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Server Time:
2024-05-07 05:20:01
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 5meodmt
Location: St. paul mn
Gender: Male
 |  | winter draining
< on 10/21/2005 3:33 PM >
|  | | | ok, i know this is kind off a silly question but is it safe to explore a storm drain in the winter as long as you know the temperture is going to remain constant and below freezing?
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Decoy
     
Location: Leslieville
Gender: Male
Oh I have slipped the bonds of earth...
| | Re: winter draining
<Reply # 1 on 10/21/2005 5:15 PM >
| | | | I would assume so... depending on the site you choose of course. I've found that the drains I've explored (mainly in Toronto's Don Valley) were still flowing anyhow.
I guess the more scouting and weather watching you do, and the more prepared you are, the better.
It's a drag, it's a bore, it's really such a pitty
To be lookin' at the board, not lookin' at the city. |
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Mister Sable
Location: Palliser City
Gender: Male
The Man with the Hat (the other man)
| |  | Re: winter draining
<Reply # 2 on 10/21/2005 5:24 PM >
| | | | The water is usually still moving - them molecules rubbing together make a bit of heat and keep it from freezing underground, it seems. It's generally warmer underground in the winter. The bad part is when you fall in the water or your boots fill and then you go topside and get very, very cold, very fast.
I've never been draining when it's icy, but I can't imagine that would be much fun, really. Lots of folks fall through drain ice and get soaked with funky stagnant water too, so that's another consideration.
I usually stop exploring once it snows. People (the Authoritays) can see your footprints and it's not a lot of fun being cold and wet anyway.
Cloak and dagger, man, cloak and dagger. |
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Turd Furgusen
Location: Charleston, WV
Gender: Male
I think marijuana is just nature's way of saying high!
| |  | | Re: winter draining
<Reply # 3 on 10/21/2005 7:14 PM >
| | | | You got to be careful cause the underground temp is usually a constant between 50-60 degree F. Plus you have the added worry of anything thawing quickly and moving a lot of water in your direction. Plus as Mr. Sable said you can fall through the ice.
I'd say it's ok but only in a drain you are pretty familiar with to begin with.
Everyone has a dark side, mines just a little more illuminated. |
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kowalski
| | Re: winter draining
<Reply # 4 on 10/21/2005 7:24 PM >
| | | | Nothing thaws quickly enough to suddenly surprise you with dangerous quantities of water. Even in a major melt the level of flow is so constant that the conditions you see when you go in are going to prevail for the few hours that you might be underground.
The biggest issue has already been noted: being wet when you get back topside. Ice is a very drain-specific concern - it depends on your local climate and the design of the drain. If you actually encounter thick floor ice, use your head.
The only other thing to mention is that winter makes handling manhole covers and inlet/outfall guards more difficult and painful.
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HillbillyHorus
  
Location: Charlottesville Virginia
Gender: Male
Im in ur government, killin ur d00dz
| | | Re: winter draining
<Reply # 6 on 10/21/2005 8:46 PM >
| | | | I think draining would be better for winter, at least down here. It doesn't snow much, doesn't rain (obviously), and the water flow tends to be lessenned. The temps here in the bleakest part of winter range from 20 - 40 usually. We only get something like 3 inches of snow a year. I feel bad for you yankees (and overseas/overborders northerners).
You can't fall off a mountain. |
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Random
Location: Richmond, Virginia
Gender: Male
Partially Retired
| | | Re: winter draining
<Reply # 7 on 10/21/2005 9:00 PM >
| | | | Horus called it. Down here, draining isn't affected by winter. You might be a little cold if you get soaked and come out, but it's not going to be life-threatening, especially with a nice warm Buick waiting for you.
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kjones
Location: Providence, RI
Gender: Male
Ninja? Or frightened little boy?
| | Re: winter draining
<Reply # 8 on 10/21/2005 9:17 PM >
|  | | | Someone on a thread over in Tutorials/Info suggested wearing a wetsuit underneath some outer stuff.
http://www.uer.ca/forum_showthread.asp?fid=3&threadid=23289&currpage=2
Seems that it's important to wear something on the outside of it since wetsuits tear easily.
Forbidden fruit a flavor has
That lawful orchards mocks;
How luscious lies the pea within
The pod that Duty locks!
-Emily Dickinson on UE |
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ArmchairExplorer
Location: Vancouver
| | Re: winter draining
<Reply # 9 on 10/21/2005 11:02 PM >
| | | | Wetsuits aren't designed to keep you dry. What you really want for cold water incursions is a drysuit.
Drain and creek waterlevels could change suddenly during thawing season as a result of an ice dam break. This is probably only a risk if a portion of the drain is on the surface and able to freeze.
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kjones
Location: Providence, RI
Gender: Male
Ninja? Or frightened little boy?
| | Re: winter draining
<Reply # 10 on 10/22/2005 12:42 AM >
| | | | Posted by ArmchairExplorer
Wetsuits aren't designed to keep you dry.
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You're right, but they aredesigned to keep you warm, no matter how wet you get. So it doesn't really matter, unless you're immersed in freezing water, in which case that's likely the least of your worries.
Forbidden fruit a flavor has
That lawful orchards mocks;
How luscious lies the pea within
The pod that Duty locks!
-Emily Dickinson on UE |
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Hinox
Location: Denver
Gender: Male
| | Re: winter draining
<Reply # 11 on 10/22/2005 2:20 AM >
| | | | If it is real cold you may see some sweet icefalls.
D: |
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J Marcs
Location: Ohio
Gender: Male
| | | | Re: winter draining
<Reply # 12 on 10/22/2005 1:45 PM >
| | | | There are good and bad aspects to winter draining.
Good--
MUCH Easier access to drains that are on rivers/ponds. There are 2 drains in the area that I can't get to untill a stream freezes.
There is (in most cases) less likelihood of a downpour and a flood.
The 40-50 degree F temp inside most drains can feel nice.
Bad--
You leave footprints in the snow
Many drains are only frozen around inlets and outlets. Sudden changes in ice thickness can occur inside
If the drain is above freezing (many are), you can get in trouble really quickly. Imagine being soaked on a cold SUMMER day.... now multiple that by 100. Getting wet when its cold out (even 50 degrees) can be very VERY dangerous. I would carry a change of clothes in the car or stash them near the outfall or entry point. remember that once you are truly hypothermic you stop shivering and you really aren't producing any heat. This makes wrapping up in a blanket pretty pointless. Making a tent with a blanket around car heating vents works ok. The best thing in a pinch is to make a naked cold person sandwich in a sleeping bag with a "warm" person on each side. Sounds like fun hunh? Anyway... Water is a key contributor to hypothermia.
While flooding is less likely...Some storm sewers have higher constant flow in the winter. Normally "dry" drains that drain roads where salt is used may have a steady 1 or 2 inch deep flow as long as the snow remains.
Keep you wits about you..
http://www.hypothermia.org
http://www.princet...ety/hypocold.shtml
http://www.sarbc.org/hypo.html
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Arrow
Noble Donor
Location: Minneapolis
Gender: Male
| | Re: winter draining
<Reply # 13 on 10/23/2005 5:20 AM >
| | | | I'd like to add more than 2 cents on this. Personal experience requires it.
Big points to watch for:
Easy way to get out of the drain at the outfall. A climbable rope is good; East Kdale's rope isn't the easiest to climb.
Why would you leave the drain at the outfall, you ask? Boredom, getting too cold/wet, icewall blocking your path.
How easy is your rope ladder or rope with loops in it to climb? What if your pants that got just wet in the drain are now suddenly frozen into solid tubes so you can't bend at the knee? Could you climb a straight rope in gloves with cold hands and shivering muscles?
Make sure you have taller boots for winter draining. You might not mind splashing water in your boots in the summer, but when you can't feel your toes, you'll want taller boots.
When you got those taller boots, did you get hip waders with neoprene uppers? Yeah, they keep water out, but they'll also freeze solid, making leg bending difficult.
Wetsuit? If that thing freezes solid, you're a popsicle. For above freezing temps, that could be good I guess.
Park a car with working heat close by. If you come out wet and hypothermic, you're gonna want to warm up really fucking fast.
Is it 0 degrees fahrenheit out? You'd have to be a fucking moron to go draining when it's that cold out. How do I know? Lemme share some of that personal experience of mine...
So it's the night of a big explorer meet up, and there's this new drain a bunch of us really want to check on. Can we hold back our enthusiasm long enough to explore it when it's warm out? Nope.
6 of us head over to the drain. 1 opts not to go at all, good call. 1 goes for a little ways, but was only wearing hiking boots. He does well walking on the sloped side of the completely round drain, but fear of slipping makes him turn back. 2 more turn back a little later. We later find out that they had trouble getting up the rope with too-widely-spaced-loops, due to the frozen neoprene hip waders.
Now it's just myself and a friend. We finally reach are agreed upon turning back point of another drop shaft, this one dry for once. We turn back, and it's ok. My feet are soaked from splashed water, and my friend isn't much better.
We get to the outfall area, and there's fog starting to come off the water as it hits the cold outside air. (Did I mention it was 0 degrees out?) We start trying to climb the rope with loops in it. I make it up, but BARELY, and only because I got a boost from my friend below.
What's a person without someone to boost them to do? If we weren't getting soooo cold just being outside, retying some loops would've been good. The rest of the people had left in another car already, so we didn't have enough people to pull the rope up with a person on it.
At this point we should have called some people back to help up the final person. Unfortunately, my friend decided he should swim out of the outfall to the climbable shore 30' away. DON'T DO THIS. I couldn't talk him out of it (into calling other people, for example), so all I could do was hold the other end of the climbing rope so that I could pull him to shore if he passed out. I also moved my car closer to the outfall, though to a no-parking area, so he could hop (stumble, actually) in right away to warm up.
Halfway to shore, the rope snagged on a bolt in the outfall concrete, so he swam it on his own. He made it to shore, but was very very very weak and disoriented (think insanely piss drunk). He said he just wanted to sit down and rest for a bit. Hell no. You're going to keep marching up the hill, even if you can't see where you're going because of the cold temperature shock. We finally made it to my car where I turned on the heat full blast and wrapped him in blankets. I tried to transfer heat from my body to him also. Really really scary experience.
End result: We made it ok, but his fingers were numb for a month, and I know that I still have strong memories whenever I see that area of the river.
In conclusion: Please consider how badly you want to go winter draining before you go and do it. Prepare like mad and have about 5 backup plans if you are going to go. Before my friend started swimming, I just about could have crapped my pants with how worried I was about whether he'd survive or not.
I'd hate to see someone die from hypothermia while draining in the winter. Draining is sweet and all, but it's hard to comprehend just how powerful cold weather is.
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HillbillyHorus
Location: Charlottesville Virginia
Gender: Male
Im in ur government, killin ur d00dz
| | | Re: winter draining
<Reply # 14 on 10/23/2005 12:32 PM >
| | | | Water levels actually seem lower as the year goes on here. Plus, it's not cold enough that I'd trust the ice unless it was on, like, a skating pond or something. Drains can be above freezing, and in fact often are even during winter (according to approach.doc they're like 40 degrees all the time), so I could see the danger of snow melting, but it doesn't snow much here either, so really winter is "draining season", at least IMHO (though really it doesn't rain too much any time of the year).
You can't fall off a mountain. |
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Sinister Crayon
Location: Colorado
Gender: Male
| | Re: winter draining
<Reply # 15 on 10/28/2005 1:23 AM >
| | | | It often stays warmer underground than up top. But in some cases where the infall is as big as the outfall, it can get chilly.
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HillbillyHorus
Location: Charlottesville Virginia
Gender: Male
Im in ur government, killin ur d00dz
| | | Re: winter draining
<Reply # 16 on 10/28/2005 12:39 PM >
| | | | Maybe fall is the worst season to go draining here: it rains more than usual and all the fallen leaves in drains make the air bad.
You can't fall off a mountain. |
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cookiesnporn
| | | | Re: winter draining
<Reply # 17 on 10/29/2005 4:09 AM >
| | | | from my experience, fall is actually worse than winter. let me tell you a story. a friend and I decided to sneak into a high school football game via a drain. so we went in, and for a little while at least, it was fine. towards the middle of the drain, we encountered problems. all the leaves and whatnot that had fallen through the gutterboxes created a series of dams in the drain, causing 2-foot deep mud and water. now this drain in particular gets rather small towards the infall. we were going upstream. so when we finally got out, our pants were soaked, and we had to walk IN THE SNOW! it...sucked...ASS!
This man has a headahce! GIVE HIM AN ENEMA!
Abandoned | Starting a revolution, exploring the forgotten. |
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J Marcs
Location: Ohio
Gender: Male
| | | | Re: winter draining
<Reply # 18 on 10/29/2005 1:35 PM >
| | | | Posted by Horus
Maybe fall is the worst season to go draining here: it rains more than usual and all the fallen leaves in drains make the air bad.
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The leaves rotting and damming up is a good point.
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aplz
Location: Neo-Berlin (Kitchener)
Gender: Male
When The Detail Lost Its Freedom
| | Re: winter draining
<Reply # 19 on 10/31/2005 6:05 PM >
| | | | Posted by Turd Furgusen
You got to be careful cause the underground temp is usually a constant between 50-60 degree F. Plus you have the added worry of anything thawing quickly and moving a lot of water in your direction. Plus as Mr. Sable said you can fall through the ice.
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Thats about all the worries you'll have to keep in your mind while draining in the winter. I find it safer during the winter as the risk of a flash flood is slim.
It's fun during the winter.
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