Thursday, April 09, 2009
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Actual Spelunking - Pepper Sauce Canyon - Tucson, AZ
Farmer John's Meat Packing Plant - Tucson
The Muse - Downtown Tucson
The old YMCA turned Theater turned Vacant. It was a friend of mine who introduced it to us and led the way. And as it turned out, it was an amazingly huge facility, complete with pool, basket ball courts, racketball courts, dance room, MPR, and a gaggle of classrooms. Just about the comprehensive pinnacle of my own urban spelunking in that respect.
We entered through the basement door into a classroom. Because of it's central location in town and easy access (no fences were climbed) it was clear that there was a kind of resident 'flow' through the building. The room we came into had a certian eirre air to it; dissheveled things, a couple of desks, writing on the chalk board. Each room after seemed to reflect the same look and we could never figure out why.
From the entrance we explored the bottom floor finding changing/shower rooms a couple more class rooms and a number of utility rooms full of boilers and such for the whole building. We moved slowly up the stairs and onto the first floor. However this was where ground level was and therefore it was well lit and quite visible to the street view with large windows. After a gentil scan of this floor, including a key locker that seemed to have more keys that expected still hanging, we moved upward. The second floor contained more classrooms and as we moved to the south of the building we found the real gems.
The gyms, racketball courts, and the suspicion that below us was the pool. After a quick once over we found our way down stairs and into the pool room. It was grand. A ceiling so far away it was impossible to discern detail with a flashlight and benieth it a pool to rival any high school competition pool, deep and long, drained.
We climbed down into the pool and ran around for a bit, however like any large room covered in tile, noise echoed and reflected and shook our bones with fright everytime we got our own sounds back. We decided from there to move through the pool locker room and then into the multi-purpose rooms and then back up stairs.
In our last effort to find roof access I opened a door to find the largest pidgeon roost I'd ever upset, dumping about 50 birds into my face, the hallway and fortunatly out the roof access hatch that was just above them. Once the door was clear we then moved out onto the roof to enjoy the subtle serene temporary ownership of space that accompanies any urban spelunking expierence. Sitting atop the roof we could see the bulk of Tucson, watch poice helicopters fly past in persuit of some college party, hear the hoots and screams from 4th ave, and in general watch the night glide by uneventful for so much of the city as we harmlessly tresspassed on condemned property, soon to be demoloshed.
(... draft in progress)
*These details are fictitious. This post in no way condones the violation of federal or state laws, vandalism, trespassing, or misuse of property. Copyright 2009 John Patrick Mizell
UA Tunnels - Getting In
Underground access points are doors. Because every building gets water, every building has a door that leads to the tunnel. These however are usually well locked, damn hard to find, or both. Yet, sometimes you'll get lucky. I can think of a few doors that may leave you in the wide open space of a building without any trouble.
One great way into a tunnel system is via a building in construction. Because they open access to the tunnel and leave the building wide open, i.e. no alarms and the doors unlocked. These buildings make for easy in and easy out points. Just be careful of the everpresent campus security and your step. Construction sites can be very dangerous and touching things or fiddling with equipment could lead to severe repercussions.
UA Tunnels - Touring
In general use the buddy system so you protect yourself if anything goes wrong - besides it's always better to tell the story about you and your buddy sitting on the curb with the cops anyway, right?
*These details are fictitious. This post in no way condones the violation of federal or state laws, vandalism, trespassing, or misuse of property. Copyright 2009 John Patrick Mizell
UA Tunnels - An Introduction
NOTE: An updated version of this post and others can be found at: www.johnmizell.com
The
*These details are fictitious. This post in no way condones the violation of federal or state laws, vandalism, trespassing, or misuse of property. Copyright 2009 John Patrick Mizell
Firsty
NOTE: An updated version of this post can be found at: www.johnmizell.com
I recently spent some time looking online for some places to explore here in Tucson - abandoned buildings, tunnels, stadiums, farm houses, etc. etc. [This will be referred to 'urban spelunking' for those of you not familiar with the term] To my dismay the only report I found online (this could be attributed to my lack of search skills) was that of a fellow who had posted to a forum asking if anyone had any tips or ideas for urban spelunking in Tucson because he was new and wanted to give it a shot.
Now I know, for a fact, that I'm not the only guy in
For those of you not familiar with urban spelunking - check out this reference site - it is amazing. Be extra sure to read the Theory and Ethics portion of the page.
SO - with that said, this will be my attempt at providing fellow Tucsonans with a urban spelunking resources - as meager as it may be.
-Cochise Alpha-Bravo
*These details are fictitious. This post in no way condones the violation of federal or state laws, vandalism, trespassing, or misuse of property. Copyright 2009 John Patrick Mizell