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Narcolepsomnia
Location: Raleigh, NC Gender: Male
| | | Cockroach Tunnel, Raleigh, NC < on 8/24/2009 10:33 PM >
| | | Today I re-explored what I like to call Cockroach Tunnel (if you know of any sort of "official" name for it, please notify me), and now you, dear frequenters of UER, get to read about it, if you please. Note: this is a very long post, and I'm not exactly what you'd call an expert photographer.
Here is a shot of the entrance to the drain that Cockroach Tunnel is a branch of.
And the view from just inside the left section, along with my shoes.
This is the entrance to Cockroach Tunnel.
A while back I taped a guest registry to the wall as Stratus, which is what I go by nowadays; it's gone missing, but someone was kind enough to replace it.
A no-flash photo of the second break.
Here the pipe turns rectangular.
I assumed this makeshift support had been placed by another explorer, and continued on to my favorite part of the drain.
Which was gone. I'm assuming the workers who renovated this segment also placed the ceiling support and perhaps even took the registry.
Here's what it used to look like.
And a different angle.
A picture of the right section, near the back.
And what it used to be.
A look back.
On more interesting times.
Now we enter a much older section, as evidenced by the large stones composing the tunnel.
There are also some nice stalactites.
Here the drain transitions to a CMP.
A view of the transition room from above.
Some interesting mineral deposits.
And some more. The top part of the picture is vertical, and the bottom part is on the ceiling.
On one of my earlier trips I discovered a skateboard sitting in the water, so I brought it to this room and wedged it into one of the rubber rungs so that it wouldn't wash away. However, it's obviously not there anymore; perhaps it was an earlier explorer's drainboard, which (s)he has since retrieved?
At this point an electrical wire of some sort enters the pipe from the ceiling. Also notice that the drain has transitioned back to RCP.
The wire disappears into a small pipe ahead, and the main path turns right, into a very similar room, where it again turns right, completing a sort of U-turn.
Here we come upon a short brick section.
Oddly, the ceiling terminates in this small point.
The next break is a pit of water, about 2 ft deep in the center, and 1 ft along the sides. As I was wearing boots that I didn't want filled with water, I had to do a very awkward split across the center in order to avoid touching the water.
Entering the second-to-last break, you see a branch that has gotten wedged across the pipe, and a bricked-in pipe straight forward.
Looking to the right, we see a section that requires some amount of crawling to traverse.
And here is a flashless shot of the room I enter next.
This is the view down the pipe in the upper right of the previous photo, and through it you see the culmination of the drain: a small gutterbox. (sorry about the blur)
After wiggling through the small CMP, this is the view out of the gutter to the right.
And to the left.
Here is a size comparison of the previous pipe and my boot. Now it is time to leave.
On the way back through the drain, I noticed this small waterproof container in the brick section. Opening it revealed a small scrap of paper, which I couldn't get a good shot of due to the flash glaring off of the white paper. On the paper was written: [Some word I don't remember, perhaps Drain, Sewer, River, etc; sorry] Crawl stopping point 11/23/08 Presumably, [something] Crawl is an earlier drainer's alias, and if anyone remembers the first word, please say so.
And finally, a view of the entrance/exit.
Thanks for reading, and if you'd like to know the exact location of the drain, just send me a PM. Edit: I now realize that I probably should have posted this in one of the regional forums. Sorry about that. [last edit 8/25/2009 12:13 AM by Narcolepsomnia - edited 2 times]
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AnAppleSnail
Location: Charlotte, NC Gender: Male
ALL the flashlights!
| | | | Re: Cockroach Tunnel, Raleigh, NC <Reply # 1 on 8/24/2009 10:46 PM >
| | | Hi, You've gone much farther up this drain than I have. Keep going upstream along the main branch for a nice surprise, but be ready for some 2-3' water. The repair of the half-collapse replaced the sweet cave with ugly fake brick, and the 2x4 was holding up the concrete slabs overhead. Is the small hole in the first stone part concrete slab roof still there? I'm 6'4" so I avoid the tiny holes when I don't expect there to be interesting things upstream. Shame on me! According to pictures I uploaded last October, I named it for the road it crosses (near the construction/trucking companies) - but I can't really claim to have 'discovered' it because it's in the middle of a city! I'm glad there's more Raleigh drainers. Let me know if you have a chance to meet up sometime when the rain doesn't do its usual daily run. 'Subway' bit: My dad in the collapse bit: Edit: Shutter and WOLF!PACK! are both local UER members. I was giving them a quick tour (which was later cut short) when we found your guestbook soon after it had been posted. I highly recommend a water-proof container zip-tied to a steprung (ladder step) in a junction box. Tape doesn't do well on concrete when it's humid, and even an inch of rain in downtown would have peeled the ziploc bag off the wall anyway. A 20-oz bottle, with paper rolled inside it but reaching all the way up to the neck is a pretty handy registry. Edit2: We did not write on the wall in sharpie. Who did? [last edit 8/24/2009 10:55 PM by AnAppleSnail - edited 2 times]
Achievement Unlocked |
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Narcolepsomnia
Location: Raleigh, NC Gender: Male
| | | Re: Cockroach Tunnel, Raleigh, NC <Reply # 2 on 8/24/2009 11:21 PM >
| | | Yeah, I've been through the main tunnel all the way to Cameron Village, and I was quite impressed with the arched part, which I also thought looked like it came from a subway.
Is the small hole in the first stone part concrete slab roof still there? |
Not quite sure what you mean by this; do you have a picture?
We did not write on the wall in sharpie. Who did? |
I suppose someone else who saw the registry after you signed it noticed it was gone and put all of your names up on the wall. I dunno. And about the original registry, it was a bit of an impulse thing; I didn't really think about it too much. [last edit 8/24/2009 11:21 PM by Narcolepsomnia - edited 1 times]
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AnAppleSnail
Location: Charlotte, NC Gender: Male
ALL the flashlights!
| | | | Re: Cockroach Tunnel, Raleigh, NC <Reply # 3 on 8/24/2009 11:50 PM >
| | | Posted by Narcolepsomnia Not quite sure what you mean by this; do you have a picture?
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I don't have pictures, but the hole in the roof is pretty small, maybe hand-sized. It showed how -thin- the concrete roof was, and they were driving caterpillar equipment over it. It was pretty near the emergency vehicle parking, just before the drain goes under the big blvd. There are some decent drains in the central NC area, just requires a bit more travel than in larger cities.
NC drain about 30 minutes from Raleigh
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Shutter
Location: Raleigh NC Gender: Male
| | | Re: Cockroach Tunnel, Raleigh, NC <Reply # 4 on 8/25/2009 12:03 AM >
| | | heh. So thats who put the original register there. Another NC drain. 10? min from the tunnel.
Oh and Snail....that hole was gone when you took me through there. Fix your memory man [last edit 8/25/2009 12:04 AM by Shutter - edited 1 times]
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Narcolepsomnia
Location: Raleigh, NC Gender: Male
| | | Re: Cockroach Tunnel, Raleigh, NC <Reply # 5 on 8/25/2009 12:12 AM >
| | | Posted by Shutter Another NC drain. 10? min from the tunnel.
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Location? I know of one fairly short yet somewhat interesting one at the intersection of Wade Ave and Glenwood Ave, ending near Five Points; it's not very tall, though. [last edit 8/25/2009 12:15 AM by Narcolepsomnia - edited 1 times]
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Staples
Location: Wilmington, North Carolina Gender: Male
at least i'm not a myspace whore
| | Re: Cockroach Tunnel, Raleigh, NC <Reply # 6 on 8/26/2009 11:45 PM >
| | | how was the air?
There is always a way to get in, there is usually a way to get out. |
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AnAppleSnail
Location: Charlotte, NC Gender: Male
ALL the flashlights!
| | | | Re: Cockroach Tunnel, Raleigh, NC <Reply # 7 on 8/26/2009 11:51 PM >
| | | Posted by Staples how was the air?
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Airflow is pretty good throughout Cockroach tunnel and the rest of the stream it's attached to.
Achievement Unlocked |
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WOLF!PACK!
Location: Raleigh NC Gender: Male
| | Re: Cockroach Tunnel, Raleigh, NC <Reply # 8 on 8/31/2009 9:41 PM >
| | | Yay Raleigh Draining!
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mascarah
Location: Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania Gender: Female
| | | Re: Cockroach Tunnel, Raleigh, NC <Reply # 9 on 9/3/2009 2:23 PM >
| | | i vote for calling it cockroach canal.
Life and death are only temporary but freedom goes on forever. Find me on: Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr. |
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zzztech13
Gender: Male
| | | Re: Cockroach Tunnel, Raleigh, NC <Reply # 10 on 9/12/2009 4:52 AM >
| | | NARCOLEPSOMNIA; What's w/ the name? Perform PSG's much? Titrations? Just curious...
"We are not human beings going through a temporary spiritual period, we are SPIRITUAL beings going through a temporary human period." |
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Narcolepsomnia
Location: Raleigh, NC Gender: Male
| | | Re: Cockroach Tunnel, Raleigh, NC <Reply # 11 on 9/12/2009 10:23 PM >
| | | Posted by zzztech13 NARCOLEPSOMNIA; What's w/ the name? Perform PSG's much? Titrations? Just curious...
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Narcolepsy + Insomnia I thought it was oh-so-clever when I came up with it years ago, but in hindsight it wasn't the best of choices.
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LauraL42
Location: Knoxville, TN Gender: Female
| | Re: Cockroach Tunnel, Raleigh, NC <Reply # 12 on 9/26/2009 4:38 AM >
| | | These are really cool. I would have looked at it sooner, but cockroach? I am never ok with cockroaches...
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AnAppleSnail
Location: Charlotte, NC Gender: Male
ALL the flashlights!
| | | | Re: Cockroach Tunnel, Raleigh, NC <Reply # 13 on 9/26/2009 4:40 AM >
| | | Posted by LauraL42 These are really cool. I would have looked at it sooner, but cockroach? I am never ok with cockroaches...
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The main (standing height) parts are pretty roachless. Check it out sometime; plenty of us Raleigh people know where it is. [last edit 9/26/2009 4:50 AM by AnAppleSnail - edited 1 times]
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Narcolepsomnia
Location: Raleigh, NC Gender: Male
| | | Re: Cockroach Tunnel, Raleigh, NC <Reply # 14 on 10/7/2009 6:33 PM >
| | | Posted by LauraL42 These are really cool. I would have looked at it sooner, but cockroach? I am never ok with cockroaches...
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As AnAppleSnail said, the large tunnel doesn't really have insect problems, but this specific side-pipe can get fairly infested during the summer, though mainly only around the previously-broken-but-now-fixed part of the pipe. Either way, the pipe is big enough that avoiding them is pretty easy if they do show up.
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Vasco de Gama
Location: Raleigh, NC Gender: Male
On a great big clipper ship.
| | | Re: Cockroach Tunnel, Raleigh, NC <Reply # 15 on 10/26/2009 4:42 AM >
| | | This places looks cool, love the arches made with the brick and it looks like it has some pretty cool flowstones formations, but nothing nearly dramatic as the Zodiac drain.
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Katetron
Location: Middlesex New Jersey Gender: Female
melting your brains
| | | | Re: Cockroach Tunnel, Raleigh, NC <Reply # 16 on 10/28/2009 10:05 PM >
| | | indeed very niiiiiiiiiiiiiiice stalactites.
too many people not enuff swet |
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Ashes in the Snow
Location: Raleigh, NC Gender: Male
Ladder Addict
| | | Re: Cockroach Tunnel, Raleigh, NC <Reply # 17 on 1/16/2010 8:18 AM >
| | | I know I'm bumping a very old thread here, but I'm new to the forums, so please forgive me. If anyone would like to show me this tunnel, I will buy you a beer afterwards at the bar of your choice. I've heard so much about this place through flickr and goodnightraleigh.com and am very intrigued. So, if anyone is interested in that free beer, lemme know -Ashes
http://www.flickr.com/kwikstix |
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