Wednesday, September 29, 2004

InPhenity and myself (Mark) hooked up tonight around Id say 10pm. After I got him parked and oriented I took him to what was my cool, two foot drain experience. Essentially a passage under a roadway with some interesting bridges. Generally I spend hours pacing this stream and hadn’t taken the opportunity to check it out in full. After following it by the engineering building, under the wooden bridge, and past the old Gym, we headed toward 5points. There is a nice little park and this fairly decent sized stream running though it. We poked around and found this little tunnel maybe 3-4 feet tall. InPhenity hoped down careful not to get his shoes wet and looked in. It traveled off a bit then banked to the left. Although nice it was quite cramped and not exactly walking friendly, plus he didn’t want to get his shoes wet. Coming to the end of the park we found this nasty rock wall, that seemed damn near impassible due to the foliage. Not discouraged I decided to walk around the neighborhood. InPhenity had noted that they were working on the drains in 5 points and a residential area. We would find out it was part of this tunnel system later. As we trotted down the neighborhood we passed two guys drinking on the porch, listening to MP3s. I almost asked them if they knew anything about the stream, but decided not to.
Going up the hill we hit the train tracks behind some houses. Now the train tracks obviously must cross the stream and we know they cross the road paralleling the stream. A short walk, and a discussion about the absurdity of having sex on train tracks we reached our first bridge. Looking off to the left with are flashlights and following the noise I spotted the entrance to the tunnel. We darted across and as I got across I warned InPhenity about hobos being under the tracks. With that statement he stopped dead and I took the lead. Please not I haven’t had a nice time with hobos. I seem to find the angry ones, and no I don’t provoke them. This bridge probably had a good 50-70 foot drop. I could be wrong due to the night and lack of relief in the dark. Going down posed 3 problems. One was the slippery steep slope with little chance of climbing out. Two the bottom looked like it ended in the stream rather then a bank. Three I had found a hobo hotel worth of cushions, and from the looks someone just got up. Could have been two loud people crunching around who knows. We then pulled out and crossed the bridge over the road into five points.
Back tracking a bit we ducked into a backyard. With no lights on we carefully peaked around until I realized we were at the base of this huge hill where the tracks lay. I guessed we were 200-300 feet off. Off to the road and up the street about 200 feet there are the guys still outside. One quick question and a long alcoholic banter and we found we hit pay dirt. Apparently I wasn’t off more then 50 or so feet. Ducking between the guys house and another we walked into sparse woods. Immediately to my horror both of us saw someone standing. InPhenity muttered "Oh shit... what’s that", most likely because of my abrupt stop. It turned out to be a electrical box, however it was about man height and change color at waste level. Just past that we hit fence.
We came upon a cow fence first, then chain-link. All meshed together with some crap razor wire we looked stuck. Not to worry InPhenity shined his light and I saw a bit of fence missing. There was this nice hole and a ledge over the stream. The concrete ledge wasn’t large and I told InPhenity not to worry about the crappy barbed wire. Going across I hoped down and found this half moon shaped tunnel. We both saw the square tunnel right next to it. Rejoiced I failed to notice the preverbal snake under my boots as InPhenity pointed out yet another large tunnel, not parallel to the others. We went into the box tunnel opting for non crouched walk. A couple hundred feet of graffiti and I asked InPhenity if he had to get up early.
After getting back to my room for a quick boot change and grabbing InPhenity car we were back in the tunnel. This time I had no grip issues and InPhenity was putting his Wal-Mart boots to good use. As you can see the trip was spectacular for this area. The archway tunnel is awesome, and picks of the lights will be great.
Now there is a little story you can find on ghost sites. Its a story about a 3 eyed man who terrorized USC. Apparently there are catacombs under USC, but no one has been in or knows anything about them. Rumor has it they were sealed off, however I figured it was a bunch of bull because there are steam tunnels under all of USC, even though they are split into sections. I may be terribly wrong. Due to a cop in our path we stumbled on a interesting tunnel. A tunnel shaped like a old doorway with the arch top, and made out of old rough stone, stands at the end of the 5points drain. Not only is this made the same way as the Saluda River and Bridge, it also seems to go straight toward the oldest part of USC. The Saluda River and Bridge area predates the civil war and USC was started in 1801. You can do the math on the possible age of the tunnel, as I know nothing about tunnel construction. In fact check out the pick. Unfortunately this place seems to have terrible flooring and is going require some waders and a lot of light. Maybe this is the fabled catacombs of lore. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit.