Did a little exploring today.

[Chris]

Me, Tunajive, and his friend got together to do some exploring today.

First, we went to River Des Peres. I've really been wanting to go into the River Des Peres tunnels, and last time I went in, I ended up ankle deep in fecal water after only going in a couple hundred feet, and promptly turned around. Now the tunnels there aren't sanitary sewers, but they do have a nasty smell and the water is not clear, but has a greyish haze in it.

This time things were a little better. The water was a little more shallow. We went in the smaller tunnel on the right side of the outfall. This one does not follow the same course as the two larger tunnels. The opening is probably 15 feet tall and the tunnel is about 15 feet wide. It's arched concrete and has a floor that is curved so the water stays in a channel down the middle.

The tunnel makes a gentle curve to the left right after you enter. About 300 feet in, we saw a shaft with light pouring down through it against the right side of the tunnel.

We continued as the tunnel made a turn to the right and began to head up an incline. It then levels out and heads to the right and at the same time turns into a brick tunnel of the same shape. We continued down the brick tunnel for what seemed like a long time and the smell of sewage seemed to grow stronger. Then we rounded another gentle curve to the right where we saw two 12"-16" pipes empting steady streams of water into the main tunnel. We decided not to mess around trying to walk through the streams of water and the floor was growing increasingly slippery anyway, so we turned back.

Along the way, we saw several gross orange deposits and some sticky grey residue that seemed to actually make walking easier due to it's stickyness.

Tunajive wasn't wearing shoes that were very drain friendly and he had problems slipping into the foul poo-funk water on the way back. Instead of taking the side of the tunnel we took to get in, we took the other side where we saw the light from the shaft on the way in.

We looked up the shaft and about 25 feet up we saw a manhole with a missing cover. So we climbed the ladder and found ourselves only about 300 feet away from my car.



Then we decided to head over to the abandoned armory south of highway 40 in the city. It's been used recently for indoor sports. First, we walked into the basement as there's a ramp that you can drive down into there from.

The whole of the walls, columns and ceiling were painted silver. There were some lights on down there and some obviously not abandoned vehicles. We checked some of the doors but they seemed to either be welded or locked shut.

So we walked around the building and saw a busted out window on the second floor. We flexed our mad ninja skillz and climbed on in, me with the assistance of a hose I found on the ground.

We really only gained access to one room, which was covered in bird poop. Gross. There was some weird and cool stuff in there, like school supplies, old record albums, old furniture, etc...

That was pretty much it. Maybe next weekend we'll do better.

[tunajive]

I hate that orange goop, it makes me angry. I still don't understand why I was the only one who couldn't stand, lol. Aw well, we'll do better next weekend.


-Matt