@ cdracingzx6r - beautiful long exposure shots! Thank you for sharing.

Posted by cdracingzx6r All good things come to an end unfortunately.

Yes, but thanks for taking us there! Incredible. Its setting among the rocky landscape is perfect.

Posted by seedy Thank you. If you look closely in that shot, theres a pipe running through the middle of the rocks on the left, taking a sharp right angle up to some water tanks. That was our access point. I'm guessing it was easily 1/2-3/4 of a mile walking on a 24 inch pipe after hiking in 5 or 6 miles through "Joshua tree conditions." cdracingzx6r and I had been discussing recently how we never really bothered to spend the time documenting the journey in to this place. But it was HARD.....it really hurt. and then, you finally get there with no energy left and have to start shooting before the sun rises.....with security buzzing around. And of course, at 4 or 5 in the morning, you want to sleep, but you can only REALLY sleep for a couple of hours. By the time I Left, I was pretty disorientated.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Definitely one of the more intense explores. I only had a few hours to shoot here and I was having technical issues so I only walked away with a couple usable shots. I haven't edited the others, but thought I'd jump on the bandwagon.

A little late, but here's s'mo shots.

As others have said, it was grueling as hell to shoot this place. We usually did it as a weekend trip w/o taking any days off work, which meant driving 6+ hours down on Saturday, then staying up all night shooting, and driving 6+ hours back on Sunday. I swore I'd never go back half a dozen times, but then when the opportunity came up again, I could never say no. I think it's probably my all-time favorite site to both shoot and explore, all wrapped up in one epic location. So. much. fun.

I'm gonna miss you SSFL...

Coca stands



Coca2



Coca1



Tunnel / cableway entrance that connects the Coca stands



Coca crane operator's booth



Alfa stand



Alfa control room in pristine condition



Bravo stand

Posted by Hoverfly A little late, but here's s'mo shots. As others have said, it was grueling as hell to shoot this place. We usually did it as a weekend trip w/o taking any days off work, which meant driving 6+ hours down on Saturday, then staying up all night shooting, and driving 6+ hours back on Sunday. I swore I'd never go back half a dozen times, but then when the opportunity came up again, I could never say no. I think it's probably my all-time favorite site to both shoot and explore, all wrapped up in one epic location. So. much. fun. I'm gonna miss you SSFL... Coca stands http://scotthaefne...haefner-ssfl-3.jpg Coca2 http://scotthaefne...haefner-ssfl-7.jpg Coca1 http://scotthaefne...aefner_ssfl-13.jpg Tunnel / cableway entrance that connects the Coca stands http://scotthaefne...haefner-ssfl-8.jpg Coca crane operator's booth http://scotthaefne...aefner_ssfl-12.jpg Alfa stand http://scotthaefne...aefner-ssfl-11.jpg Alfa control room in pristine condition http://scotthaefne...haefner-ssfl-1.jpg Bravo stand http://scotthaefne...haefner_ssfl-7.jpg

Jesus, dude. Your shots turned out incredible. I'm full of regret for not getting more shots, but at the same time, completely content with this one for the journey alone.

First off HUGE shout out to cdracingzx6r for being a cool cat and letting me crash on your couch. What can I say that hasn't been said about SSFL, the place is a wonder of american engineering. So much steel, piping and conduit, just thinking about how big of a project it was to construct these mammoth structures boggles the mind.

I made 5 trips down here over the last year and a half with some amazing people, most trips were fruitful, some weren't. I slept on a freezing cold rocket test stand twice, was seconds from being spotted by security twice in one night and living off MREs and trail mix are a few of the highlights.

The hike in is unreal, about a 10 mile hike in and out through poison oak and climbing slippery pipelines. I was sore for 3 day after my first trip, the second trip I got a bit smarter and loaded up on anti inflammatories the day before and was only sore for a day.

Here a few of photos from various trips

#1 Bravo Test Stand


#2


#3 Alpha stand


#4


#5


#6 Cocoa Stands


#7 I stole the lighting from 2 legends, it was fun hanging out.


#8


#9


#10

Beautiful shots guys WOnder what will be left when I am in that area in december

Posted by spacetimecurvature Thank you for the write up cdracingzx6r! Yes, I'm glad I got to see this when I did.

Love that photo, what time of day is that?

Ok ok... all this fun is forcing me to break my hiatus... for this thread only!

1. We were all Jerry's in this game. Tom would routinely throw us curveballs, which made no repeat visit like any prior... but also constrained how and where we could safely* shoot.
Untitled by DtEWSacrificial, on Flickr

* - there is no safety here. Just relative degrees.

2. The platform in the upper-right, hanging 80-odd feet above the canyon is where we spent our first night. Being in the middle of the air over a wind corridor made for a damn cold night. But when else does one get a chance to sleep on a rocket engine test stand?
Untitled by DtEWSacrificial, on Flickr

3. The heat and propellant chemicals gives rise to a rainbow of oxidation.
Untitled by DtEWSacrificial, on Flickr

4. This trussed ~60 x 60' platform (what we regarded as "ground floor") was built to slide out of the test stand and wholly clear the exhaust path of the rocket engine.
Untitled by DtEWSacrificial, on Flickr

5. An observation and control station in a remote control room. A relatively safe way of getting around this limited area was by using the extremely long (~1600ft total) underground passageways filled with conduits, bad air, desiccated animal carcasses, standing water, and some bats.
Untitled by DtEWSacrificial, on Flickr

6. A video of me wheezing for ~2.5 minutes in bad air, passing through ~600ft of the tunnel. Bat at 1:20 (reverse countdown), and sporadically onwards as I chase it out.
https://www.flickr...sacrificial/692dRq

7. Some of the extensive plumbing necessary to pass millions gallons of water (literally) in quick order to quench the rocket exhaust and keep the exhaust deflection chute from melting into a pile of steel.
Untitled by DtEWSacrificial, on Flickr

8. One of two Bravo test stands. The Bravo test stands were notable for being key in the development and testing of the F-1 engine, 5-of-which was used in the first stage of the Saturn V (i.e. Apollo moon shot) launch vehicle. To this day, the F-1 remains the most powerful single-chamber liquid-fueled rocket engine ever developed.
Untitled by DtEWSacrificial, on Flickr

9. The other Bravo stand. This was used to test the turbopump for the F-1 engine.
Untitled by DtEWSacrificial, on Flickr

10. Goodbye, SSFL. I wish I had been a consistently better photographer to capture all of your glories.
Untitled by DtEWSacrificial, on Flickr

Awesome pics, all of youse.
Yeahhhhh I dunno about the overnight stays!
Dtew...lovin #7 reminds me of the Sonic Hedgehog Vegas level

Wow, great photos everyone. I didn't realize the extent of how many people got to visit this place. Congrats to everyone for their diligent attention to not letting the cat out of the bag, not getting caught by security, not tipping off any vandals, graffiti writers or other unwanted elements.

Here's one of several interesting stories:
I think it was on my second trip there, and Scott's 5th trip. We came back to the truck after being out most of the night and saw another car parked next to ours, one that wasn't there when we left. That meant that they arrived after us, after dark. This was mildly concerning but what were we going to do? We were exhausted and were driving home that same day so we crashed out in the back of Scott's truck to get a few hours of sleep before driving back up north. We woke up and the car in question was gone. Very interesting, arrives after dark, leaves after the sun rises, maybe it's another explorer, maybe a camper?
Well, we get home and a few days later on a Tuesday night after midnight I get this random UER PM from someone I didn't know at that time:

-It was a pleasure sharing the parking lot with you on Saturday night/Sunday -morning, I was in the black ****** next to the dodge ****. How bout that wind? -It was blowing pretty good on the top of the peaks.

W.T.F. How the hell could this guy know who we were, 450 miles from home, and send us a message on UER? No one but our closest friends knew of this site, or our plans that weekend. This was weird, bad weird. I freaked out. Did they look at our faces when we were asleep in the truck? My face isn't in that many photos. Did they know me from a meet&greet? It wasn't that long ago that DOT was investigating us; are we being watched? Paranoia went a little wild for a few minutes. I responded about 30 minutes later with:

-oh shit! hahshahaa. we were asking ourselves, what are the chance of the other -car being an explorer? were you at SSFL? call me

And that's how I got introduced to boosted302. It turns out that a certain banned member was with boosted, and maybe cdracing and this guy recognized Scott's truck from a desert campout mine explore weekend they had done together. Boosted and I immediately got along great over the phone and this led to meeting in person and more future exploring. This was when we realized that other people have found this place and it's no longer our super secret location. That was the night of 50-60 mph gusting winds where my tripod got knocked over mid-shot and ripped my wide angle lens in half causing us to quit earlier than normal. This whole thing led us to join forces with cdracing and boosted for a crazy campout sleep-deprivation weekend trip later on.

another processed piccy:

Late in the night, the moon had wheeled around enough in the sky to illuminate this Coca stand from the back side.

-free

This has to be one of the best threads I've seen here so far. Great pics!

Wow. Sad panda never got to go there. Epic thread, for sure.

Not sure where you guys started your 10 mile hikes, but I've MTBiked to within a mile or so of that place to the SW via Las Virgenes Canyon and what looks like Bell Canyon Fire Rd, which are both legal for night riding, AFAIK.

It's a little late, but I wanted to say Thanks to Seany for helping me out with this location.

When I first started scouting it out, I thought I was the shit and that no one else had been there. Only by way of chance did I meet up with Seany for something unrelated and found out others (Tunnelbug, Hoverfly, Freeside, Seany, etc) had been going there for a decent amount of time already.

Before his help, I was getting pretty annoyed with security there. But Seany gave me some pretty crucial tips for avoiding them, that eventually lead to many following joyous explorations. So thanks again man!

Hopefully Seany will get some free time and post some of the shots from his trips to SSFL.

No problem man. I was trying to be careful about letting others onto it, but had already been scouting it `and` guessed that that's why we were in the area in the first place. Between that and your hospitality I figured I might as well help you out a little bit


I'll probably get some stuff online tomorrow.

I couldn't help myself. Here's a few.

I started coming out to this site in December of 2010. On my first trip, took my brother along with me, who has never been exploring before. He loved it. We made it as far as Coca, looked at the immense scale of the tower, and I knew I was coming back. All told, have probably been there five times since.

Wow. Four years since the first trip. Time flies!

I love how everybody's perspectives on these are unique and different. I don't see any similar shots out of all of these, which rarely happens! I'll post a few soon too.

I'm doing it wrong... what an absolutely awesome location. Thanks for sharing this, very cool photos!

really amazing story, history, explore & photography. just a fantastic gem, very cool. thank you all for sharing this.

-cappy

Posted by freeside And that's how I got introduced to boosted302.

Oh, it's a kodak moment! You know the world is a small place when abandonments start getting crowded. Fun times...