Spring 2008

Hey folks

All of the snow is almost melted and we are anxious to get back on track with exploring. The Winter hiatus that began with the epic toe freezing in Lucky 13/St. Anthony Drain deterred us from most underground exploring, but we are back on track and prepared for some grand adventures! MORE EXPLORING!


A visit to the store will provide us with waders so that our feet never get wet again and therefore making our exploring balls grow six sizes! Upcoming updates will include:

•Waterfall Drain
•Phalen/Trout Brook
• ToT
• Tailraces
• Loads of other cool abandoned shit.

Ill never forget extra batteries again <3

-Goxkok

National Geographic Caves

Hey folks

Due to lack of an update for a while Ill throw up a quick recap of a short exploring adventure from a few days back....

I got a call from Jasper asking me if I was free that night to go explorin with Ebenezer. Nothing much was going on that night, so I ran outside and got picked up by Ebenezer in his car with Jasper along in the passenger's seat.

The plan: some interesting sandstone caves on the West Side of the river. We were hoping to explore some extensive caves, though after much mucking around suspiciously along the bluff, we settled for exploring the National Geographic Caves. Jasper led the way and we snuck around an abandoned building and through a small hole into the cave.

Fucking sandy! Sand piles everywhere and getting all over my shoes. It was like being on a beach, minus the heat. And the Sun. We set off into the cave, passing by some cool carved staircases that wound up into the bluffs. I really wanted a photo, but my camera batteries were being a little selective in what they wanted to photograph (blah blah blah I know, bring spares).

Here, Jasper shines a 4D LED Maglite down one of the many long sand passages

The tunnels were maybe ten feet high and wound all through the bluffs. Lots of bats hung hibernating on the walls and we walked carfully around them, carful not to wake the poor bastards up. We came across a table with loads of beer bottles and empty Karkov Vodka handles (classy!) and a threating note to some kids who apparently had been trashing the place.

The most interesting part of the cave system involved a awkward climb up a huge sandy pile. At the top was a huuuge underground room with high arching cielings made of a different kind of rock (limestone mebbe? I dont know my rocks) Tea candles littered the scene and a freaky plastic halloween pumpkin sat on top of the underground hill. I fucking wish I could have gotten a photo of this place, but the camera seriously was on Ambien or something. Ill definetly come back here with more tea lights and ighters galore to take waaay better photos because this subterranean room is really sweet.

Further exploration revealed a lot of storage for what seemed like random junk, mostly scaffolding and other building equipment. We poked around a bit more, and headed back as we all had class tomorrow and it as getting past midnight.

A panic attack was had by all when Ebenezer couldnt find his keys, then we all calmed down 5 minutes later when we got back to the car and they were sitting on his hood!

More on this cave later

-GoxKok

Mouser Week IX Awards Ceremony

Hey folks!

The kickoff to Mouser Week IX was a great opportunity to meet a lot of people from around the Metro Area. We had a great time getting to know so many people from the community and have a chance to talk to some really interesting folks.

We headed out from St. Paul and took 3 different busses to get to the Perkins, the 84, the 16 and the 2. We had no idea what to expect when we got there, so we sort of wandered in awkwardly and were warmly greeted by everyone at the table. Dinner was great: the combonation of the food, conversation and people was perfect. We sat mainly with Katwoman, Gatsby, Ben Again and Jasper, though many others stopped by to chat, get our names and share stories.

Here's a shot of the gang by Ben Again:


After dinner, Franklin, Jacques and I carpooled over to West K with Ben Again and Spaz. We slid awkwardly down the embankment and headed up the drain to the final helix, where we waited for the rest of the group. Spaz and Ben had other plans for the night, so they headed out and we waited with our lights turned off at the foot of the helix.

We sat in the dark, chating as we watched the lights bobbing slowly towards us in the distance: two LEDs, one red light and occasionally Freak's gigantic spotlight lit up the tunnel. Watching these lights coming down the drain was one of the weirdest sights we have ever seen: the lights bobbed mysteriously and hypnotically as we stared them down.

Here are Goxkok, Jacques and Franklin Delano Nothing , after wainting a good 15 mins for people to get to the meeting place.


Then someone who clambered up the slippery incline of slime found a wandering cat in the upper drain levels!! He brought it back down to our level and we found it didnt have an eye and was limping. Someone lent their bag to Freak and he and DC hauled it out of the drain later and brought it to a hospital.


The awards started after Freak lit a few bag lanterns and tea lights and the upper part of the Helix was packed with explorers. Stories were shared, amazing homemade awards were handed out to the winners and still more introductions were being made. So many people to meet!


Jacques, Franklin Delano Nothing and I needed to bus back to Jacques house, so we ducked out right after the awards and trudged with Robin and his fiancee back to the outfall, clambering around and slipping on the huge ice-pwn-wall near the entrance.



We made it back safe to Jacques and passed out after a hot bowl of soup.

Hopefully, this was just the first of a few explorations this week. Check back soon!

-Goxkok

This Upcoming Week

Hey folks!

Mouser Week IX is upon us this weekend, so Franklin, Jacques, Goxkok, Jasper and Hollers will be headed out en masse to Perkins on Sat. to meet up with the rest of the TC gang and watch the awards ceremony and hopefully participate a few times during the coming week of explorations around the Twin Cities.

A solid week of exploration awaits! Stay tuned for harrowing tales and amazing sights!

-GoxKok

ADM Grain Elevators

Hey people. The exploring crew is back and dressed warmly for this brutal Minnesota weather. It was a bit warmer the other day (relative to the chilly past few days) so we decided to get our asses into gear and get out and explore. The freezing cold and our epic toe-freezing of the Lucky 13 / Saint Anthony drain sort of deterred us from water involved explorations.

But, the call of the grain towers proved to be too strong. Even though it was balls cold outside, we go ahold of Franklin and picked his sorry ass up at his house. Adventures ensued:

Jacques and I drive over to the SuperAmerica to fill up his struggling gas tank.

We slam our doors shut to fill up gas and buy rockstar, and realize shortly after that WE FUCKING LOCKED JACQUES KEYS IN HIS CAR! Dammit! We shamefully called up the only other person with a key (his mommy) and she drove over, pissed, and opened the car for us. We got in, and drove off to the West Side to pick up our buddy.

Franklin Delano Nothing was waiting ever patiently for us, and wasted no time in hopping right in. We motored off to Minneapolis along University Avenue and spent at least 10 mins looking for a parking spot suitable for Jacques behemoth of a car.

Parking finished, we looked in front of us at the gigantic building (this picture borrowed from e is for ericka on flickr)
We evaded a simon delivers truck and crawled in a small hole and entered a smelly, dark and grain-encrusted building. We were in! Explored the majority of the first floor, which ended up being mostly control rooms, electricity, lockers and bathrooms. Some cool pictures ensued:


Here Jacques poses with some rusted out and decrepit machinery shit. We guessed it was some electrical switch station, and found one station identical to this one for every silo. Some more poking around led to the discovery of some gigantic electrical stations. Switchbox upon switchbox spanned all the way down this hallway.


We followed the hallway to a section of old offices and pawed a bit through the empty desks and found a VHS Tape and nabbed it, thinking it might be something cool or at least, weird. Our exploration of the first floor ended at the end of the long hallway which ended at a set of stairs that led into the basement with a prominant sign warning us of some crazy gasses that probably dont exist, but still... we didnt want to fuck with crazy gases. Here, Jacques poses with another switchbox near the ladders.

We headed up a narrow staircase that climbed all the way up to the top of the grain towers, at least a dozen flights in a tiny shaft with sporadic windows. It was the upper levels of the towers that were really interesting, and sadly, this is where my camera batteries finally gave out against the brutal cold... so you cant see the pictures.

The upper level included some sketchy stairs, many ways onto the roof (not dark enough to go out yet) and some cool spaceship-like hallways that led to other rooms on the roof. The kicker though was a long passage that spanned the whole upper-floor that gave access to the top of each silo.. we walked along this area from one end of the elevator to the other, tripping balls as we peered over into the silos, hundreds of feet down to their cement bottoms. We definetly tossed a plastic bottle over the edge, and it took at least 8 or 9 seconds to get to the bottom.

There was no way back down on the other side, so we headed back to the sketchy stairway down after poking our heads outside on the roof: turned out to be way too cold in the wind so we'll come back another day to get photos of D-Town mpls. Here's one last shot of the upper hallway as we head back with the light boosted a bit:

We exited the way we came, out the little hole and into the night to go grab McFuckingDonalds on the West Side before watching that VHS we got:

Turned out to be an insurance claim tape: water had spilled onto the train tracks, effectivy freezing the train cars into place. ADM i guess spent thousands trying to free the railcars and used this tape to document their spending. The footage was just a worker with shitty camera angles filming workers trying to free the train from the ice with some awkward commentary. Maybe we'll have a screening of this blockbuster film someday: keep checking back ;)

-GoXkok, Jacques and Frankling Delano Nothing

Finals

No, we haven't died, it just got really cold all of a sudden and snowed a lot. We're headed out exploring soon, finals are just kicking our asses!

On the list to do during winter break:
- Grain Towers
- Trout Brook and or Phaelen

Peace -Gox

Dan's Drain / Davern Drain

Finally, Dan's Drain! After 3 different trips to find that damn oufall, we finally went and explored all of that elusive drain. The entrance was just below my feet the whole time...

I called a fellow explorer named Jasper last night and, thankfully, she was up for going draining. I biked to her house and we got all of our stuff together for an adventure underground. We left her place and biked to a spot near the outfall where we locked our bikes up to a nearby tree. We then went on a bit of hike through the woods and found ourselves at the outfall near the river. We slipped into the drain with no difficulty and found ourselves a room underground with two different passages.:

One was an RCP headed off to the left, while the other was a low, rectangular tunnel going to the right. We elected to go down the RCP, as we were equipped with tall, rubber boots and we were anxious to try them out. We sloshed upstream and It got a lot shallower until the tunnel became a crazy triangular shape! The tunnel actually looked like a triangle and continued on this way for as long as we could see.

We hiked a ways up the drain and began to hear the sound of falling water from a long distance. The sound got louder and louder an louder until we emerged in a HUGE ROOM underground shaped sort of like the tunnel from which we had just come. A huge dropshaft poured water from a shallow draining shaft way above us and a second, dry dropshaft led to a grate on the surface. I knew my camera had very little battery, I whipped it out quick to take a picture:

This doesnt really give you the scale of this place....its really big. My batteries died right after this however, so I dont have any more pictures of Dan's drain, even though it got even more interesting as we went on.

The atrium turned out to be a dead end, so Jasper and I turned back to go to the other passage. We made it back to the outfall in no time, and went into the crouching, rectangular tunnel. After a few hundred feet, it opened up into an older, coffin shaped passage that headed straight into the city. Another triangular drain went off to our left, but we continued down the older shaft and vowed to return to this passage.

A few dropshafts later and a lot of weird graffiti (Including "BOMB SADDAM 1993) we turned down a walking height side tunnel that, according to the graffiti, goes under Norfolk Ave. The tunnel was of a different make than the previous one: it had the look of an old sewer with the depressed brick channel in the middle and cement walls to walk on on the side. The cieling was carved from the naked sandstone and wasnt round but triangular and cut sloppily. The tunnel was pocked with even smaller side tunnels leading to dropshafts that had amazing mineral and cave-like formations.

The tunnel went far and stopped abruptly at a dropshaft and catchbasin filled with really really clear water that Jasper almost walked right into. Above us was a ridiculously long dropshaft going up to the surface, and another dropshaft before that one had something even more interesting in it.

We turned back, and walked the long walk back to the main drain. We explored a few of these long offshoots, one, which was labeled as "West Seventh" went on for a ridiculously long time towards downtown and was coated with clay and a lot of really weird minerals. A few really cool dropshafts dotted the tunnel, and it dead ended after a long long trek. We turned around and headed back.

The main drain continued on for a while, but got shorter and shorter as the drop shafts grew more numerous. We ended at a dead end: time to head back to that one tunnel we havnt checked out yet.

That tunnel turned out to resemble the other triangular tunnel from the original branch at the outfall. We followed it down, and came across a raccoon a the bottom of a dropshaft a few feet away from us that scared the crap out of me and made Jasper shriek loudly. However, a closer (but not too close) inspection revealed that the raccoon had apparently fallen down the shaft and broken a leg, as it lay there and looked at us with pitying eyes with its leg folded awkwardly underneath its fat body.

We continued down the shaft and came to an identical atrium as the one pictured above, so we turned back and headed back to our bikes, popping out of a manhole near the outfall.