Log - 2002

 

tunnel trip #24 - December '02

 

We just did the very short stretch of tunnel between Miles and Lee. Tunneling is like an addiction... I need more, I always need more. Dicked around in Lee's crawlspace for a bit, found some cool stuff. Like steam pipe parts, the remains of a 1994-95 campus directory, and and old pull-tab Sprite can.

 

tunnel trip #23 - November '02 It was cold as nuts outside tonight. by that I mean 34 degrees, with 30mph winds. But the tunnels were nice and warm... We went in at the Miles/Barringer grate, and worked our way back to Lee. After poking about in Lee's crawlspace, we got back in the tunnel and headed back the way we came, stopping at the steam discharge by Vawter. It was going off more frequently than usual, so we backtracked, exiting out by Miles.

 

Burruss Hall - November '02 I got up on the roof of Burruss! And it was good. Ok, better than good. I was just looking for a place to relax and watch the sunset after a couple of rough exams, and Burruss' roof just happened to be unlocked. Must...return...with...camera...

 

tunnel trip #22 - November '02 Introduced someone new to tunneling tonight, which is always cool. We did just about the whole Agnew - New Chemistry run. And on a very good note, I have a new (and fully functional!) USB scanner. So I'm in the process of rebuilding my site from the ground up, to be hosted somewhere without ads! E-mail me and I'll send you an update when I make the switch.

 

tunnel trips #20 and #21 - September '02 The Big Two-Oh. Wow. So Panic of urbanadventure.org came to town this weekend. Chong and I showed him the Agnew-Cowgill run, and the stretch from Barringer to the Chapel. Yes, the tunnels were hot tonight. We did get to explore the new section of steam tunnel recently added on to the Derring tunnel - very cool. We used the relatively-exposed Barringer entrance while people were nearby, but we didn't get caught so it's all good. Plenty of pictures, and thirty minutes of quality video. And I swear I'll get those damn rooftop pictures up here soon, though I may need to break down and buy a new USB scanner first.

 

Summer '02 I had all kinds of great plans for exploring campus while everyone was away for the summer, but they all pretty much fell through. I did do some exploring with the creator of this website though - we found some cool stuff in Pamplin, but not much else new. Plenty of locked doors. I have three rolls of film that'll get uploaded as soon as I get my scanner working - I promise!

 

tunnel trip #19 - May '02

I had absolutely no intention of going tunneling tonight. But while on a 12am  walk around campus, I noticed some people acting kinda suspicious around one of the grates at the lower end of the drillfield. So I dropped in the Saunders entrance, hoping to surprise them in the tunnels somewhere. I've never actually run into anybody down there... I think it'd be cool, but it'd be scary as hell to see a flashlight coming at you in the darkness. But when I caught up to those people, they were above the grate in front of Pamplin - I don't know if they got there above ground or underground, but I wasn't about to pop up and ask. I continued on a little ways, until I found an entrance into Burruss's crawlspace that the BS Crew stumbled across during their most recent exploration. Too small to even crawl around in, but kinda cool none the less.

Oh yeah, check out my pimp-ass Fralin rooftop panoramic!

 

tunnel trip #18 - May '02 Ok, so the whole point of this trip was to see if the sub-tunnel to the new (front) section of the library is passable or not. And it would be, if you enjoy crawling on your stomach beneath a giant steam pipe. I wasn't really in the mood, so I passed. I did, however, find the sub-tunnel to Vawter. It's easy to miss, since you enter it through a hole in the tunnel ceiling, directly above the scary-as-hell steam discharge. After tunneling, I did a little dumpster diving (and made off with a pretty good haul), and happened to stumble across a couple workable entrances to a section of tunnel I haven't been able to explore yet. Soon enough...

 

tunnel trip #17, Pritchard and Lee - May '02 Exams are over and I needed to unwind, so I headed out for some solo tunneling. Dropped in the Cassell entrance around 1am, then headed for the Pritchard sub-tunnel. Getting in involved a tight squeeze under some pipes, but it was worth it. The Pritchard crawlspace was pretty cool, I'll have pictures up soon enough. After poking my way through the mud and muck for a bit, I backtracked and exited out through the sub-tunnel I came in. I headed down to the sub-tunnel to Lee, then squeezed underneath some more pipes to get in it. Lee's crawlspace wasn't as interesting as Pritchard's, so I just shot a few pictures before exiting out through the basement storage room.

 

tunnel trip #16 - April '02 Headed out around 1am with Chong, Thor, and Goldphish (hope I got that one right), to do the Cassell-Chapel run again. It was raining pretty hard, so there was water dripping down pretty heavily through manholes and random spots on the tunnel ceiling. We found a street sign in the Lee sub-tunnel (your guess is as good as mine), and I noticed that the sub-tunnel to the newer portion of the library looks almost passable. Made it all the way to where the impassible tunnel runs behind McBryde, then backtracked and exited at the Chapel.

 

Rooftops - April '02 Went out exploring with Chong, to see how many rooftops I could get up on. First we hit Engel's roof, then dropped down onto the short roof on the Engel-Fralin bridge, then climbed up onto Fralin's rooftop. Which is pretty cool, btw. There's all kinds of crazy ventilation shit up there. Unfortunately I left my camera behind... will have to head back later to get some pictures. We poked around Fralin and Engel some more, including the ever-interesting Engel storage room. Next up, we hit Seitz, and the roof of it's tower. Which is kinda lame compared to most of the other buildings. After Seitz, we couldn't make it up to any more rooftops (too many locked doors), so we called it a night.

 

Engel Hall - April '02 By chance, I found the door to the roof of Engel unlocked this afternoon. Since this was during the day and Engel isn't that tall, I didn't stay up there too long, for fear of being spotted. It was a pretty cool rooftop though, and it looks like it'd be possible to get to Fralin's roof from up there, since the two are connected. I shot half a roll of film up there... hope they turn out ok, because the chances of me finding that door unlocked again are slim to nil. Pics should be up in a few weeks.

 

tunnel trip #15 - April '02 Met up with the BS Crew again, for an exploration into the stretch of tunnel running along Washington Street and West Campus Drive. Noticed some neat new things... In the sub-tunnel to the grate across from Litton Reaves, there's a plastic pipe emerging from one wall that's just big enough for a skinny guy like me to squeeze through. It seems to lead to a small underground room, otherwise accessible only through manholes in the field above. Will have to check it out later. Also, there's a spot where you can look through a small hole in the tunnel wall, into the empty space below a flight of stairs in Hillcrest. Pretty cool.

 

Whittemore & Durham - March '02 Poked around Whittemore's penthouse mechanical room again. The roof was still locked though. Tried to get up on Durham's roof, but the penthouse mech room was locked. The small basement mechanical room wasn't though, so I shot a couple pictures down there, I'll have them up soon.

 

tunnel trip #14 - March '02

Fourteen trips into the steam tunnels? Shit, I had always planned on stopping at ten... You know, giving up while I was ahead.

Tonight I dropped in by Saunders around 1am, with the goal of checking out everything along this run that I hadn't yet. First I climbed down into the lower tunnel near Agnew, making my way to the locked door to Saunders' basement. Then I worked my way the other direction in the lower tunnel, squeezing my way along until I reached a wall where the pipes entered Seitz. Not a comfortable stretch of tunnel, by any means.

Returning to the main tunnel, I worked my way to the door to Burruss, and climbed up through the manhole into the crawlspace. Pretty cool. Can't really go anywhere - it's just a small chamber at one corner of the building - but it's still a neat place.

 

tunnel trip #13 - February '02 Met up with Turcicus and a couple of his friends around 2am, for a run from Cassell to the Chapel (with hopes of reaching the library). Some lights were on between Cassell and Miles that weren't before, and the heat didn't seem too bad either. I noticed a lot more things this trip than I did my last time in this section of tunnel, and the guys pointed out some cool things I walked right by (like the sub-tunnel to Barringer). I even made it to the door to the Library... talk about a tight squeeze, that sub-tunnel sucks! And I didn't even remember to take a picture of the door to the library. 

 

tunnel trip #12 - February '02

So tonight I got together with the cool guys of the BS Crew for a trip into the Ag Quad to Cowgill run. Dropped in around 1am, and took our time working through the tunnel. Nothing's really changed since the last time I was down there... The ceiling has caved in a little more in the sub-tunnel near Price, and some of the graffiti has changed... that's about it. The tunnels were surprisingly cool, for the most part, until we got to Burruss. From then on, until we reached the ladder down to the lower section, the heat was pretty intense. There were some drunk people above the manhole by Cowgill, it kinda freaked me out when I heard voices and the clanging sound of them stepping on the manhole cover. But everything ended well, we made a safe exit, I argued with a Pepsi machine (damn thing ate my money), and the freezing cold weather outside didn't feel so bad after all. Pictures coming soon, it's a big party weekend so don't hold your breath.

 

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