The UE Dream by K.A.O.S.

It seems to me that we're residing in the age of Urban Exploration 2.0. Things are different today than they were in the late 90's when UE first began to flourish. In those days Infiltration, the Cave Clan, Jinx and Action Squad were the big thing. It was all new, with fresh discoveries happening every week. The terrain was truly uncharted and those that set out into that unknown were explorers and adventurers in the truest sense. There were no guides, no maps or signposts.

The stories that came from those days were truly epic. Perhaps there's a touch of nostalgia associated with those stories, a bit of exaggeration propping up their endeavors. Maybe they were just talented storytellers, or perhaps getting there first, before UE was an internet buzz word loaned some extra heroism to their acts. Whatever the case I can remember each and every one of those stories with crystal clarity, and the excitement I felt reading them resonates still. I'm not worthy.

So when I went to Minneapolis this past month, home of the infamous Action Squad I knew what I had to do. I had to do the Labyrinth. I knew the stories too well. I held my breath when Slim Jim slipped through an unknown tunnel, scraping his belly on the rock, my heart pounded as Max Action tempted fate above an underground cliff. I needed to go to the Labyrinth, and I needed to go to the bridge.

If you haven't read the Action Squad missions of the early 2000's you might not understand the significance of all this. To me it was like stepping into the original UE mythos, the stories that forged my conception of what real UE ought to be. UE should be about cramped tunnels, forgotten sub-basements and underground connections between buildings blocks apart through sewers, utility tunnels and caves. So...

http://www.actionsquad.org/wabasha.html (Read it!)

K___ and Flame agreed to show me the Lab on my last night in the Twin Cities. We met up in St. Paul and descended down a non-nondescript manhole into a narrow, brick lined tunnel - an abandoned sewer. K___ and Flame led the way into the darkness and I felt a strange sensation of claustrophobia and helplessness. I've been in plenty of tunnels and drains, but something about the Lab summoned up deep primordial fears in me. It felt stale and crushing.

Soon enough we reached a section of tunnel where several bricks were missing from the roof leading to another chamber.

"This way." said K___ as he lifted himself up through the small jagged hole. Good God, this was better (or worse) than I'd imagined. I wriggled up and my claustrophobia increased. Still no significant airflow in a small crouching room with a tiny crack of a tunnel covered in chains one way and a small round portal the other. Flame popped up through the hole in the floor and K___ beckoned me through the round portal behind me. I crawled through beneath wooden building support beams a hundred years old and through another breech, around a corner and finally to an ancient elevator shaft, long since capped but still dropping sixty feet or more to an uncertain floor.

"What's down there?" I asked.
"Oh, just a cave." K___ responded and led me back to the junction where Flame was waiting for us. "Let's go to the bridge."

The bridge is the one thing I definitely wanted to see in the Lab. I remembered the story well, but it didn't properly prepare me for the reality.

We slipped through a narrow passage, took a left at a T junction then climbed up through another tight tunnel through the limestone. That's perhaps one of the things that blew me away the most. Many of these tunnels seemed either to be natural or at least dug into the virgin rock. No concrete, no bricks, just rock and dirt, under the city no less! We popped into another room, this one with some brick wall. Up another tunnel, this time crushing and narrow thanks to a spilled concrete piling. Just like Max Action I scraped my belly against the rough concrete, through more tunnels and into a small room where Flame waited for me. The people who did this for the first time, not knowing whether these tunnels led anywhere, facing the possibility of getting stuck or causing a cave in. That's gotta take balls.

"You go first." Flame said, grinning.

I pushed through the next hole and felt cold air pressing against my face. The tan coloured sandstone gave way to an immense void, darkness my headlamp could barely penetrate. I turned to my left and saw the glitter of ice crystals on a smooth concrete wall. I knew where I was. I was under the bridge.

"Holy shit!" I exclaimed.
"I love seeing how people react the first time they come down here." K___ chuckled. "There should be a rope and some rebar to your left."

I looked and indeed it was there, though it would take a bit of contorting to get to it, kind of nerve wracking then your light can't illuminate the bottom of the underground cliff you've come out on. I grabbed the rebar sticking out of the wall and it moved. It wasn't anchored at all.

"You can push down on the rebar, but don't pull it sideways or it'll come out. The rope's a bit dodgy too."

Fuck. Just think, the first time there wasn't even a rope, and nobody knew if there was anything up there worth seeing.

I finally managed to get myself up and out ontop of the cliff between a deadly plunge and the bottom surface of the roadway above us. K___ came up next followed by Flame and we set about getting into the bridge room itself. Yes there's a door up there that leads you out, over and into the bridge rooms across the river. You can actually cross the Mississippi without going topside. Not only that but the three previous bridges built at this point still have foundations inside the current bridge. My mind was already starting to reel.

After the bridge Flame bid us farewell. She had to work early in the morning and had already taken lots of time out over the past three days to show me around the cities. We said goodbye and she climbed back up the manhole shaft we'd entered from. The manhole seated with a thud leaving K___ and I alone underground. Perhaps...

We went further down the sewer line and eventually it became active though only with a trickle in the centre channel which was fairly easy to avoid. K___ dashed ahead giving me instructions on where to turn when I reached the junctions. I tried to keep up as best I could but running in this was different from running in RCP and he quickly outpaced me. I found him waiting in a side tunnel, beer in hand.

Everywhere we went side tunnels abounded along with connections from the ceiling, tunnels active and old, brick and natural rock, it was amazing and we weren't even that far yet. We finally ended up in a room with a distinctive brick hump running through it. K___ revealed a well hidden break in the brick and dropped down into the lower tunnel. I followed, using old stepirons to avoid standing on what must've been live electrical cables. Indeed I found myself in a larger, semi-lit cable tunnel, part rock, part concrete, part brick.

Trying to describe the remainder of the trip with any accuracy or sense of chronological coherence would be futile. Suffice it to say there are layers upon layers of raw tunnel dug through the limestone, brick, concrete, tangles of cable, wires, hundred year old lightbulbs, old plumbing, basements, manholes and grates from one underground system to another, portals to the outside in the form of doorways, manholes, utility vaults, abandoned side tunnels, hand dug additions and connections, holes leading to natural caves, it goes on and on.

I think we spent three more hours in the Lab and only managed to scrape the surface. Despite exploring it for years the local UE community is still exploring and mapping the system, making new discoveries. There is active excavation underway in old sub-basements and abandoned sewers in search of old artifacts and who know's what's behind that pile of junk or sand? Perhaps another tunnel. Tiny cracks and holes in the wall lead to other tunnels and caves. The possibilities down there seem endless.

We emerged from the ventilation system of an underground parkade to the harsh glow of fluorescent lights. On our way out we spotted another set of sandy footprints, proof that we weren't the only ones in the labyrinth that night, but in a system so vast you could wander for ages without encountering another soul. In fact if it weren't for the occasional underground street sign you might find yourself terribly lost.

The Labyrinth isn't as awe inspiring as something like a giant abandoned factory, or the mind blowing reality of being behind Niagara Falls in Confluence. The Labyrinth sticks with you though as a place that needs to be experienced and explored. You can spend hours, perhaps days inside without seeing it all, and even though much of it looks the same, the idea that you're in the major arteries of the city should be enough to snap you out of any sense of complacency. You can get from anywhere, to anywhere, you can climb, crawl, shimmy... Its truly a UE playground.

When I think of UE, the ultimate urban exploration dream, I don't think of vast factories so much as I think about tunnels that connect vast factories to sewers to powerplants to other tunnels to forgotten caves and basements. Something about that interconnectedness thrills and fascinates me and many other explorers I think. Its a sense of freedom. Underground freedom.

Down here its our time...