbody><tr> <td class="CenterBodyText" align="center" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top">"A LOT OF PEOPLE<br /> in the <b class="CenterBodyText">government hate me,"<br /> MIKHAILOV SAYS.<br /> "It's because I know more<br /> about the underground than they do.<br /> <b class="CenterBodyText">I'm the king down here."</b></b></td> </tr> </tbody></table><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b></center><b class="CenterBodyText"> Ordinary Muscovites have always had an ambivalent relationship with their underground. In a country that has for centuries endured all manner of political tyranny, living atop this maze of hidden passageways and rumored catacombs has only tended to compound their suspicion that someone somewhere is surely listening in, that dark doings are afoot, that the very ground on which one walks is not to be trusted. </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">But if Russia's extensive underground has spun a climate of dread, it's also offered ample opportunities for refuge. Samizdat, or banned self-published literature, passed among literati in subterranean darkness. Black marketeers have long turned to the catacombs to trade hard currency. Stalin's infamous midnight purges, which inspired the sobriquet "Genghis Khan with a Telephone," sent political enemies fleeing for hidden tunnels and friendly basements.</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">When Vadim Mikhailov was a child, he spent entire days riding the metro with his father, a subway conductor. He memorized the configurations and junctions of all the different lines, came to know every dip and dogleg in the track, learned the lay of his city from the bowels up. When he was 12, he began undertaking increasingly ambitious jaunts, innocently following municipal service tunnels and ventilator shafts just to see where they led. Stuck in a sprawling gray city, too poor to travel, where else was there for a restless young adventurer to go but down?</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">Besides, Mikhailov says, it was in his blood: He claims to be descended from an old aristocratic family that once owned and ran a gold mine in the Urals. Burrowing in the ground, he came to believe, was practically a genetic predisposition.</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">Mikahilov's fascination for the underground pulled him out of art academy and then out of medical school. He decided to forsake all chances for a relatively secure, state-subsidized life; instead he constantly daydreamed about ways to turn his moleish predilections into some sort of calling. At first he explored in secrecy, terrified at the prospect of getting caught by Soviet authorities who, having much to hide, kept Moscow's underground strictly off-limits and well stocked with security forces. Slowly, he built up a corps of a dozen or so comrades who shared his clandestine love for the underground: bodybuilders, pallid technogeeks, college dropouts with a jones for urban design, former soldiers from the Afghanistan front, a few former KGB agents turned karate instructors. They kept venturing deeper and deeper, until they eventually realized that a cross-section of central Moscow might have as many as 15 levels, plunging as deep as 700 meters. The city's jumbled secrets seemed to press on one another like so many tectonic plates.</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">In 1985, when Mikhailov was 20, Gorbachev came to power. Then, with perestroika taking hold two years later, Russians everywhere began to pick the lid off their history. Mikhailov and his friends were suddenly emboldened. For the first time they were able to publicize their underground jaunts while openly seeking more ragtag recruits. Mikhailov was finally able to invite the Moscow media to join him belowground, to shine their lights on the waste dumps, the sagging wartime infrastructure, the Mad Max cast of sewerbound psychotics, squatters, hookers, and thieves.</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">While the Diggers were mostly just larking around down there, they managed to make some fascinating — and in some cases frightening — discoveries along the way. Last year, Mikhailov and the Diggers stumbled upon 250 kilograms of radioactive material under Moscow State University, a discovery that seemed to shed light on the long anecdotal history of illness, hair loss, and infertility among the university's students and faculty. Recently, Mikhailov claims to have rediscovered an underground pond legendary since the eighteenth century as a site of mass suicides. Mikhailov, a devout Russian Orthodox Christian who takes great stock in omens, was thoroughly haunted by the place. "We all could tell something horrifying had happened there," he recalls. "The tension was palpable." The Diggers turned back from the site and never returned.</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><table align="right" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" width="163"> <tbody><tr> <td class="CenterBodyText"><img src="http://outside.away.com/outside/magazine/0997/images/undersketch.jpg" border="0" hspace="10" vspace="5" width="143" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td class="CenterBodyText" align="center" valign="top"> <b class="CenterBodyText">Moscow cross-section, as mapped by Vadim Mikhailov </b><hr width="80%"><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b></td> </tr> </tbody></table><b class="CenterBodyText">In 1994, exploring seven levels down, the Diggers hit upon what Mikhailov believes is Stalin's much-rumored second metro system, a "spetztunnel" used to spirit Party officials from the Kremlin to the underground town of Ramenkoye, some 50 miles away. The train is still functioning, he claims, and "for merely a few thousand dollars" he'd be delighted to take international film crews down for an eyeful. Now Mikhailov dreams of finding the lost library of Ivan the Terrible, a priceless collection of Byzantine and Hebrew scrolls that is believed to be stashed somewhere under the Kremlin and that for centuries has been the subject of an on-again, off-again national search. To do it right, of course, such an ambitious hunt would require not only considerable funding and state-of-the-art archaeological equipment, but also official permission to go rummaging beneath the twelfth-century foundation of the Kremlin none of which the Diggers have. </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">If anything, Mikhailov has tended to thumb his nose at local officialdom. He has a habit of hastily arranging press junkets in which he'll unveil to the nine million citizens of Moscow the location of some particularly egregious toxic dump or point out what he feels are the foundational flaws of certain city-favored construction projects, such as the giant Christ the Savior Cathedral that's now being rebuilt in the center of town. Around city hall, he's been known to flaunt his knowledge of the underground's many secrets, sometimes making vague you're-in-for-a-big-surprise threats, like the Penguin in a Batman episode.</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">At the same time, Mikhailov craves legitimacy like a kid craves car keys — legitimacy both for the Diggers and for the city's long-neglected underground, of which he considers himself the one true champion. He wants the government to certify the Diggers as an official organization, accord them some sort of status as underground firemen, security guards, caped crusaders — something. But officials just seem to ignore him. ("Oh, you mean the speleologues?" says Alexander Zavaratov, deputy director of the city militia's eco-police division. "We don't really work with them.") Although the city's bald-pated mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, once accompanied the Diggers on a well-publicized walkabout, he refuses to listen to Mikhailov's lavish ideas for opening up the underground to commercialized historical tours, glitzy malls and bistros, even a cabaret under Red Square. In a metropolis on the brink of bankruptcy and gripped by organized and not-so-organized crime, theme-parking the smelly underground is well down on the mayor's priority list.</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><center><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5"> <tbody><tr> <td class="CenterBodyText" align="center" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top">ONCE MIKHAILOV HAS PREVAILED OVER<br /> <b class="CenterBodyText">criminality and terrorism<br /> HE WANTS TO LEAD<br /> <b class="CenterBodyText">ADVENTURE TOURS down there,<br /> LIGHTING IT UP WITH THE<br /> <b class="CenterBodyText">HOT NEON OF CAPITALISM</b></b></b></td> </tr> </tbody></table><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b></center><b class="CenterBodyText"> Which predictably incenses Mikhailov. "Our bureaucrats don't understand that the city's future rests on its underground," Mikhailov pronounces. "A lot of people in the government hate me. And I know why. It's because I know more about the underground than they do. I'm the king down here." </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">After a long morning's foray underground, Mikhailov, Burov, and I repair to the Digger "base," which turns out to be nothing more than Mikhailov's mother's apartment in central Moscow, a cramped, slightly dilapidated space just off traffic-clogged Leningradski Prospekt that she shares with Mikhailov and his 19-year-old girlfriend. We climb the sour stairwell and enter the stuffy entrance hall, crowded with helmets, lamps, boots, orange vests, and waders — the de facto Digger dressing room. Mikhailov gingerly rests his helmet on the hallway table, like a trophy. Then we take off our skanky fire suits and hand them over to Mrs. Mikhailov, who halfway-neatly folds them up, trying her best to ignore the stench.</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">A busy, solicitous little woman with black hair, the widowed Mrs. Mikhailov is the Diggers' den mother, press secretary, and, it seems, greatest fan. "Come in, come in!" she burbles, hustling us toward the yellow, linoleum-floored kitchen, where a kettle of bouillon simmers on the stove, fogging up the windows. On a spotless card table, Mrs. Mikhailov has laid out a spread of piroshki pastries, china teacups, and a shiny zinc pot of tea.</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">Mikhailov pours himself a cup, parks himself on a stool, and begins scribbling a map of some dark nook from the day's wanderings. Mrs. Mikhailov unties her boy's ponytail and diligently combs his sweaty chestnut hair, frowning at each snag. "I can't get rid of it," he says, swishing his rock-star do. "The women think it's sexy."</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">Young Burov, meanwhile, takes the corner stool, picks up the phone, and starts calling around, in an authoritative, grown-up person's voice, to the local khozyayeni, or district landlords. He wants to see if there have been any fires today. It's part of the daily Digger routine, the Russian equivalent of checking the police scanner. Mikhailov likes to keep abreast of the news, partly because he's just incorrigibly curious and partly because he thinks the Diggers, as volunteer firefighters, might be able to save the day. "When are your exams?" Mikhailov asks Burov between calls, momentarily paternal.</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">"In three days," he answers, embarrassed that his high school age has now been revealed. "But it's only math."</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">Hanging out in his creaky apartment, you quickly realize that Diggerdom is truly Mikhailov's entire life. He has no job, no responsibilities, no schedule. The dozen or so hard-core members of the Diggers — most of whom, like Burov, are half his age — are his only friends. At 32, he's still an adolescent dreamer, and all his dreams, one way or another, lead underground. He's fueled by ambitions so vast and wide-ranging that he can barely articulate them, let alone turn them into reality. He wants to start a safety training center for Digger initiates. He wants to take a trip to the National Speleological Society in Alabama. He wants a new Land Rover. He wants new fire-fighting suits and helmets from France ("$1,700 each, but they're the best"). He wants to set up sort of a free-market, for-profit security service to prevent people who...well, people who aren't Diggers from roaming Moscow's warrens. And once he's prevailed over the forces of criminality and terrorism and cleaned up the environmental hazards, he wants to lead adventure tours down there, lighting it all up with the hot neon of capitalism.</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">In the meantime, all the Diggers really have to work with is their shared obsession, some seriously antiquated equipment, and their modest "base" here in this fatigued section of town behind the railway station. Mikhailov's apartment is both the Digger lodge and the Digger museum. It's stuffed to the gills with stalagmites and stalactites, fossils and bones, a miscellany of relics plucked from the depths. There are Digger scrapbooks, videos of various Digger media appearances, cassette tapes filled with Digger songs sung at Digger initiation ceremonies (in which Mikhailov touches the kneeling inductees on each shoulder with a sword, King Arthur style, and then asks them to recite an elaborate pledge to protect the underground environment). Hidden away, he keeps a manuscript of the Digger novel that he's written but can't get published and the collection of subterranean maps that he has lovingly rendered but can't sell. Out of a shoebox of photos, he removes a portrait of himself standing with Hollywood film director Phillip Noyce, whom the Diggers led underground for the 1997 Val Kilmer movie The Saint.</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">Which brings up a sore point, actually. "After I took him down," Mikhailov says ruefully, "Phillip said he was going to help me make a movie about my life. I gave him some tapes and, well, I haven't heard from him since." At that, Mikhailov's bombshell girlfriend, Marina, swishes into the kitchen in a pink terry-cloth bathrobe and black pumps. "Vadim," she says, fingering her wavy blond hair, "why didn't you sign a contract with him? You should have put something in writing."</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">Mikhailov winces at this noxious intrusion of practicality and lapses into one of his frequent monologues on Digger philosophy, such as it is. "The important thing," he says, "is that we've become a part of history. Diggerdom may have started as children's games, but it's turned into something serious. We're living in a whole new epoch now, the epoch of the Diggers. This is no hobby. It's a state of the soul. These places where we go, they're full of darkness and disease, rudeness and vice, all collected there like a sponge. But it's interesting! There's a total civilization down there! When I hear the water babbling in the sewers, it's as if I can hear our ancestors talking. I hear their whispers bubbling up, and I'm closer to them."</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">Marina rolls her eyes and disappears into some back room of the apartment. Mikhailov takes a sip of tea and goes back to work on his sketch, laboriously shading in the thousandth brick in what has become a baroquely detailed drawing of some monumental sewer system. Then he looks up and says, "People think they are independent of these underground forces. But they're not. We're all just rats in a big laboratory. We all depend on the underground. For what has come before us, determines us."</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">After a snack, we pull on our boots and fire suits again and head out for an afternoon sortie. Mikhailov secures his helmet in the hallway mirror, and slaps on a bit of Harley-Davidson cologne. Then he realizes his headlamp batteries are dead. He looks at me pleadingly and says, "Do you have money to buy some at the kiosk downstairs?"</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">It's late afternoon now, and we're seriously lost, somewhere deep under a part of town known as Sukharevskaya, several levels below Moscow's Garden Ring speedway. We're making our way through a cool brick corridor strung crazily with dripping electric wires, wading through a foot-deep swirl of sour-smelling chemicals. Two flashlights have already died on us, and now there's only Mikhailov's headlamp, with its nice fresh batteries, to guide us to the surface.</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">We stumble across a threshold and the brick corridor opens up into a series of chambers. We've wandered into some sort of extensive hippie hideaway, room after musty room painted with sad, groovy murals: red guitars dancing with musical notes, rainbows, "Peace," "I Love the Beatles."</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">"These date back to the sixties," Mikhailov whispers reverently, as if we've just stumbled upon some priceless eastern adjunct to the Lascaux cave paintings. But then the sad-sweet hippie atmospherics darken. Charcoaled on a gray, square building support, Mikhailov spots some demonic, if misspelled, graffiti scrawled in English — "satin was here" and "666" — and instantly falls into a deep panic. "Devil-worshipers!" he says. "Shhh! Be still!"</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">We hear some indistinct droning above. Mikhailov is certain it's satanic chanting, that there's a coven just above us engaged in some sickening rite. He's breathing uneasily, hunting desperately for a way out before warlocks descend, his Russian Orthodox imagination running wild. He brandishes a knife, and we retrace our steps, past an old white stone chimney and central heating system. A shabby-looking elevator looms up from the black depths.</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">After a half-hour of frantically retracing the maze, we take a chance on a cement crawl space low along a blistered wall. We hurriedly shimmy through on hands and knees until we come to a rusted ladder. Vadik races up first and pops the top. Light! Weak light, but light. We grasp the flaking rungs and follow Burov's lead, emerging, sweaty and disoriented, into a shadowy courtyard. A babushka sitting on a stoop shoots us a long, baleful stare; a toddler saunters in a scummy apartment entrance. It's your typical Moscow tableaux: no satanists, no chanting, just a television squawking from some unseen apartment.</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">We wash our hands under a dribbling drainpipe, and Mikhailov throws me a raised-eyebrowed look of relief, as if to say, "That was a close one." Maybe it was; maybe it wasn't. But it's somehow nice to see that decades of subterranean exploration haven't dulled Mikhailov's capacity for a good spook.</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText">"It's a struggle down there, the forces of good against the forces of evil, " he says as we hail a cab in the late Moscow rush hour. "Yet God would have shown us a thousand times if we weren't supposed to be doing this. He protects us, you know. Nothing bad ever happens to the Diggers."</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText"><i class="CenterBodyText">Erin Arvedlund lives three floors aboveground in Moscow, where she is a correspondent for the</i> Moscow Times.</b></p><b class="CenterBodyText"> </b><p><b class="CenterBodyText"><i class="CenterBodyText">Photographs by Jeremy Nicholl</i></b></p></blockquote><p><b class="CenterBodyText"><i class="CenterBodyText"></i></b></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/">http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/</a></div>Spazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172137362684433408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28357719.post-13998741164187066042007-02-05T13:19:00.000-06:002007-11-11T18:51:29.266-06:00"Urban Explorers: Into the Darkness" Minnesota DebutHere are the details:<br /><blockquote>Closer to home, <em>Urban Explorers: Into the Darkness</em> makes it’s official <b>Minnesota debut</b> on Friday, March 16th, at 9pm, followed by a second screening a day later, March 17th, at 4pm. Both are at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, whom you should contact to reserve or purchase tickets. To judge from the turn-out at the last fundraiser for the film, I would <em>not</em> show up fifteen minutes early and expect to get in.</blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;"> -taken form http://www.slugsite.com/</span><br />For more information:<br />http://www.urbanexplorersfilm.com/<br />http://www.walkerart.org/index.wac<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/">http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/</a></div>Spazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172137362684433408noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28357719.post-43788419640882901992006-11-23T18:33:00.000-06:002006-11-23T19:13:49.574-06:00WCCO Urban Exploration StoryThis is an interesting story regarding urban exploration that appeared on WCCO yesterday. It features Mike Gilday, a local <a href="http://www.buggrit.com/urbex.html">explorer</a> and <a href="http://www.kitzi.com/">photographer</a>. It is a little shallow when it comes to photos and content, but there is nothing really negative in it, no mention several recent deaths in local grain elevators that were rumored to be urban explorers.<br /><br />Link to the <a href="http://wcco.com/local/local_story_326172547.html">transcript</a> and <a href="http://wcco.com/video/?id=21758@wcco.dayport.com">video</a> at WCCO.com, or watch it below...<br /><script language="JavaScript">var dcIFrame=false;dcSiteName='cbs.wcco';dcZone='local';if (dcSiteName=='cbs.wbz4') {dcSiteName = 'cbs.wbz';} else if (dcSiteName=='cbs.krua') {dcSiteName='test.krua';dcIFrame=true;} dcAd(dcSiteName,dcZone,'videosponsorbutton','mod=video;pg=local_story_326172547.html;',dcIFrame);</script><script language="JavaScript" src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/cbs.wcco/local;mod=video;pg=local_story_326172547.html;tile=7;sz=88x31;ord=2196905873054558.8?" type="text/javascript"></script><a target="_blank" border="0"></a><br /><div id="flashcontent_video"><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://wcco.com/content/file_file_150112948" id="Main" name="Main" bgcolor="#ffffff" quality="high" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" wmode="opaque" flashvars="CBS_configPath=http://wcco.com/content/file_file_157124128&CBS_storyIDs=21758@wcco.dayport.com&CBS_categoryID=96" height="350" width="310"></div><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />// <![CDATA[ var fo = new FlashObject('http://wcco.com/content/file_file_150112948', 'Main', '310', '350', 7, '#ffffff'); fo.addParam('allowScriptAccess', 'sameDomain'); fo.addParam('wmode', 'opaque'); fo.addVariable('CBS_configPath', 'http://wcco.com/content/file_file_157124128'); fo.addVariable('CBS_storyIDs', '21758@wcco.dayport.com'); fo.addVariable('CBS_categoryID', '96'); fo.write('flashcontent_video'); // ]]><br /> </script><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/">http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/</a></div>Spazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172137362684433408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28357719.post-60556484371577309252006-11-04T16:09:00.001-06:002006-11-04T16:46:42.137-06:00Urban Exploration Film Screening<div><blockquote>This new documentary, co-produced by Channel Z Films of Minneapolis, delves into the world of urban exploration, a growing subculture of adventure-seekers from around the world who explore places most people would never dream of going.<br /><br />Doors open to <a href="http://www.millcitymuseum.org/">Mill City Museum</a> at 6:30 p.m. with a cash bar and an exhibit of photographs of hidden Twin Cities locations taken by urban explorers during their "missions."<br /><br />After the screening, audience members can discuss the film with the director and several of the urban explorers featured in the film. Participants can take guided mini-tours of hidden places in the Washburn A Mill, a destination for urban explorers in the decades before it became <a href="http://www.millcitymuseum.org/">Mill City Museum,</a> and visit the museum's exhibit galleries, included in the ticket price.</blockquote>More info:<br /><a href="http://shop.mnhs.org/moreinfo.cfm?Product_ID=1100"> Tickets</a><br /><a href="http://www.myspace.com/urbanexplorers">The MySpace</a><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/">http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/</a></div>Spazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172137362684433408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28357719.post-13803454781210046772006-09-17T19:52:00.000-05:002007-07-03T14:42:03.225-05:00Jim & Dean<span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-size:78%;" ><span style="font-family:times new roman;">9</span></span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/1600/map.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/400/map.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Location: </span><span>East bank of the Mississippi River</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Crew: </span>Cheese and I<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mission Time: </span><span>about 2 hours of biking and exploring</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Difficulty:</span><span> can't say really<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">It's been a while since we had done any serious exploring, so after I got off work this after noon, I called up Cheese and we started biking down the West Kitttsondale Drain. I had <a href="http://urbandecay-spaz.blogspot.com/2006/08/west-kittsondale-triple-helix-drain.html">been there before with Ratophobe</a>, but this would be Cheese's first time. I also took my Sony video camera with me this time too. It has night vision, which I figured would be an excellent asset in the pitch black underground. We climbed down the embankment, and into the outfall. To my excitement, there wasn't the choking mist hanging in the air this time. Once inside we geared-up, and recorded a few seconds of introductory video before pressing on (I'll post it once I convert it).<br /><br /></span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/1600/DSC03961.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/400/DSC03961.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Up the Mississippi River from near the outfall of the drain.</span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />Soon w<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">e reached the first obstacle, a waterfall that empties from a hole in the roof of the drain. I had decided to ware a like-new pair of second-hand Nike Airs instead of my usual shoes. In hind site, it was a poor choice. I started around the pillar of falling water, noticing that either the concrete had gotten slicker, or that the traction of these shoes was for shit.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Then I realised that was was laying on the ground, in the water, and feeling like someone had hit me in the head with a club! I pulled myself out of the water and walked, rather quickly, towards the outfall.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Head pounding, mind going in and out, I sat down to try and collect myself. I noticed that my ear was in pain too, and asked Cheese what he could see. It was bleeding a little I guess. This is about when I realized that exploring without a first aid kit or something of the sort, was a bad idea.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">We came to the conclusion that what had happened was a really bad omen, and that it really didn't seem like a good idea to keep going. Then I noticed something just beyond the waterfall, a small light shining from beneath the water... my Mini-Mag. A good explorer never leaves a flashlight behind, besides, my Mini-Mags hold a special place in my heart. I took off my soaked socks and shoes, danced around the water fall, grabbed it, and danced back, trying not to lose my balance slipping on the super slick concrete.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">So back up the river we went, to enjoy a perfect late September evening, and to show Cheese some of the other drains of interest.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Further up in the East River Flats area, I spotted an entrance that I had never noticed before. To our frustration, the gate was not locked, but decades of the elements had rusted it firmly into place.</span><br /><br /></span></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/1600/DSC03967.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/400/DSC03967.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><br />The gate may be rusted shut, but I think I've found another way in, how about you?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">We had just about decided to move on, when we were met by a man with long hair wearing a bandanna and what I'd describe as pajamas, walking up the bank. He introduced himself to us as Jim and explained that he was looking for firewood so he and his friend could build a fire. He was very nice and asked us if we would like to join them, and if we smoked weed at all. I told him that I was pretty much straight edge and that we were heading home. Before we left though, he asked us to help him carry back a piece of fire wood. It turned out to be the trunk of a tree that had long since died, but had not yet started to decay, leaving an excellent piece of dead wood to burn. We weren't in any hurry, so we volunteered to help. With a little group effort, we managed to push it down and carry it back to their fire pit, where we meet Dean. Again, we exchanged pleasantries before explaining that we did have to move on to get home for dinner. Before we did though, we helped Jim carry another even larger log over to the fire. He explained to us as a rule of thumb, think of how much wood you will use over night, and collect three times as much.</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/1600/DSC03968.0.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/400/DSC03968.0.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Jim, left, and Dean, right, sit back in front of their fire. In the background are the logs that we carried over.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/1600/DSC03969.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/400/DSC03969.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><br />In the background you can see Dean's makeshift tent.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">So with handshakes and hugs we departed. Before we got too f</span>ar we stopped at the roach tube from last time. I crawled in to take a look. At first I didn't see them. Then, as I got further in I noticed them. Multitudes lining the cracks and crevices, along with a host of crickets and spiders. I'll wait until we have a cold snap that kills them all off before I go back.<br />The evening wasn't a complete loss, not even remotely. My head still hurts as I write this, and my ear is pretty torn up (even though oddly enough it doesn't hurt), but I think we had a bit of an enlightening experience. Maybe there is more to Urban Exploring than I realized. We didn't get to the end on the Triple Helix, but we made some friends, and maybe learned a little something about humanity and ourselves in the process.<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/1600/DSC03980.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/400/DSC03980.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >The sun setting in the West as the day draws to a close.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/">http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/</a></div>Spazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172137362684433408noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28357719.post-56509945498596343372006-09-06T21:15:00.000-05:002007-07-03T14:50:17.889-05:00Poking Around Near St. Anthony Main<span><span>8</span></span><span><span>*</span></span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/1600/St.%20Anthony.jpg"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/400/St.%20Anthony.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span><span>Location: </span>Near St. Anthony Main<br /><span>Crew: </span><span>me</span><br /><span>Mission Time: </span><span>About 20 minutes</span><br /><span>Difficulty: </span>None ;)<br /><br /><span>It has been a while since our last post. Quite a while. Being in school all day and working on the weekends is probably going to cut down on the time we can spend exploring. I know I promised an update by Labor Day, and this is a pretty sad excuse. I didn't even think to take a few seconds of video, just for the sake of posting <span>something</span> interesting.<br />Honestly, I didn't expect to do anything remotely urban exploration related. I was going to bike over to my old school to give my old art teacher a hand with posting some of the student's art on the web. I was not sure he would be there and, well, he wasn't. It was a really nice, cool evening so I decided to bike a few blocks over to an area that I knew to have entrances to several... points of interest. I started looking for the entrance to<span> </span></span></span><span><span><span><a href="http://www.actionsquad.org/NSP.html">The NSP Power Plant Tunnels</a>, which are somewhere near by.<br />By this time though, the sun was getting low. The area is unlit, overgrown, under kept, and popular with homeless people, drunks, and others I didn't really feel like having a confrontation with, so I left with a few photos of a tunnel entrance that might be worth coming back to another time, but I am not going to hold my breath.<br /><br /></span></span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/1600/DSC03873.0.jpg"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/400/DSC03873.0.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span>This is the tunnel entrance... no, really.</span><br /><span><span><span><br /></span></span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/1600/DSC03869.jpg"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5207/3461/400/DSC03869.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span>...looking in.<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">///UPDATE/// -2/28/07</span><br />So I've been back there since and this tunnel unfortunately dead-ends after a few yards. There is plenty of other very interesting stuff in the area though.<br />What I'm excited for though is the completion of a new park area closer to the falls, where the fireworks are usually launched form during Aquatenial and the 4th of July, ect. It should give easy access to a great view of the falls, starting this spring.<br />-spaz</blockquote><br /><br /></span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/">http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/</a></div>Spazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172137362684433408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28357719.post-1154571020103135462006-08-02T20:38:00.000-05:002007-08-02T17:09:27.296-05:00West Kittsondale (Triple Helix) Drain, and East River Flats Tunnels<span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-size:78%;" ><span style="font-family:times new roman;">7</span></span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/East%20Bank.3.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/East%20Bank.5.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">(I've omitted some of the locations we explored from this map, due to the fact that either I don't wish to make there entrance points over-obvious, or I can't place them exactly on the map by memory.)</span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Location:</span> East Bank of Mississippi River, near the **** St. Bridge<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Crew:</span> Rataphobe & Spaz (me)<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mission Time:</span> 2 hrs, 40 mins<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Difficulty:</span> Moderate<br /></span><br /><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">The West Kittsondale (Triple Helix) Drain:</span></span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Today we set out with two objectives:</span><br /></span><ol style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><li>Explore the Minnehaha Amphitheater Drain.</li><li>Locate the West Kittsondale (Triple Helix) Drain entrance.</li></ol><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">As we biked down the West River Road though, we spotted on the far bank, drain after drain, after drain, after drain. I felt like a kid in a candy store (okay, that is kind of wierd). The clincher came when we reached the **** St. Bridge, and looking across the river, we could see a massive concrete entrance into the cliff, the West Kittsondale Drain. Minnehaha became a secondary priority.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Locking our bikes up, we climbed down a steep, sandy embankment beneath the bridge, and made our way over to the concrete tunnel we had seen from across the river. There was actually a smaller brick tunnel adjacent to Kittsondale entrance, and we decided to explore it first. It was of walkable height, but ended quickly at the foot of a dropshaft.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03318.1.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03318.1.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >The steep sides of the tunnel made it difficult not to get our feet wet.<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03320.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03320.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >No, the roof didn't collapse, it seems that the tunnel's builders found the sandstone stronge enough to warrant not spending the time to add in an unnecessary layer of bricks. That, or a cheap sub-contractor was trying to cut costs.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Next, we dropped into the large concrete outfall of the Triple Helix Drain, and the mist that poured from the gaping entrance.</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> This thing is big, big enough to drive a car into. It even crossed our minds to ride our bike's in next time (if we didn't mind going through the inches of water that flowed through the center).</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03321.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03321.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Looking back at the entrance of the West Kittsondale Drain.<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03322.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03322.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Rato in the sewer.<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03324.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03324.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >There was something extremely photogenic about this part of the tunnel. Too bad the rest was chocked with mist.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">So we pushed on, jumping over the stream of water, from one side to another, to avoid the occasional waterfalls that poured in from the ceiling, filling the already dank air with drops of water that made photography in most of the drain impossible.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03328.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03328.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Visibility was nearly nill. There is one of those water falls here too, somewhere behind all this mist... I think.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Not too far in we found a set of rungs leading up the side of the tunnel, into a small hole in the concrete over our heads. As I stepped beneath it, I was hit with a blast of air. There was a continuous wind blowing out and down into the tunnel from it. I climbed up and looked in. The air, again, was very thick, making photography all but impossible. I emerged into what appeared to be a very tall concrete tunnel. At my level was metal grating, over six feet beneath me, was the tunnel floor. The roof was high enough to making walking atop the grating easy, but I didn't trust it and was concerned about the source of the air, so we decided that we should continue down the main tunnel, in search of the "helix" spiral staircases that give this drain its name. I have no idea what that place was, if anyone has any idea, leave a comment, I'd like to know!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">This tunnel had the worst visibility of any underground place I have ever been in. The air, especially near waterfalls, was thick with large </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">water</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> particles and slime that floated through the air. Not only does it hamper photography, but makes breathing unpleasant, and cuts the effectiveness of flashlights. My Mini-Mag could barely reach over a dozen feet, and my LED head lamp was nearly useless.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Eventually, we found a side tunnel. The air was about as thick as where we were coming from, but there was hardly any water so we started down in. The roof was low, low enough that I hit my head once when I wasn't paying attention to it. The tunnel turned to the left, and pretty soon, we came to what looked like a stair case. We had reached the first helix.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03336.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03336.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Water flows down the stairs at the base of the helix.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I'm not great at judging distances, but we climbed </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >a long way</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> up the stairs, of which the steps were rather small and seemed to be made with the idea the people might need to climb them in-mind.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03333.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03333.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >The designers may have chose to add these steps to avoid the erosion that would otherwise be caused by water dropping such a long distance.<br /><br /></span><span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">We reached the top of the stairs winded, and entered a room, with a hole in a wall leading to a manhole shaft high above, and a large circular culvert leading a short distance to another dropshaft. We took our first break of the entire day before we stated back down the helix, to push on further into the tunnel.<br /><br /><embed style="width: 400px; height: 326px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-7043719336908979017&hl=en"></embed><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Video from on the way back out.</span><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">We didn't go much further into the drain. The roaring sound of what we hoped would be a massive waterfall turned out to be just a large volume of water flowing swiftly out of a side tunnel. It kicked up a disproportionately large amount of mist though!</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">So we turned back. Having spent over an hour walking at least a mile into the drain, we set our sites up-stream, at some of the smaller ones we had spotted on the way down.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03359.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03359.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Part of a fish vertebrae Rato found on the beach near the outfall.<br /><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">East River Flats Tunnels:</span></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><br /></span><span><span><span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The rest of the tunnels we explored were in what is called the East River Flats, a park and recreation area along the river. Here were several very interesting tunnels that are likely often passed up due to there small size.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The first was close to the path, and difficult to get into with out getting ones feet wet. Bending over I started into the small brick tunnel. Very soon, the tunnel started to slope up, enough that I was worried about slipping on the slick bricks. The bricks that were placed down the center of the tunnel, over which the water flowed, were red, and surrounded by a troff of concrete, while the roof of the tunnel was constructed out of orange brick.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03345.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03345.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Looking down the tunnel (you can make out where it levels at the base), I got the idea that after a rain storm, this tunnel would make an excellent water slide, if you brought something like a lunch tray to sit on.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Just a soon as I was really starting to appreciate the work done on this drain, it stopped. The drain ended at the base of a dropshaft not far from where the picture above was taken.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Biking on, we found, on the outside at least, another intriguing drain. The tiered outfall led back into a rather large brick tunnel. Walking back into it, we came to (surprise!) another dropshaft.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Then, I found something really interesting. At first glance, I barely thought anything of it, a concrete pipe, barely two feet in diameter, with a trickle of water running out of it, into the river. As I got closer, I noticed something odd. There was steam coming out of it. That got my attention. Inside, another surprise, roaches. I have never seen roaches in a storm sewer before. They like warm, damp places. Drains are usually cold, that is unless they link to, say, a </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >steam tunnel</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03348.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03348.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Cockroaches in the pipe.<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03349.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03349.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >The roaches were definitely not a factor in why we did not investigate further.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Time was starting to run short, so we left the steaming pipe.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Not far from the pipe, we came upon a steam tunnel entrance that I remember seeing on a map of the system. Locked up tight, but it did get me thinking even more about the pipe.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03357.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03357.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >The entrance, with an "oh so intimidating" amount of warning signs.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03351.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03351.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >What the flashy signs failed to do, a locked steal gate did, but there is always another way in.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">So we didn't make it to Minnehaha, but I'm not sorry. What we found was far more interesting (I'm not even convinced that it doesn't just end a few yards at the foot of a drop shaft).</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Still to come:</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Pushing deeper in to the Triple Helix, and finding the source of our "steam pipe".</span></span></span></span></span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/">http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/</a></div>Spazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172137362684433408noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28357719.post-1153521273894651952006-07-21T17:21:00.000-05:002007-07-03T14:42:03.226-05:00U of M East Bank Storm Drains<span style="font-family: courier new; font-style: italic;">6<br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/WashAveBrdg.0.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/WashAveBrdg.0.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Locati</span></span><span style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">on:</span> East Bank of Mississippi River, near the Washington Ave. Bridge<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Crew:</span> Cheese, Deadhead Bob, Rataphobe, & Spaz<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mission Time:</span> 1 hrs<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Difficulty:</span> Easy.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">We wanted to meet at 1:00, but it turned out we didn't leave my place until past 3:00. Rataphobe, the newest member of the crew, slept through his alarm (which turned out to be "in his head"), and then got lost on his way over! Eventually though, the four of us got on our bikes, and road over to campus, where we locked up our bikes near the river bank. On the way to the storm drain outfall, we passed the blocked steam tunnel entrance. We were going to give it another look, but someone was catching zzz's in it this time.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Minutes later, we were crawling through the spider tunnel. "Why?" Quite simply, to see what was in the other side.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">We made our way down the concrete tunnel keeping our feet dry by straddling the trickle of water flowing down the center. That was, at least until we reached the half way point, there water flowed down a mini water fall from a pipe above (there was also a drop shaft on the left with about a foot deep pool beneath it), and a damn of debris trapped enough red, rust colored silt on the on the other side, to make a several inch deep mess. Some us changed in to sandals at this point, some kept their boots on, while the rest went bare-foot.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03210.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03210.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Looking down the tunnel. The floor is covered in some very wet sand, but easy to walk on.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Soon the floor became covered in pebbles, and we could see a wall blocking our tunnel. To the left was another dropshaft.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03219.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03219.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >The End. The drop shaft of The Cess Pool of Death is just out of sight, to the left.<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03214.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03214.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >The glowing Cess Pool of Death (illuminated by my head lamp).<br /><br /></span><span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">That was pretty much it. On the way back we noticed a few things we had not seen on the way in. First was a metal grate in the ceiling near the half way point, and just above us, what looked like a steam tunnel, running perpendicular to our drain. It wouldn't budge for us. The next was a similar hatch in the roof, but this one was a solid sheet of metal, which had been bolted in place, and then the nuts soddered. Bummer.</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03221.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03221.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Left to right: Rataphobe, Deadhead Bob, & Cheese.<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03222.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03222.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >A very cool shot with the lights on.<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03233.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03233.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Spider webs on the roof of the tunnel near the entrance.<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03237.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03237.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >I actually ended standing up right into this stuff when we climbed in. The webs got in my hair, and then I had spiders hanging in my face, crawling on my neck, oh it was fun!</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">At least I got some cool shots. We discussed biking down to Minnehaha, but our stomachs, wallets, and schedules dashed our hopes of exploring the Amphitheater Drain, at least for the day.</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/">http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/</a></div>Spazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172137362684433408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28357719.post-1153250076371700802006-07-18T14:03:00.000-05:002007-07-03T14:44:21.611-05:00U of M East Bank Storm Drains Recon<span style="font-style: italic;font-family:courier new;" >5<br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/WashAveBrdg.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/WashAveBrdg.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Locatio</span></span><span style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">n:</span> East Bank of Mississippi River, near the Washington Ave. Bridge<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Crew:</span> Spaz (me)<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mission Time:</span> 1/2 hrs<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Difficulty:</span> Easy</span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">I happened to find myself biking down the river road this morning when I remembered seeing something on some person's web page late one night, about a tunnel entrance on the opposite bank, near where I was. I spotted not one, but two concrete structures on the far bank, and having nothing but time to kill, decided to check them out.<br />I crossed back over the river, through the university, and locked my bike up down by the long stairs from Coffman. From there, I hiked along a foot trail beneath the cliffs.<br />The first structure was just a concrete tunnel leading back into the river bank. A sign near the entrance warned of high pressure steam and CCTV surveillance cameras. S</span><span style="font-family:georgia;">surveillance cameras, yah right.</span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03138.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03138.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-style: italic;">The mouth of the tunnel was blocked by a iron gate. There was no way this was gonna budge</span><br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03136.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03136.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-style: italic;">A look through the gate, and down into what becomes a sandstone tunnel. Beyond the darkness, the lower level U of M East Bank Steam Tunnels.</span><br /><br />Defeated, I decided to move on to my next objective.<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03139.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03139.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Looking back across the river at the Washington Ave. Bridge from the blocked steam tunnel entrance.</span><br /><br />A few minutes later, I was looking down at the other structure that I had seen from across the Mississippi. It looked like the entrance to a bunker. I walked up to the door, to see if there was a way to open it. Unfortunately, the door was barred, by three bars of iron, bolted across the heavy door, but </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">where there is a will, there </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >is</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> a way</span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03149.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03149.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >The entrance to what ever is on the other side was barred shut. No one has gone through there for years.</span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03144.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03144.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >A very large spider sits in the middle of its web near the door, only a taste of what is to come.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">There is always another way in, especially in Urban Exploring, and what you seek might be closer that you think. That is what I did, I stopped to think... and listen. Soon I was ducking through a cement culvert beneath "the bunker", waving my spider wand (a stick I used to clear the nearly solid masses of sizeable spiders and cobwebs) in front of me as I went.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">A few yards in, I arrived at a spot where a metal grate that would have welcomed people entering through the door, had been broken down (not an easy task), to provide access up in to the tunnel.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03151.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03151.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Water flows through the drain from campus above, through the tunnel, and into the river.<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC03157.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC03157.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Standing up through the grate, and looking in to the still blackness beyond. This is as far as I got.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Lacking flashlights and backup, I didn't go any further in, so I went and ate breakfast/lunch at Coffamn, but will return soon. It is possible that this storm drain tunnel links to the U of M Steam Tunnels further back.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/">http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/</a></div>Spazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172137362684433408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28357719.post-1152249318941175642006-07-06T23:50:00.000-05:002007-07-03T14:42:03.227-05:00Return to the Nicollet Island Utility Tunnels (Satan's Cave)<span style="font-family: courier new; font-style: italic;">4<br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/NicolletIsland.1.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/NicolletIsland.1.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Location:</span> Nicollet Island</span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Crew:</span> Cheese & Spaz</span> <span style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />Mission Time</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">:</span> 2 hrs (underground)<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Difficulty:</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> Moderate</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">-</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 204, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Easy</span></span><br /><span style="font-family:webdings;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">After an unsuccessful attempt to make a return trip several weeks ago (in which incompetence on the part of all involved caused us to believe that we were trapped beneath the manhole through which we entered the tunnels), Cheese and I returned for a more thorough exploration of the complicated tunnel network (as that is what it was revealed to be).</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Unlike in our previous expedition, we took time to explore many of the side caves (due in part to the fact that dry weather made their exploration possible without walking in several inches of mud), leading off from the main brick tunnels. Most were dead ends, or were blocked by sand, but more led into other small caves. We also realized that the main brick tunnel snakes all over the island. At one point, we found a manhole leading to the surface above with climbable rungs. It turned out that it surfaces right in front of someone's front yard!</span><br /><br /></span></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02845.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02845.0.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >This large sanitary sewer pipe crosses one of the first side tunnels we encountered after our decent. The iron panel is, in fact, a door that opens inwards to provide access, as we found later...<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02851.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02851.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >A more typical side tunnel for the first section of brick tunnel.<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02856.0.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02856.0.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Pipes and hoses protruding from the water pipe that runs the length of the tunnel, into a hole in the wall.<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02860.0.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02860.0.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Interesting drip-formations beneath a rung less manhole shaft.<br /><br /></span><span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">We proceeded down the brick tunnel, and to the small hole in its side that leads to the first cave.</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02863.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02863.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Cheese crawling through a side tunnel that opens up into the first cave.<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02865.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02865.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >The sand stone in this section was eroded up into the cave's limestone ceiling.<br /><br /></span><span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">We made our way through the first cave more slowly than in our first visit, when we believed it to be the actual Satan's Cave, and were expecting to stumble upon the shrine, just around the next turn,</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02868.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02868.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Cheese, about to climb down into the first cave.<br /></span><span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">On each side of the first cave is an entrance to a sandstone tunnel. I don't know where either lead, and will need to check them out when we return.</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02875.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02875.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >An entrance to tunnel that crosses the cave.<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02876.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02876.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >The tunnel continues on the other side.<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02877.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02877.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >A look at the roof of the cave, and what could come crashing down on us (however unlikely that would be).<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02879.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02879.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.frozencrystal.com/places/nisland.htm"><span style="font-style: italic;">"Dragons ^"</span></a><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">We continued on, back into the brick tunnel, passing by Satan's Cave for the moment to have a look at where else it goes under the island. We explored many sandstone side tunnels that at times became quite small. They connected to each other, and back into the brick tunnel in several places.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02880.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02880.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> <span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Another sewer pipe, very similar to the one in the first side tunnel, maybe another part of it. Note the open iron door in the brick-work.<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02881.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02881.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >"mommy, what does raw sewage look like?"...<br /><br /></span><span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Time waits for no man, and we were running short, so we decided that we had better check out Satan's Cave and the shrine before we had to leave.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02882.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02882.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >graffiti on the wall, next to where we dropped in from the brick tunnel.<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02884.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02884.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Looking back, in the opposite direction of the shrine. Barely visible to the right is the part of the cave that leads back the the drop-point.<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02893.0.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02893.0.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >An evil smiley carved into the sandstone near the shrine.<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02906.0.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02906.0.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Another demon face.<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02909.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02909.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">This wax (actually, I think it is plastic) head sits in an alcove carved into the cave wall, and is probably the creepiest thing down there.</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02910.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02910.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Another shot of Wax Head (and yes that is a proper noun now).</span><br /><br />Cheese brought his Zippo down with us this time in hopes of lighting the numerous candles, but most had already been burned down to nothing. Note to self: Bring new candles.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02919.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02919.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Does anyone know Russian? What does the flag on the shrine say?</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02927.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02927.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The shrine, with the one candle we managed to light</span>.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02931.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02931.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Cheese poses with his Zippo.<br /><br /></span><embed style="width: 400px; height: 326px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-4960783839090765712&hl=en"><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">About a minute of video from Satan's Cave.<br /></span><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02936.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02936.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >More graffiti. Any NOFX fans out there?<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02937.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02937.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >"The Earth keeps some vibration going there in your heart, and that is you, and if the people find you can fiddle, then fiddle you must, for all your life."<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02943.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02943.0.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >"The world was not given to us by our parents, but loaned to us by our children" (actually a Kenyan proverb)<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">We eventually decided that it was time to leave, and headed back to the drop-point, facing a challenging climb out. On the way, I spotted a small sand stone tunnel, just large enough to crawl through. I had heard that there was a crawl tunnel that led from the cave, back up to the brick tunnel, and figured that this must be it. It followed a slight incline for several yards, before emerging back into the brick tunnel, just feet from the drop-point. I highly recommend this path as an alternative to the drop.</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02946.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02946.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Cheese, about to start making his way through the crawl tunnel.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">So yah, we came, we saw, we kicked some cave ass, and we will be back. We aren't finished with Satan's Cave yet.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02949.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02949.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Looking back down at Cheese again, as I climb back up the manhole shaft to the surface.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/">http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/</a></div>Spazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172137362684433408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28357719.post-1150388810940237312006-06-15T11:26:00.000-05:002007-07-03T14:50:17.890-05:00Minnehaha Creek Amphitheater Drain Recon<span style="font-style: italic;font-family:courier new;" >3<br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/MinnehaAmpDrain.0.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/MinnehaAmpDrain.0.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Location:</span> Minnehaha Park</span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Crew:</span> Cheese & Spaz<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mission Time :</span> 5 mins (in drain)<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Difficulty:<a></a></span> N/A<br /></span><span style="font-family:georgia;"> Cheese and I were all set to check it out. We found the entrance with no problem (its hard to miss), and I squeezed through the gate inside.</span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">The drain is massive, large enough to drive a small truck in to. After walking a few yards into the darkness, I could see a massive hole in the floor, into which rushed all the water from the drain. I grabbed a lose metal railing that ran back along the wall on my right and proceeded to move past the hole. I didn't get to far though as the water behind the hole extended from wall to wall. I walked back to the entrance where Cheese was waiting, and told him about the impediment, so we just climbed the cliffs around the creek before returning.</span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">We'll be back, next time with waterproof boots!</span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/">http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/</a></div>Spazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172137362684433408noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28357719.post-1154905305454447692006-05-21T17:44:00.000-05:002007-07-03T14:42:03.227-05:00Trapped Beneath Nicollet Island<span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: courier new; font-style: italic;">2</span></span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/NicolletIsland.1.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 321px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/NicolletIsland.1.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Location:</span> Nicollet Island</span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Crew:</span> Cheese, Deadhead Bob, Spaz, & a friend</span><span style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />Mission Time</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">:</span> 40 mins<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Difficulty:</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> Challenging</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 204, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"></span></span></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">It is a story that goes to show, keeping a cool head, and not panicking, can get you out of what could otherwise be a very difficult situation.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">It was the final weekend of Art-A-Whirl, and I had spent most of it looking at galleries, or crashing all night at my friend's place. We had been discussing making a return trip to Satan's Cave, possibly with some mapping equipment, such as a compass, to better understand the tunnel system. After considering a midnight run, we opted to go the next day. Though the next morning, having spent the night on the PS2 and Game Cube, no one was up for going when I brought it up.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">After half a dozen phone calls, I finally got the entire crew to commit. Of course, it was much later than the planned meeting time that they all showed up at my place. Apparently it took them all two hours to buy some snacks that we planned on taking down with us, and to change it to appropriate attire. So once again we set off to Satan's Cave.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">When we arrived, we realized that we had not brought the crowbar with us, and had no way of opening the manhole. For the next half hour we looked for a suitable lever, breaking several wooden sticks in the process. Deadhead and I scoured the near by railroad tracks, while Cheese stayed by the manhole, and our friend, already rather uneasy about the whole plan, looked around in the tall grass for... I'm not exactly sure what he hoped to find.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I was about to give it up when Deadhead found exactly what we were looking for, a strong metal rod, about four feet long, lying near the tracks.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Before we opened it up, I brought up the idea that we should close the cover over us to prevent any careless passerby from following us, and to not arouse suspicion. The idea sis not go over too well and Cheese informed me that, "If you want to do that, you're gonna have to do it yourself."</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">So one by one, we started down. I was just about to bring up the rear when I saw an old lady ambling up the path. I froze. </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >What had she seen? What was she going to do?</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I backed off from and walked as casually as I could around to the other side of a tree. There I waited, not daring to go back to the hole and tell the guys what was happening. All she gave me was a mildly disapproving stare. She was walking away when, echoing up the open manhole, came Cheese calling, "hey, what's going on?!"</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Fuck!</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">What, of all the possible reasons for me not coming down, could yelling at me like that, for all the world to hear help? I watched the old lady, and to my relief, being hard of hearing I guess, she just continued to walk away.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Moments later I was starting my own decent.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">"I'm gonna close the cover." I called down the shaft.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">My friend protested and I decided to only close it half way. What good closing it half way would have done I still don't know, but in the my rush after one close call, it seemed to be a good idea. Unfortunately, round objects slip, and just as I got the heavy cover about half way over the hole, with a deep grinding sound, it slid soundly shut catching a bit of my finger in the process, and for the second time that evening;</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" > Fuck! (followed by)<br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><span style="font-style: italic;"> "What the hell did you do?"</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> "You fucking moron"</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> "God damn it!"</span><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I gave the cast iron disk a few testing pushed with one arm, to no effect.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Climbing to the bottom, I let Cheese, being the biggest out of all of us, take a try.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">For the next 10 minutes or so, Cheese tried the manhole cover, pushing his arms, or the top of his head. Over and over there was the grinding of rusty metal on rusty metal, followed by a sharp </span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >thud</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, and the manhole cover fell the inch or so Cheese was able to raise it.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Our friend wasn't taking all this well, and when I asked him what was wrong, he informed me, for the first time, that he was claustrophobic.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >He knew where we were coming, he had seen photos, I had warned him that once we were down, we were down... And NOW is a good time to be telling me this?</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I'm getting pissed now. Frustrated.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >How are we gonna get out? What if we can't? Our friend's brother knows where we are, so eventually, our some family will come and haul us out, but we'd get in a shit load of trouble. Worst would be the cops coming along too. We did bring plenty of food. Maybe if we knock or yell, someone walking by will come over...<br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">My confidence isn't improved when my friend starts thanking me for bringing down with us, what great friends we have </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >been</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, ect.</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Cheese is getting worn out, and Deadhead is positive that although he is a hobbit up to the rest of us, he can do something. I agreed, he has spent a lot of time camping in the Boundary Waters, and can be very resourceful. Shortly though, he reports that there is no way he is going to get it to budge. I am the next smallest, so I decide to head up too, to see if there is room for both of us to get there and do something, but there is not.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I'm set to try it on my own one last time. This will pretty much be our last shot. I brace with my back, lift with my legs, body, and arms, and the manhole gives. I push myself up through it and move it off it's base. Moments later, everyone is up, and the only thing keeping them from killing me is the joy of being on the surface.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">So we spend the next few minutes enjoying the food and drinks we brought, on a spectacular night, with an excellent view of downtown, before everyone heads home, and gets ready for school the next day. I still had homework.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/">http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/</a></div>Spazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172137362684433408noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28357719.post-1149119323444149252006-05-15T18:48:00.000-05:002007-07-03T14:42:03.228-05:00Nicollet Island Utility Tunnels (Satan's Cave)/Introduction<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">1<br /></span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/NicolletIsland.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/NicolletIsland.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:courier new;" >Location:</span><span style="font-family:courier new;"> Nicollet Island</span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Crew:</span> Dead-head Bob, Cheese, & Spaz<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mission Time:</span> 1 1/2 hrs<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Difficulty:</span> Easy<br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-family:georgia;" >The origin of Urban Decay, and our journey into urban exploration.....</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">There is an entire city's worth of places that most people don't know a thing about. Tunnels, caves, canals, all right beneath our feet, or behind a barred iron door. There is a community of people who explore these places. Sometimes they are called crooks, sometimes trespassers, other times fools, but they are explorers. They go places people are not supposed go to, and see things others do not see. "Why?" Curiosity. Adventure. A generally inquisitve nature. A search for answers. Urban Explores generally suffer form one, or a number of the above mentioned mental dissorders.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">So do I. After having spent far to much time reading the sites of </span></span></span><span style="font-family:courier new;">other urban explorers such as <a href="http://www.actionsquad.org/index.html">Max Action</a>,</span><span style="font-family:courier new;"> I decided to give it a try, and use my camera for something other than tormenting my friends. One evening as I was walking along some railroad tracks near my house with a few of those said friends, I brought up an idea that I had been thinking about for a while, that we should try and find Satan's Cave. I had done my homework, reading "mission logs", examining satilite maps (not really that usefull), listening in on a little first hand testiomony, and stomping around on the island my self, I was certian of at least one enterance.<br />So it began, around noon, next day, we packed flashlights, extra batteries, and water, and biked to Nicollet Island. When we got there, we ditched the crowbar that we had tied to Bob's bike in some tall grass near the entrance, and locked our bikes up on the other side of the island. The three of us then returned to the manhole cover, and began our climb down, into the pitch-black abyss...<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02493.1.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02493.1.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" > Railroad tracks near my house, the day before the expedition.<br /></span><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02495.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02495.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" > Some local wildlife we found where we locked up our bikes. There was a pretty cool garden snake there too, but it slithered under a rock before I could snap a photo.<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02497.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02497.0.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Deadhead Bob sits on the pipe that runs the length of the brick tunnels. Often times we had to walk along the top of it, as it would be flanked by water and deep mud.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02499.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02499.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >The brick tunnel was comfortably sized, but just not quite tall enough to stand in.<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02507.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02507.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Cheese Standing in the entrance to the first cave, after crawling through a side tunnel.<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02509.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02509.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >The first cave is one of the largest on the island, and connects to the brick tunnel on the other end.<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02514.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02514.0.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Left to right: Spaz (me), Deadhead Bob, holding a sign left by a <a href="http://www.frozencrystal.com/places/nisland.htm">previous expedition</a>, & Cheese.<br /></span><span><br /><span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">When we reached the end of the first cave, we reentered the brick tunnel, and followed it a little farther to the right, and came upon another small hole in the brick-work, that dropped down in to another large sandstone cave.</span><span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >/////*Map of Satan's Cave*/////</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">________| | </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><-shrine area</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">| ___.____ |</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">| |______| |</span><br /><span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">| ________|</span><br /><span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">| | </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><--drop down into cave</span><br /><span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">=========== </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >(brick tunnel)<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">From there, we made the first right, walked down another large sand stone tunnel (though not quite as big as the first cave), and made a left in to the shrine area. On the way out we made a right, and found ourselves walking through a different section of the cave. At the end, we made another left, and walked back to the drop, where we made use of a broken plastic milk crate and rope to climb back up.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02516.0.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02516.0.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Demon faces carved into the sandstone walls around the shrine area of Satan's Cave.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02515.0.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02515.1.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >The shrine, covered in candles, surrounded by empty beer bottles. I can't believe that I forgot my matches back at my place.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02518.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02518.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >The wax head, very freaky!<br /><br /></span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/1600/DSC02524.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7136/3003/400/DSC02524.0.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >The shrine.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">After spending a while in Satan's Cave, Cheese and Deadhead Bob wanted to leave, so we backtracked through the first cave, down the tunnel, and up the man hole.</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/">http://urbandecayue.blogspot.com/</a></div>Spazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172137362684433408noreply@blogger.com4