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The Icebox Drain type: Small municipal drain of an eerily flooded nature. Year: 1997, give or take. Region: Remote valley near residential Barrie. The same valley, in fact, as the Bad Portent. Drain accessibility: High, if you're the squeezing-through-reasonably-sized-gaps-in-steel-gates type. God knows we are. Drain exitability: Just squeeze back out the entrance, and watch you don't get your feet wet. Traversability: It's not huge. But then, the only real reason you'd want to visit it is only a few dozen feet into it, through a four-foot pipe off of the main chamber -- it's a pretty easy ride. Interesting features: The dammed tunnel from which the Icebox gets its name. Very nifty. Hazards: The dammed tunnel from which the Icebox gets its name. -_- Recommendation: A very cool thing to see -- a new favourite attraction of the UEC Drains O' Barrie tour. Weirdness in Drainland The Icebox has a photo gallery. One fine, chilly winter day, Grebin decided to insist that we go to see some drains he'd found near a residential area. He wouldn't say much about them, but out of a profound lack of anything else to do at the time we followed him. Apparently our destination was a sort of mecca of drains -- in a brief expedition he'd made there himself, Grebin had discovered all sorts of drainish goodness. Down a steep, icy hill we went, out of suburbia proper and into a pleasant little ski-hill-looking valley. We didn't have to walk far before we came to the entrance of our first target. We squeezed into the as-of-yet nameless drain and proceeded down the five-foot entrance tunnel. The first manhole chamber was a junction into two pipes. Grebin told us to take the lower one, so we hunched into its forty-eight inches of accommodation and made our way slowly forward. It didn't take long for our lights to give shape to what would be the drain's namesake: a two-foot high brick wall, covering the lower half of the tunnel. We approached it excitedly, overjoyed at actually discovering a unique feature in a city that tends to consist of standard, dull RCP's with few particularly nifty features. Grebin, of course, had seen it before. On this first excursion, the water behind the wall was frozen over, and some cautious prods with the infamous four-foot Urban Quarterstaff gave Grebin and I the idea that maybe, just maybe, the ice would support our weight. Unsure but hopeful, we pulled ourselves over the top of the wall and into the manhole chamber beyond. Standing on a layer of questionable ice over two feet of freezing-cold water was a uniquely frightening thing to say the least. Grebin and I shone our lights around the chamber, down the tunnel, and at the ice in an attempt to determine how thick it was, before it decided to let us know that it wasn't going to take this much longer with a menacing crack. Needless to say, we scampered. Off the ice and back into the tunnel we went, amongst much cracking and creaking from the ice under our feet. We made it back to the main chamber without a single case of hypothermia between us, explored the high pipe briefly, and left when it promised nothing interesting. The image of the tunnel stretching for hundreds of feet, half-filled with ice, was fresh in our minds and the drain's proper name came to us immediately. This is probably one of the most beautiful things we've seen in a municipal RCP -- oh yes, it is nifty. The night went on to bring us the Bad Portent. But first, quickly, go to the Icebox photo gallery! :D -Flame0ut Contact: [email protected] .