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Flowstone Caverns and The Fur Drain type: Obnoxious New Municipal Drain Year: 1990-something. Region: The entrance is in a field, but it seems to go under most of the south Barrie region. Drain accessibility: High. There is an open standing entrance at the far downstream end, and although all the manholes we could verify as going into it are mysteriously welded shut, one has been forced open just upstream of the standing entrance. Not by us -- "Jay", perhaps. Drain exitability: Infuriatingly low. It seems to stretch on forever, getting lower and lower, and it's easy to convince yourself that there'll be an exit or a poppable manhole just one chamber up... or maybe at the next one... or the one after that... and finally you realize that not only are you terribly exhausted, but you have two kilometres of four-foot pipe to get back to the entrance. A pox on small pipes! A pox on municipal networks! Traversability: To be fair, Flowstone Caverns is a bit of a letdown. The entrance will take you into an RCP at least seven feet high, with lots of oxygen and a musty municipal drain smell. You go less than two hundred feet down this pipe, though, until it turns slightly and opens into a manhole chamber, the exit of which is much smaller (about the size of the pipes halfway through the MANWHORE). But you go on anyway, since it's not that bad... eventually traversing this drain is just not worth the effort, as the pipes continually shrink and there's no end in sight. Interesting features: Flowstone! Perhaps the only real redeeming quality of Flowstone Caverns was its ubiquitous, thick, fascinating flowstone. I recommend touching it. It varies in texture, colour, location and other such things. It's really quite neat. The further in you go, generally, the better the flowstone becomes. At one point we found some tiny, pressurized jets of water shooting into the tunnel through what must have been micropunctures in the concrete -- it was actually quite a soft mist and very pleasant to touch. Mushy rust stalactities abound. You'll find lots of crawlable side-tunnels which, in all fairness, probably go nowhere, but who knows? Also, there is animal dung in every single one of the first five or six chambers, and inevitably one finds a bizarre fungus of some kind growing on said dung -- it looks like it's covered in thick, white fur. It's really quite strange. Then, of course, there's the graffiti. And an eastern toe-biter! Hazards: Very little oxygen far in, to the point where one can become confused and disoriented (if you're climbing any ladders or anything of the sort, make certain you have someone on the ground whose only job is remembering which tunnel you entered through!). As well, god only knows what you're inhaling with that fur-fungus everywhere. Bring dust masks, perhaps. And a hat, for the rust stalactites. Or, go up to the fourth chamber and go home. Trust me. If you really want to see some great flowstone, go up to the sixth or seventh chamber, but you'll have a long and tiring walk back. Recommendation: If you want to do this drain solely to see the flowstone formations, for god's sake, go spelunking. That way you'll get to see blind cave salamanders as well, and maybe not die in a concrete tomb ten feet underground of exhaustion, exposure and oxygen deprivation. If you really need something to do, by all means check out the first four or five chambers, but don't push yourself. Flowstone Caverns goes nowhere fast. The Siren Song of Flowstone Caverns One day, when I was just about to eat some salmon, I got a call from Grebin. He told me that he had found a "great drain" in my area, and insisted that I go with himself and Asher to explore it. I did so. Asher drove her truck through the field to the entrance, but ended up parking a little ways away on a road as there was another vehicle out there surveying, or illegally dumping, or hunting people, or something. We walked to the entrance where a manhole had been removed and lowered ourselves into the drain -- it was, in fact, quite large. I was pleased. We splashed our way upstream to the first manhole chamber, where there was some strange graffiti, and decided to proceed down the smaller pipe continuing upstream. It was around the second or third chamber that we began finding bits of graffiti by someone apparently named "Jay" who, it would seem, had a very large penis with four testicles (which were on fire). Somewhere around this area we saw a very small side-pipe which led somewhere with daylight and a ladder, so I crawled through it on my stomach, only to discover it was a rather unexceptional catch basin. Grebin decided to join me and soon made the same conclusion. Thus, we returned to the drain, displeased with ourselves and our ill fate. As we went, we passed a large eastern toe-biter, contemplated the furry animal dung, saw some truly fantastic flowstone and touched some pressurized water jets. It was quite neat. We continued down the drain, observing the odd bit of weird tangled rope and such things, noticing that the pipes were getting considerably smaller as we went, and getting gradually less and less oxygen, until we finally reached that critical point where we were becoming quite exhausted but the entrance seemed a terribly long way back, and it seemed reasonable to continue upstream to see if there was another exit. I ran ahead to the next chamber, where there was nothing. Asher and Grebin came up after me, and I decided that I'd scout ahead as far as I was able to, and I'd call them if there was a promise of an exit. I left my backpack with them and ran upstream about four or five chambers, where I became exhausted and had to stop. For some reason, then, Asher and Grebin decided to come up and join me. It was only after they'd done so that we realized that the pipe going upstream from there could be traversed on all fours at best -- it just didn't make any sense to go further. Sweaty, tired, miserable, and oxygen-deprived, we sullenly accepted that we'd be walking back to the entrance. It had taken us over an hour to get to where we were, and we weren't looking forward to going back. Grebin tried to pop a few manholes along the way, but with no luck. We trudged slowly and painfully through the tunnels, stopping at each chamber for several minutes to catch our breath. The odd combination of cold air and high humidity was strange and made us more miserable (although, to be fair, probably anything would have at that point). Grebin and I tried to kill the time by performing imitations of various sirens (emergency broadcast system, air raid, that sort of thing), until Asher indicated with absolutely no ambiguity that we must stop doing so. Finally, after about forty minutes of mind-numbing trudging, the tunnels began getting bigger, and when we reached Jay's graffiti we managed to make our first penis joke in ninety minutes. The air got better, and so did we, as we approached the exit, and finally, finally, we were out. Then we all gladly went home. In retrospect, it was a very cool experience. At the time, it blew giant donkey balls. I wonder if Reader's Digest will publish this in Drama In Real Life... -Flame0ut Contact: [email protected] .