Infiltration

Chainsaw This member has been banned. See the banlist for more information. location: Underground, Colorado Gender: Male \| \|	A deep quandry... < on 9/4/2003 6:58 PM >

	So, we have this 120k square foot underground abandoned missile base we can't find a way into. Well, that's not true - there is one way in. It's an emergency escape route - open hole flat in the ground - about 3' in diameter and ~80' deep and the ladder has been removed that opens into ??? - we've been in other missile bases and found it could be water/sharp nasty metal/toxic sludge at the bottom. We have no idea how to get in and out. Couple ideas: Climb it: Too slow - we could only get one person up and down at a time - could take hours to get 4 people in and out - it's visible from some inhabited buildings so we couldn't hang out that long. The hole is too narrow to rappel, it would have to be a controlled descent. Winch it: Sounded good - we could get a truck winch with a 100' aircraft aluminum cable and just winch people up and down - come to find out the winches we can find/afford only run about 3 feet per minute - again - a couple hours to get in and out. I'm a welding nut so it would be no problem to build a trippod/quadpod to stand over the hole and mount the winch too - it would be heavy, but so would be the batteries. Driving a truck up to it is right out of the question. Heave-Ho: Get a couple beefy guys to go to haul the rope up and down - faster than a winch, but really who would want to do this if they couldn't go down the hole themselves? Both winching and heaving require someone to stay exposed on the surface - on a dark night it wouldn't be a problem, but sitting out in the cold waiting a couple hours to haul someone back up would SUCK. Anyway - I've got a stand almost built that straddles the hole and has a good sturdy place to hook a beener. I've sharpened the legs so they will sink into the ground under weight - just have to figure out the legs. It's all steel and plenty strong for the job. You guys are a bunch of frickin geniuses - what are your ideas? Quid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

lorax location: Albany, NYC, Northeast, USA Gender: Male \|	Re: A deep quandry... <Reply # 1 on 9/4/2003 7:17 PM >

	Sounds like a job for some specialized climbing equiptment. I would use a static climbing rope and 4 jumars (mechanical ascenders.) You could set up a grigri and belay yoursef on the way down. That would give you more speed in both directions. It shouldn't take more than a few minutes to descend 80 feet slowly and safely with a self belay. Once on the bottom, attach the jumar and ratchet yourself to the top. At least that is what I would do. As always, take stranger's advice with a grain of salt and use your own judgement. I am an experienced climber and would feel comfortable doing it in this manner.

MacGyver location: St Paul, Minnesota Gender: Male "Someone go find me a paperclip, a D-cell battery, and a cheese grater" \|	Re: A deep quandry... <Reply # 2 on 9/4/2003 7:20 PM >

	How 'bout a rope ladder? I've been in a similar situation before. There was a 65 foot shaft I wanted to get to the bottom of. I was already underground, so climbing gear was employed. We set up an anchor from some manhole stepirons and a few other beefy anchorable stuff nearby and rappeled down. Once morning was approaching, the ascending back up said shaft took a lot longer than anticipated (the guy I was with almost couldn't hack it. I was afraid I would have to leave him at the bottom for the chuds to find). I began devising a rope ladder system that would make the setup time almost nothing and eliminate the problem of rappeling/ascending. My design used thin aircraft cable and steel electrical conduit. I would cut 12" or maybe 14" rungs and space them 12" apart along the aircraft cable with nicopress swages. (these buggers) I was thinking of making 20 foot sections that could easily be connected together to form very long ladders. Aircraft cable is rediculously strong for the forces it would be seeing with this use, so breaking strength shouldn't be an issue. The anchor would take some thinking, but for a hole in a concrete slab, a chunk of strong pipe or a 4x4 spanning the hole should make do and be quick to set up. I eventually learned of a different way to get to the goodies at the bottom of the shaft, so I never made the ladder. I still might just to have it for future stuff though. Like a fiend with his dope / a drunkard his wine / a man will have lust for the lure of the mine "If you are not part of the solution, you are not dissolved in the solvent."

Jester location: Vancouver,B.C. Canada Gender: Male Always just out of sight... \| \|	Re: A deep quandry... <Reply # 3 on 9/4/2003 7:24 PM >

	Well, 80' could be done in a few minutes per person... I'd be inclined to try the climb personally. Or if your truck has decent clearance under it, and it was viable... I'd think of parking the truck over the hole, securing your ropes to the vehicle frame or something, and goin in like that. Would cover people seeing you in and out of the hole, just look like a vehicle parked there... Might want someone to stay in the vehicle though, to make sure you don't get towed or something... It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

MacGyver location: St Paul, Minnesota Gender: Male "Someone go find me a paperclip, a D-cell battery, and a cheese grater" \|	Re: A deep quandry... <Reply # 4 on 9/4/2003 7:28 PM >

	He's talking about a bunker-like target which is very likely in a remote location. If it was in a city setting, you'd have a whole different can of worms. Like a fiend with his dope / a drunkard his wine / a man will have lust for the lure of the mine "If you are not part of the solution, you are not dissolved in the solvent."

Jester

location:
Vancouver,B.C. Canada
Gender: Male

Always just out of sight...

Re: A deep quandry...
<Reply # 5 on 9/4/2003 7:35 PM >

Posted by Commander Chainsaw

Climb it: Too slow - we could only get one person up and down at a time - could take hours to get 4 people in and out - it's visible from some inhabited buildings so we couldn't hang out that long. The hole is too narrow to rappel, it would have to be a controlled descent.

Krazy, I think it is near buildings ...

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

MacGyver location: St Paul, Minnesota Gender: Male "Someone go find me a paperclip, a D-cell battery, and a cheese grater" \|	Re: A deep quandry... <Reply # 6 on 9/4/2003 7:39 PM >

	but it doesn't sound like it's in an urban environment where there is a place to aprk, much less get towed. I'll shut my mouth before I'm proven wrong though. Chainsaw, care to fill us in? Like a fiend with his dope / a drunkard his wine / a man will have lust for the lure of the mine "If you are not part of the solution, you are not dissolved in the solvent."

Chainsaw

This member has been banned. See the banlist for more information.
location:
Underground, Colorado
Gender: Male

Re: A deep quandry...
<Reply # 7 on 9/4/2003 8:08 PM >

Okay - we can't get a truck on site.

The facility is fenced and in a rural location. Because it is on top of a hill though there is visibility from houses nearby.

We can get people in no problem under a poorly secured gate, a vehicle would be seen onsite, seeing as the local sherrif has their communications tower ON THE SAME facility I would assume someone would report a vehicle being there...

click to view

The White X is the location of the hatch - the blue circles indicate houses that have a clear line of site to the facility.

Quid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

Chainsaw This member has been banned. See the banlist for more information. location: Underground, Colorado Gender: Male \| \|	Re: A deep quandry... <Reply # 8 on 9/4/2003 8:12 PM >

	Check out this link if you want to see the layout of the missile base itself... http://subciety.homestead.com/expedition2~ns4.html We've been into one of these bases and scouted out a couple others...This seems to be our best shot to get into #2 and hopefully it's in better shape as it has been owned by the county government and not totally abandoned like the one from expedition2 - so no vandalism or squatters. Quid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

MacGyver location: St Paul, Minnesota Gender: Male "Someone go find me a paperclip, a D-cell battery, and a cheese grater" \|	Re: A deep quandry... <Reply # 9 on 9/4/2003 9:00 PM >

	to Jester: ha! to the subciety guys: what do think of the pheasability of the rope ladder idea? Like a fiend with his dope / a drunkard his wine / a man will have lust for the lure of the mine "If you are not part of the solution, you are not dissolved in the solvent."

Chainsaw This member has been banned. See the banlist for more information. location: Underground, Colorado Gender: Male \| \|	Re: A deep quandry... <Reply # 10 on 9/4/2003 9:03 PM >

	Well, if you know anything about me you know that I'm fairly nimble for a fat man...but I'll probably be one of the guys sitting on watch. I'll bounce the idea of the guinea pig...uh...other members of the group and see which way they want to go. One other idea is to get hyrdraulic on it - see if we can pry open the main entry, but again, that's a lot of heavy equipment - probably been sealed since 1965 - 6'x10'x2' slab built to withstand a nuke? Not too optimisitic about that one... Quid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

Jester location: Vancouver,B.C. Canada Gender: Male Always just out of sight... \| \|	Re: A deep quandry... <Reply # 11 on 9/4/2003 9:06 PM >

	Krazy : HA ,it still has houses within view. Well, in the dark of night (no billion candle headlights going), you should be able to climb down without anybody seeing a damn thing... At least from the aprox distances I see on the map... It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

Chainsaw This member has been banned. See the banlist for more information. location: Underground, Colorado Gender: Male \| \|	Re: A deep quandry... <Reply # 12 on 9/4/2003 9:30 PM >

	Yeah, but we could never get a truck up there without being spotted...thus the quandry. Hell, I wouldn't be adverse to using explosives if I though we could get away with it. Quid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

Jester location: Vancouver,B.C. Canada Gender: Male Always just out of sight... \| \|	Re: A deep quandry... <Reply # 13 on 9/4/2003 9:46 PM >

	I realize you can't get the truck up there, but you could put your set up you spoke of over the whole, in the dark nobody is going to see it from over 500 meters ? I would think you could all stand in that area for a long time as long as you were quiet and light was used very sparingly without anyone noticing... It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

Ferret

location:
Toronto

Re: A deep quandry...
<Reply # 14 on 9/4/2003 9:47 PM >

Posted by Commander Chainsaw

Winch it: Sounded good - we could get a truck winch with a 100' aircraft aluminum cable and just winch people up and down - come to find out the winches we can find/afford only run about 3 feet per minute - again - a couple hours to get in and out. I'm a welding nut so it would be no problem to build a trippod/quadpod to stand over the hole and mount the winch too - it would be heavy, but so would be the batteries. Driving a truck up to it is right out of the question.

This one is a very easy way to badly injure or kill yourself - caving sites are full of stories of people using vehicle winches to descend into or ascend out of caves.

Given the narrow diameter, I would climb it. Three feet is perfect for practicing my chimney climbing techniques!

Chainsaw

This member has been banned. See the banlist for more information.
location:
Underground, Colorado
Gender: Male

Re: A deep quandry...
<Reply # 15 on 9/4/2003 10:22 PM >

click to view

You really want to chimney this sort of thing?

*THIS IS NOT THE SHAFT WE NEED TO GET DOWN*

This is an image of another bases Personel tunnel - this bad boy is horizontal and 15' in diameter.

The shaft we need to get down has the same sheathing, the cable run stands are not in the escape shaft - just a few chunks where the ladder used to be attached.

I posted this picture to show you what the sides of the verticle look like - rusty w/ peeling lead paint.

Anchoring isnt' a problem at the top - got that covered.
[last edit 9/5/2003 11:30 AM by Chainsaw - edited 1 times]

Quid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

Jester location: Vancouver,B.C. Canada Gender: Male Always just out of sight... \| \|	Re: A deep quandry... <Reply # 16 on 9/4/2003 10:27 PM >

	I would be setting up the gear above, to securely anchor ropes, and going down climbing using the sides when possible with rope assist... Fuck I wish that was around here... It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

Caput_58 location: Virginia, USA Gender: Male \| \|	Re: A deep quandry... <Reply # 17 on 9/5/2003 3:45 AM >

	Wish I was there too.. Why didn't we put more ICBM's in southwest virginia? Oh well. One thing we did install in virginia is a shitload of caves. In my experience, 4 people with minimial experience can prussik a 120' drop in about 2.5 hrs. A set of prussik knots cost $12/set. Webbing to tie a harness is about $8/24'. For down, and eight and a biener will run you about $20. Static line runs about $80/150ft. Its not cheap, but with some above ground training it is safe and effective. The vehicle powered hauling system on the other hand is outrageously dangerous. Don't do it. A second option, if the pipe is chimneyable, is to use the rope to top belay the climbers up. This would require less equipment, and the safety would be based on the skill of the best belayer. Of course someone needs to either remain at the surface, or climb without a safety. Anyway, vertical technique have been discussed before. I highly reccomend you go to your local library/outdoors stoor and find a copy of "On Rope". Caput_58

Jester location: Vancouver,B.C. Canada Gender: Male Always just out of sight... \| \|	Re: A deep quandry... <Reply # 18 on 9/5/2003 4:27 AM >

	One plain rope and I would be down that in about 10 minutes (given it is indeed 80 feet?) Going up would take longer, with more little stops along the way, bracing against the wall... With a harness and some safety, it wouldn't be difficult from the looks of the shaft. It's a good size for bracing yourself when needed. It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

Ferret

location:
Toronto

Re: A deep quandry...
<Reply # 19 on 9/5/2003 5:06 AM >

Posted by Commander Chainsaw

click to view

You really want to chimney this sort of thing?

Those projections make it a bit awkward, so an anchor and safety line would be needed, but it does look chimney-able to me. The points where those brackets meet the wall would probably be stable enough for foot holds, but I wouldn't put any weight on the ends of them, they would probably just snap righ off.

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