So, I have some big explorations planned very soon. I just have to work out schedules with my buddy, as these are going to be larger and more complex drains I prefer not going solo.
I believe I've located quite a few of the notable drains in Denver.
Crystal Pepsi (Brick Titan), Rivergate Hollows, and Phantom Creek (AKA The Gallery, The Temple). As well as possibly a few other smaller ones.
According to my maps, there may also be a HUGE chamber under one of the railways from one of these drains in the area. I have to map a route and check, it may be a long ass trek - potentially better to pop a manhole. It could also be a typo or mistake on the map. If not, it must be some kind of underground reservoir or something, but no point in speculating until I can confirm it exists. Perhaps it's a known part of an explored drain that I'm not aware of.
I know what Crystal Pepsi looks like, but haven't found pictures of the later two - hopefully with more research, or when I get pictures from inside someone can confirm if it's the right spot.
I'll be sure to avoid posting entrances and location specific info
I was actually in the area one night recently, but there were a lot of homeless, so I got sketched out poking around solo in the dark. When I return, it'll definitely be with a buddy or at least during the day.
Raccoon City: Here's another small drain explore that I did to tide myself over until we get into the massive ones.
This drain is located in one of those concrete box drains that just goes under a road. This one was interesting in that it was a quadruple box, with four sections instead of the usual double or single I usually see. Inside along each of the outermost walls is a drain outfall. One side's is only 3 foot, but the other starts off about 5ft.
I hopped inside the 5ft with my trusty drainboard. After a bit, it shrinks to 4ft, then eventually 3ft. And yeah I actually brought my measuring tape and confirmed most of the heights, the maps are mostly right
Here's the first junction/chamber- absolutely covered in shitty graffiti, to the point I can barely make out what most of it says.
It shrank to the 4ft pretty quick. This drain had a little bit of a flow, and sometimes hitting a deep gap between pipes splashed me a bit. At this point in the trek, it wasn't too bad however. As I went further, I came to more chambers, most with side inlet pipes too small to venture into, and the main pipe itself, which was mostly a straight shot with only one big turn from what I recall.
The manholes here all had brick-laden openings leading to them:
Although the first manhole chamber was a chaotic mess of graffiti, further on the graffiti was seemingly from just a few people. A bunch of metal heads and stoners, the tags with dates all from 1991. They tagged band names, the Van Halen symbol, their own names or nicknames, a shitload of silly satanic stuff, childish swastikas/racist scrawl, and tagged names on several of the junction rooms. Some of the names included 'The Doom Room', 'The Devils Room', and the underwhelmingly named: 'Rob's Room'.
In fact, this Rob guy seemed pretty popular, tagged a lot of rooms in here as 'Rob's Room', as well as his name in some of the 2-3ft sections, further in, and a supposed exit through a tiny crawling pipe. I wasn't going to crawl through all those leaves and garbage though to find out
An old drainer perhaps?
It was actually pretty interesting to find. I definitely got the sense of the group of metalhead punks who probably used to come down there to smoke weed, drink beer, and freak each other out with candles and pentagrams- almost 30 years ago. There wasn't much graffiti other than these guys stuff as I said, so it's possible no one had been in that far in quite a few years.
Eventually it got tighter, until I was rolling through 3ft sections. I then reaction a chamber where I had another run in with some glowing animal eyes. This time, down a small 18" inlet pipe, very obviously a raccoon or other small animal, and it was quite a ways away from me. I spoke to it, barked at it a few times to see if I could scare it off, nope, it didn't really care. I hoped I just freaked it out enough that it wouldn't come into the main tunnel and lose it's shit when I came back that way on my exit.
I explored a few of the bigger side pipes at some of these junctions, that's where I found some more writings of the mysterious 'Rob'. They didn't go very far however, and had a lot more leaves and dry debris. While going to explore one, I had put my board in front of me to get on, and it rolled out from under me, my entire front half took a nice dip in the cold drain water. Funny in retrospect, but also not really great considering the outside temperate was about 30 degrees Fahrenheit, although warm in the drains. My gloves also began to take on more water, leading to me losing a little body heat.
I ventured further, determined to get to the point where it should have been too small to traverse. I got most of the way there I think
I hit a section where the pipe continued at about 2ft in height changing to a black plastic PVC kind of material. I thought about going in, but there was even more water, I was already wet, and the beginning 5ft of the pipe had a lot of rocks and dirt in the bottom as well, meaning it could prove difficult for the board. So this is where I called an end to the pushing forward:
This was a pretty long one, I think the main pipe goes for more than a mile. I believe I spent around 2 hours exploring this place and taking my exit. Speaking of which, the fun part was now rolling back down and out of this little drain. There was a section in here that was smooth enough to not kill my speed, and I was cruising for a minute! Hard to say the speed, but you could definitely go dangerously fast in a long and smooth enough drain tunnel. It's much more worth exploring some of these smaller pipes now, just for the potential of finding a truly good sloped pipe without huge gaps in the RCP, then seeing how fast I can go!
I must figure out some sort of good padding setup, as without it, the board definitely leaves a few bruises from hitting big gaps. The grip tape being abrasive will also eat through clothing, so that's another motivation to cover it. A helmet and maybe some elbow pads are not a bad idea either.
As I started to roll back, I ran into a problem. Not only was I somewhat wet from before, upon my return trip with the extra downhill speed, some of the rougher gaps would splash me like a mini-waterpark. By the time I was nearly out, my front half was soaked.
And this was the one time my dumb ass thought: 'I haven't needed the spare set of dry clothes at all yet, why bring the extra weight?'. I was about a 20 minute walk from where I parked as well. Always bring spare clothes when draining in the winter guys, seriously. If I was more completely soaked, or if it was a decent bit colder, I could have been in a lot of trouble. I trudged along and made it to my car with mostly just my legs burning from the freezing cold. I got home quickly, and was dry and warm in no time. Lesson learned!
Oh and I nearly forgot- As I was leaving I had a total oh-shit moment. I reached the last chamber before the exit, and I could see out the pipe into the concrete box that leads out of there.
Out of fucking nowhere I hear a bunch of splashing- it sounds like people running through the water outside the pipe, then getting INTO the pipe entrance!
I'm shining my light and see glowing eyes first, then I realize it's two chunky ass raccoons GALLOPING toward me down the pipe. I don't think they realized I was there for a few seconds. They definitely did when I barked and yelled at them to get back, and held my board up to bat them away worst case scenario. Raccoons are damn cute, but they're still wild animals and I'm not trying to be trapped in an enclose space with a terrified one.
Luckily after a few tries my wildman noises and monkey grunts worked and they scampered out of the outfall. I made sure they weren't inside still and followed suit. I approached the very exit of the pipe with caution and made some more noise, poking the board out first. No angry raccoon attacks. I hopped out and looked around quickly, there was one just outside of the box drain, looking at me all like 'wtf man?' - then he dashed off somewhere.
I noticed numerous of their prints in the fresher drain water sediment in the pipes. I should make a mental note that, in future explores, if there are a bunch of those fresh tracks, and they all lead OUT of the drain, that might mean a big family may be coming back at some point soon!
That's it for that one. I'll be back soon, hopefully with some pictures of these fancy Denver drains I've been hearing about for awhile
Wish me luck!