Here’s my 2023 Year In Review, only, uh… three and a half months late? In my defense it’s been a busy forever, honestly, and I’m only now getting the chance to sit down a bit and catch up on documenting my adventures.
Anyway, here’s this last year’s lineup. For the sake of brevity I’ve only included one photo per location instead of one per visit. Without further ado, strap in because this was one hell of a year.
As is annual tradition, I started off the year with a weeklong visit to MSP for a meetup (if you know you know) to catch up with explorers from around the country. This year was the perfect mix of adventure and catching up with friends for me- I don’t think I really got to spend quite enough time with as many explorers as I’d hoped, but then again, the meetup could be twice as long and I’d still feel as though there wasn’t enough time.
1.) [REDACTED] Really cool mine near MSP, redacted because they’d get pissed if I posted this. This mine nearly ended my year before it even started when a softball-sized chunk of the ceiling broke loose and nearly smashed my head in. It fortunately missed me by about three inches, though it gave me quite a scare. It wouldn’t be my only close call this year but it was certainly one of the more alarming ones. 
2.) A super cool art show in a party cave. It took two days to set up, but we finished just in time for the show. Myself and dozens of other photographers contributed photosets to be hung on the cavern walls, though that wasn’t the only form of art present- there were sculptures, short films, historical displays, zines, and even a stage play alongside the open bar. 
3.) A hangout spot and zine library in a side passage off a popular drain. 4.) [REDACTED] An MSP sewer. MSP being MSP, I’ll err on the safe side and censor this one. 
5.) A classic MSP drain. We didn’t realize there was a trail with a staircase leading to it, so we ended up risking life and limb to climb down a one-hundred-foot-tall icy bluff to reach the drain before we realized that we’d completely missed the easy, safe route. Go figure. 6.) [REDACTED] A cave party bust that turned into a whole big thing. Censoring this one to not reopen that can of worms because it could have ended far worse than it did. After that disaster of a party bust, I shook the sand from my boots and headed west. As I put hundreds of miles behind me across the vast plains of North Dakota I stumbled upon a derelict farmhouse and a ranching ghost town that fell to ruin when the railroads moved on.
7.) An old farmhouse on the North Dakota prairie. 
8.) The ghost town had some really unique and honestly pretty creative graffiti. Soon enough I had returned to Montana. I had a great deal of unfinished business there and I was determined to wrap up as much of it as I could in a season. But with last year’s drought finally broken the brutal Montana winters were back with vengeance and I found urbex far more difficult than it had been the year prior. Vicious blizzards with gale force winds howled down from the mountain peaks, dropping visibility to zero as they frequently dumped several feet of snow in a matter of hours. My first winter in Montana had been on easy mode, and in my second I learned how badly I had been lulled into a false sense of security.
I often found myself struggling to limp back to civilization whenever my car ended up bogged down in the thick snow. Even if I managed to reach the general vicinity of a spot, I often found that the heavy snowfall had rendered all access routes completely impassable until spring. On one disastrous expedition I found myself stranded on the side of the highway in a whiteout blizzard, huddled and shivering in my car as I tried to fend off hypothermia until the morning when the plows would clear the roads. But despite these enormous setbacks, I still managed to find a few spots worth seeing.
10.) An agricultural ghost town along I90. 
11.) A brick ore smelter built high upon a mountainside. 
12.) The last of seven charcoal kilns that provided fuel for the nearby smelters and mines. I got followed for several miles by an old man in a pickup truck who noticed me poking around this spot before I managed to shake him. 
13.) A railroad tunnel through the foothills, once the longest of its kind in Montana. 
14.) The Montana State Orphanage, which featured in my most recent writeup. To be honest it really took a lot out of me to write. I haven’t quite worked up the motivation to finish another one like it yet (unless this thread counts?) but I’ve got a few I’ve been plucking away at here and there. I wasn’t quite done with Montana, but before I could wrap things up there it was time to journey to Kansas City for another meetup! This was the tipping point for when I began to seriously consider moving to Kansas City this year. I knew I wanted to do it sometime and had been making promises to that effect for a couple of years by that point, but up until this meet up it had been more of a nebulous idea than a solid plan. I found myself so enamored with the sense of community I experienced at this year’s meetup that I couldn’t help but want more of it.
15.) [REDACTED] Censored to avoid getting a certain explorer fired. 
16.) These cut-off sections of a collapsed mine remain the most terrifyingly sketchy cavern roofs I’ve ever seen in my life. There were places where entire boulders were hanging by a single strand of rebar. 
17. I believe I might have been one of the last to see this school before it burned. I should get some “after” photos for comparison. 
18.) Another derelict school. 
19.)Mine driving in a room and pillar mine that is notoriously difficult to navigate. To quote a drunk explorer, “How the hell did we lose an entire truck?” 20.) [REDACTED] The King Tut’s Tomb of KC, in that it was long-sought after by literally everyone and opening it clearly unleashed a curse upon the entire community. I’ll redact this one to avoid reopening old drama. 
21.) I almost rented an apartment next door to this one. Almost. 
22.) Nobody’s been able to get back into this building for the last year or so due to a violently unstable homeless person who keeps attacking everyone who tries. 
23.) The lobby of an abandoned skyscraper. Once one of the more coveted spots in Kansas City, it’s been the source of no small amount of drama. 
24.) The ever-classic party cave. I wish I had more photos but unfortunately that jungle juice took me OUT. A certain somebody made the punch with seven handles of hard liquor, enough Kool-Aid powder to hide the taste, and nothing else to dilute it. Lots of folks had to be carried out of the cave that night, myself included. The day after the KC meetup I led a ragtag group of Midwestern explorers out to Denver to visit some of the classic Front Range spots- but absolutely nothing went according to plan. Two of our best spots were cut off by several feet of snow, and the spring melt had destabilized the snowpack so much that we sank up to our hips every other step. We were already soaking wet and fending off hypothermia less than three hundred yards into a three-mile hike, so we had to turn back in defeat.
The Titan silo (that everyone knows about) was even more of a disaster. Our midnight attempt ended in a dead sprint across a quarter mile of open field with a security truck hot on our heels, followed by a high-speed chase out of town where I was nearly thrown from the bed of our getaway truck while rounding a corner at highway speeds. But despite these major setbacks, the expedition wasn’t a total disaster.
25.) This was one of the spots a Colorado explorer and I scouted immediately before the KC meetup for the Front Range Expedition. As it turns out, this derelict greenhouse had been taken over by a small group of squatters who were trying to turn it into a black market grow-op to undercut the premium prices of the dispensaries. Trying to grow weed in the winter to sell on the black market in a recreationally legal state seemed like a losing game, but when we noticed a few of the squatters discreetly circling behind our backs to flank us with the biggest pit bull I’ve ever seen we decided to make a hasty exit without arguing the point. 
26.) A small boiler building we stumbled upon after striking out all day. It felt kind of like a consolidation prize from the universe, to be honest. 
27.) A bunch of abandoned trains and two derelict grain elevators in a small town on the Eastern Plains of Colorado. 
28.) Another ghost town on the plains of Colorado. 
29.) An ore crushing mill. You can almost see the mesothelioma in the air, so that might be a problem in twenty years. 
30.) A partially abandoned parking garage with some fully abandoned offices on the top level. It’s no wonder the parking garage is mostly derelict, considering they charge $90 a day to park here. 
31.) An absolutely enormous hospital which was the saving grace of the Front Range Expedition. Between the federal officers out front and the workers inside we thought there was no way in until a Chicago explorer who’d accompanied us declared that she’d use her “infinite cop rizz” to get us inside. To everyone’s surprise her fast-talking actually worked, and this ended up being the home run of what would have otherwise been a long string of strikeouts. Kansas City and Denver had been fun diversions, but I still had to tie upon some loose ends in Montana in both urbex and my non-exploring life.
32.) I had to fistfight a very angry grouse for access to this mill. Who needs security when you’ve got aggressively territorial birds full of heavy metals and spite? 
33.) Easily one of the riskiest infiltrations I pulled off this year, and I did it half-deaf due to an ear infection. 
34.) The surface workings of the Smith coal mine, site of the second worst mining disaster in Montana history. Since 75 men died the last time this mine was opened, I stayed above ground to avoid making it 76. 
35.) A tiny gold mine dug by an independent prospector. 
36.) A wedding photo set that fell to disrepair after the photography studio got turned into a dispensary. 
37.) Another ghost town killed by railroad diversions. This would be the last spot I explored in Montana. With winter’s grip on the land broken and a warm spring sun shining down, it was time for me to say my farewells and return to the Midwest while I decided my next move. First on my list was poking around some spots in what had once been my home turf a long few years ago.
38.) The school of a small ghost town I encountered on my way back across North Dakota. About twenty miles outside of town I got stuck behind a funeral procession and may have accidentally joined it for a while, before discreetly peeling off once I reached the ghost town. 
39.) A farmhouse in rural Wisconsin. 
40.) A small town church in central Wisconsin. I spent hours looking for it after seeing a photo of the crumbling brickwork online, and eventually my efforts were rewarded. 
41.) This school down the street from the above church was built right next to a small cemetery. I suspect that the gravedigger didn’t dig deep enough, because the faint stench of rotting meat wafted on the breeze around this schoolhouse. 
42.) An underground punk show in MSP, hosted inside a bridge by several explorers. The speakers were cranked so loud that the music was clearly audible for several blocks in every direction and it was no surprise that the police eventually showed up. But upon poking their heads inside the bridge and seeing close to one hundred punks moshing, the two officers decided that discretion was the better part of valor and left without breaking the show up. Naturally, the bands took that as encouragement to crank the music even louder- a feat I didn’t think was possible. I had been planning a road trip out to New England for a good year or two, but I never seemed to have the cash for it thanks to various car repairs always eating up my savings. This year I worked a second job all through the winter to save up enough money to make that trip happen, and it was finally time to enjoy the fruits of my labor. From Pittsburgh to New York all the way up to Boston, I spent the better part of two weeks living out of my car and meeting with old friends as I traversed the northeast.
43.) I think we might’ve been among the first explorers to crack this pristine steel mill. 
44.) This shipwreck washed up on the shores of the Ohio River one night and nobody is quite sure where it came from. Ten years later and its origins remain a mystery. 
45.) This spot nearly killed a fellow explorer while we were exploring it together. We entered through a sinkhole in the sidewalk that led into the basement, and as we were climbing down the sinkhole a beachball sized chunk of pavement broke loose and narrowly missed his head. The structural stability didn’t improve from there. 
46.)A wedding venue, just a few short weeks before it got the Northeast Flavor Of The Month treatment by the clout chasers. I believe it has since been demolished. 
47.) I had a remarkable amount of trouble finding information on this cop shop. As far as public documents go, it might as well not exist. 
48.) I know for a fact we were the first to crack this shuttered church, and we might have been the only explorers to get in at all before it reopened. 49.) [REDACTED]. This is one I can’t share, as I was sworn to secrecy by the New England explorer who showed it to me. 
50.) The remains of a housing projects block. 51.) [REDACTED]. This is the other East Coast spot I can’t share, as I was sworn to secrecy about this one as well. 
52.) This hospital was a fun one. The black mold was so atrocious that I actually had to use my respirator, which is a rarity. I also encountered some teenagers who screamed and took off running when I stepped out from behind a boiler and asked “so are you explorers?” in a dark steam plant. Ah, I remember being the spooked teenager once upon a time. How the tables turn. 
53.) This church didn’t impress me at first, until I looked up. Though it was almost completely empty aside from the shattered altar, the ceiling alone made it one of my favorite spots on this trip. 
54.) On the way back to the Midwest I stopped at this mostly derelict Air Force base in Michigan. This shot was taken in the abandoned hospital. 
55.) I thought I was the first to find this abandoned wastewater plant until I found the discreetly cut locks around back. I don’t know who, but it distinctly looks like explorer handiwork so I know someone beat me to it. All this travel may have looked glamorous, and in many ways it was. But the nomadic lifestyle is a hard one, and with the highest of highs come the lowest of lows- and trust me when I say the lows couldn’t get lower. Fatigue and loneliness had become my only constant companions amidst the ever-changing sea of new people and places, and the weariness from the last two years on the road pressed heavier upon my bones with every thousand miles that passed. By the time I had finished my New England trip I felt stretched too far and spread too thin, as though I was too little butter on too much toast.
Something had to change. I finally decided to act upon the promises I had been making to myself and others for so long and moved to Kansas City in early summer, running on fumes with the fragile hope of finding a place to finally belong.
I found it in spades as the Kansas City urbex community welcomed me with open arms. This was what I had crossed the country searching for over the last two years. Kansas City breathed fresh life into me, refreshed and reinvigorated me as I quickly found myself exploring more than ever before.
56.) The ruins of a burnt down house I stumbled across while on my way to the store. 
57.) The first local urbex community gathering I attended, atop a derelict railroad bridge that was a popular hangout spot before its renovation. 
58.) Some late night rooftopping my first week in town. 
59.) More rooftopping in the downtown area. 
60.) A punk show in an abandoned reservoir. 
61.) We found a half-drowned racoon in a garbage can full of rainwater inside this derelict school. A fellow explorer was able to rescue it with a broom handle, but if we’d explored this place ten minutes later it may not have survived. 
62.) We found some CPR dummies while exploring a university medical school building that was slated for demolition. Anyone remember that one scene from The Office? 
63.) An abandoned daycare. 
64.) A half-burnt school that the neighbors were weirdly defensive about. 
65.) The Castle, a 19th century prison that is perhaps one of the most iconic abandoned buildings in all of Kansas City. I’ve seen the renovation proposal for this place and frankly, demolition would be a mercy compared to the architectural atrocities the developers plan to inflict upon it. 
66.) A mine in rural Missouri with strangely blue water. That’s not photoshop, it really is that blue- I think it has something to do with the mineral content. 
67.) Another abandoned room and pillar mine in rural Missouri. 
68.) This room and pillar mine was renovated into an underground industrial park before it was abandoned and partially flooded. 
69.) Another section of abandoned mine. This wide-open entrance with the wooden arch is an iconic Kansas City urbex photograph. 
70.) Trinity Lutheran Hospital in its final days before demolition. 
71.) We spent a lot of time on rooftops over the summer. 
72.) A local urbex meetup, but on bikes. 
]73.) Petey the Penguin has become the mascot of the Kansas City urbex community. Here is a small crowd of explorers gathering in the drains to hear his wisdom. 
74.) An abandoned warehouse filled with all sorts of odds and ends. 
75.) A giant neon sign that made this rooftop one of the most popular exploring spots in Kansas City. Unfortunately, a pissing match between security and a splinter crew of social media explorers got it sealed. 
76.) I also made a few day trips into neighboring states like Illinois. This glass factory was on my list for a very long time. All that white- that’s all broken glass. 
77.) A prison in central Illinois. It was so overgrown that I couldn’t even see the buildings from the outside, just the gaps in the vines where the open doors and windows were. 
78.) The shell of an observatory in southern Illinois. It’s sadly just out of the path of totality for the 2024 solar eclipse, or else I’d be watching it from here next month. 
79.) Another Kansas City cave. We have a lot of these here. 
80.) A natural spring-fed cave in the Ozarks with the ruins of a small stone hospital built over it. Supposedly the doctor who built it believed that the cool, moist air flowing out of the cave would be good for patients with lung issues. 81.) [REDACTED]. Sorry, I was asked by the explorer who showed it to me not to tell a soul about it since it has personal significance to them. Despite my resolution to settle down and relax for a while, I somehow found myself exploring farther than ever before once I got settled in Kansas City. For the first time in my life, I had easy access to a major airport with cheap budget airline flights and I took full advantage of that.
The first big trip I did was a return to western Colorado for the second annual Weslopex meetup with the Bureau of Exploration. As one of the core organizers I found myself incredibly stressed as I tried to arrange the logistics for a backcountry urbex meetup from two states away, and we found ourselves hampered by setbacks that were only narrowly overcome through the extraordinary teamwork of everyone involved. It was quite the story, but I’ll save it for a future writeup. I haven’t decided if I’ll post that writeup to UER yet or if this site is too public – the rest of the Colorado community is spooked about posting mine information online due to increased activity by looters, so we’ll see.
82.) This 19th century copper mine was lined with unique mineral formations in bright pastel colors. Combined with the wild west murder mystery that made it infamous and it became one of my favorite mines in the country. But, like the story of Weslopex itself, that’s a tale that deserves (and will get) its own writeup someday soon. 
83.) We now return to your regularly scheduled Kansas City locations, featuring a fire-damaged church. 
84.) More Kansas City rooftops! 
85.) This enormous multi-building warehouse complex used to be the staging ground for Army logistics back in the mid twentieth century. The military hasn’t owned it for decades now. 
86.) A small office building. We gave the homeless encampment inside a wide berth. 
87.) This was a fun rooftop with quite a view of the skyline. 
88.) We held the birthday party for a prominent Kansas City explorer in the pumphouse of an abandoned powerplant. Decked out with fancy lights, speakers, and lots of alcohol, it made for quite a venue. 
89.) Weld Wheels, an abandoned wheel factory that has been the first bando for many rookies over the years. It’s currently under demolition and we tried to have a cookout inside a few weeks ago to see it off into the great ghost town in the sky, but we ended up running out the back carrying grills and coolers while three workers with crowbars ran in the front. 
90.) The launch bay of an Atlas missile silo. I fell up to my thighs in some of the foulest swamp muck I’ve ever touched while getting inside this one. 
91.) A small town train depot. This town had some eerie vibes- the downtown area looked just like any other small down main street, except that nobody was around. Middle of the day, flags flying from every streetlamp and everything looking normal except for the complete lack of people. To make it creepier, the railroad crossing next to the depot kept signaling a train that never arrived- gates down, lights flashing and bell ringing for twenty minutes straight without a single train ever passing through. It was still signaling when I left. 
92.) A one room schoolhouse full of crumbling taxidermized animal heads and massive piles of antlers. Very strange vibes indeed. 
93.) I got chased out of here by phantom footsteps moments before the sheriff arrived. Had it not been for them, he would have caught me inside for sure. 94.) [REDACTED]. A bit of infiltration in a spot we’re very much trying to keep on the down low. 
95.) A giant room and pillar mine that’s actually surprisingly easy to navigate, thanks to its consistent grid layout. 
96.) An abandoned Church of Christ Scientist. To clarify, the Church of Christ Science and Scientology are separate religions. There was some persistent confusion over this amongst the local community. I spent the summer getting settled here in KC, but with the autumn leaves beginning to turn it was soon time to catch up with the broader Midwestern community at a meetup in Dubuque.
97.) Starting things off with some excitement, we set off a trail camera almost immediately upon entering this powerplant. I spent all of two minutes taking my photos before we fled across the river, where we listened to an angry farmer spend the next twenty minutes circling the property on his ATV while he looked for us in vain. 
98.) A small but neat mine so old that it had wooden minecart rails. 
99.) The infamous Level Crevice, a lead mine-turned-water reservoir until someone on the city council realized that storing their drinking water in a derelict lead mine was an objectively stupid idea and merged it with the stormwater system instead. It became infamous in the Midwest urbex community after a rookie explorer fell 30 feet and nearly died here back in 2016, resulting in it getting sealed for five years. Really glad I did it at least once, but the crawl to get to it is tough enough that I never want to do it again. 
100.) A brewery cave that isn’t buried by the city is a novelty for anyone who’s spent a while in MSP. 
101.) Pits Cave, a longtime classic abandoned mine for this meetup. Named for the numerous pits that explorers must crawl or climb across, it was a lot less sketchy when they were filled with water. This is the largest and deepest pit. 102.) [REDACTED] I got the impression the explorer who showed us this one probably doesn’t want it blasted all over the internet. 
103.) The ruins of an electrical substation for a flooded mine that I hit with some MSP folks on the way out of town. 104.) [REDACTED] Back in KC for some late night infiltration that I’m redacting for obvious reasons. 
105.) This geriatric care facility got downright scary after dark. Another KC explorer and I found blood splattered on the staircase on the upper floor, and when we tried to explore the other side of the building we encountered no less than three homeless people inside. When one of them kicked some metal down the hall just out of range of my flashlight beam, we decided to bounce. Soon enough it was Halloween, and that meant it was time to catch a flight to Seattle. A close friend in the Colorado urbex scene had spent the summer exploring the Pacific Northwest, and he offered to show me some of the best spots he found. I couldn’t say no to an offer like that and quickly booked an economy flight for a three-day weekend on the west coast. I was joined by a few mutual explorer friends and soon enough I found myself in the PNW with little else except for the clothes on my back and a list of spots to explore.
106.) A derelict train on the side of the highway. 
107.) The main goal of the trip, a partially built nuclear power plant. It remains only one of two nuclear plants (to my knowledge) in the entire US that are explorable without getting shot on sight. 
108.) This derelict US Navy warship took us two days to board. On the first day our approach was cut off by the rising tides, and the temperature was low enough that getting wet risked hypothermia so we decided to give up. On the second day we successfully boarded the wreck at peak low tide but discovered upon exiting that rising tide turned the mud flats into quicksand. I found myself stuck nearly to my waist in quicksand and sinking fast. It was fortunate that my friend was nearby to pull me free, because quite frankly I’m not sure I could’ve freed myself before being completely submerged. 
109.) The shell of a brewery in the Cascadian fall. No sooner had I returned from Seattle, I got word from my new job that I had been transferred to a temporary assignment in Minneapolis until Christmas. Though I was happy in Kansas City, I welcomed the chance to spend a few months getting to know the MSP community better outside of the big meetups and to explore the area more in depth than I usually had time for. So with some fond farewells and a promise to return to Kansas City, I departed for its sister community in the north.
110.) [REDACTED] Within hours of arriving in MSP I was already wandering a certain legendary system with a bunch of other explorers. This was pretty much how I spent every weekend, but for the sake of brevity (ha! As if this post could be considered “brief”), I’ll restrict myself to a single photo to represent all the trips to that system this year. Redacted for reasons obvious to anyone familiar with MSP. 
111.) A two month stint in MSP seemed a good chance to knock some of the basic stuff of my list that I never had time for during previous Mouser Weeks. One of the Lilydale party caves was first up. 
112.) This Nike missile launch bunker was a bit of a disaster to explore. We got caught by the cops on our way out and had to talk our way out of an arrest. We managed it, but they were definitely fishing for any reason to ticket us. 
113.) A rooftop view of the Minneapolis skyline. 
114.) A quick jaunt back to Kansas City for Petey’s Soiree, an art show thrown by the local urbex community. Held in the utility tunnels beneath a derelict public swimming pool, organizers and volunteers spent days shoveling mud and hauling furniture to prepare the space. Featuring photograph prints contributed by dozens of explorers around the country, this art show was a black tie formal event with live music and an open bar. Somewhere between 30-50 explorers showed up in thrifted suits and dresses to slam cocktails, admire each other’s photos, and party till dawn in this one-night-only venue. 115.) [REDACTED] Censored because I don’t actually know if we’re still trying to keep this under wraps or not. 
116.) Back to MSP for the most basic of the basic. This drain connects to the cave in #117 via a passage dug through a dozen feet of bedrock by explorers long ago. 
117.) Tunnel of Terror. This cave is easily the most blown spot in MSP, possibly the most blown spot the entire Midwest. 
118.) Calcium formations in a storm drain over a hundred feet beneath the surface. 
119.) A brick section of a buried creek that has been tagged up by local graf kids. Hot take but tagging brick is a cardinal urbex sin. 
120.) I spent my last night in MSP eating tacos and drinking nogchata (a mixture of hard eggnog and horchata) in this Lilydale party cave. Eventually my time in MSP came to an end and it was time to return to Kansas City just in time for New Year’s Eve.
121.) A derelict casino boat I snuck onto as I was making my way back down to Kansas City.
Whew. 121 unique locations scattered across 16 states, all the way from the east coast to the west. This was easily my biggest year exploring ever, and I’ll confess that I’m
exhausted. As always, thanks for sticking with me to the end. It’s been a real roller coaster of a year but I couldn’t be happier to have landed in Kansas City by the end of it- so here’s a toast to another year gone and plenty more to come.
order your copy of Access All Areas today!
