It was during a hike on the trails of Mt Newton near Victoria, BC when I found it. I had wandered off the official trail, exploring the fence line of a doppler radar station when I happened to look down and spotted something black and shiny crawling over the rocks. I bent over to take a look, and was surprised to see a strange creature – 2 inches long, 62 tiny legs, 32 orange spots and 2 antennae flailing around – a small millipede: Harpaphe haydeniana Embracing my inner child, I coaxed the little guy onto my hand and watched with Continue Reading
Adventure
Completing Bowker Creek – The final stretches
Following my adventures in the Hall of Wonders and the Bowker Creek headwaters I was becoming fairly familiar with the underground portions our little urban stream, however, I was aware there were a couple more sections of the creek which flowed beneath the city’s streets that still needed to be explored! Finally, in the summer of 2021, a full two years after my first journey below the city’s streets, I would have the opportunity to finally complete this explore. It was a beautiful summer afternoon when my usual draining buddy popped by and we made our way to the creek. Continue Reading
Totally Not Getting my Friends Stuck in a Drain
Let me begin by stating that despite the title, I did not get any of my friends stuck in a storm drain, nor were we ever in any real danger. I did learn a valuable lesson about knowing the physical limits of your friends before encouraging them to do borderline insane things with you though! The streets beneath downtown Victoria are home to a number of interesting storm drains, many of them popular urban exploration spots for the local UE community. The drains of my hometown range from “easy to access” to “only attempt at stupid o’clock in the morning Continue Reading
Shenanigans with Servers in the Middle of the night
At an hour when any reasonable person should have been asleep, I found myself sitting in front of a closed gate at a datacenter on the outskirts of Vancouver. While I waited for my friend to return with access cards, I heard a beeping sound, almost like an alarm, and the gate began to move. It was about 1:30 in the morning and I was sitting in a car with my roommate outside the Cologix datacenter in Vancouver helping a friend move servers. Why? Because, well, I’m not really a “normal” person and this is what passes for entertainment in Continue Reading
Two Trestles, a Tunnel and a Waterfall
Just West of Victoria there is an extensive wilderness green spaced called Goldstream Provincial Park. It features hiking, camping and a nature house among other amenities. If you know where to look, it also serves as an access point to the disused E&N rail line and some pretty cool train trestles. The first trestle (known as the Goldstream trestle) is extremely well known about, and until recently, was a frequent destination for hikers. Sadly, within the last year a high-profile suicide at this very location, prompted calls to erect fencing around the bridge and within the last 6 months fencing Continue Reading
Finding the Bowker Creek Headwaters
“Bower Creek is an urban stream in the Victoria-BC area which originates in the wetlands near the University of Victoria and snakes it’s way through several municipalities before eventually outflowing to the ocean.” This is the way I introduced Bowker Creek way back in October of 2019 when describing my first draining adventure. While the description is accurate, something always bothered me about it; I never actually visually confirmed where Bowker creek originated, was it interesting, and most importantly; were there more tunnels? The answer to all of the above was yes; otherwise there wouldn’t be a blog post about Continue Reading
Exploring the Jordan River Diversion Dam
“Is there anything else we might need?” It was 7AM on the Saturday of a long weekend, and, rather then sleeping in, I was packing camping gear into my backpack in perpetration for a day-long adventure. Several days earlier I had seen some pictures of the Jordan River diversion dam and I was anxious to see this place for myself. And so it was hardly surprising that at the next available opportunity, I found myself packing into my roomate’s Kia Rio along with my good draining buddy at an ungodly hour of the morning to take a sketchy trip up Continue Reading
Journey to Bradian, BC
I stepped outside of the long-abandoned house and into the gravel street. Behind me a breeze picked up and some clouds of dust billowed around me. Before I joined my companions at the next building I took a moment to really bask in the isolation I was feeling, and tried to imagine what it would have been like to live in this town all those years ago. I turned towards the next building to continue the exploration of Bradian, BC. Bradian is a ghost town in the mountains of British Columbia. While most other ghost town’s have long-since crumbled into Continue Reading
Discovering a New Drain
As we cautiously moved forward into the darkness I stopped my buddy and pointed ahead; a section where the weight of the buildings and earth above us had partially crushed the steel pipe in which we found ourselves. Not dissuaded, but much more cautious, we continued deeper into the Sandy Freeway. Since my last explore in April a lot has changed in the world. The spread of the COVID19 Carona virus, and the subsequent withdrawal of society, made going out on mundane excursions feel like an urban explore – deserted streets, abandoned shops and an overwhelming feeling of stillness gave Continue Reading
The Transforming Tunnel
As I crept forward, the shallow water splashing around my ankles, I quickly came to the realization that this drain was not the one I was expecting. And I wondered just where it would lead. Since my last post, I’ve gone on a several more explores, which I’ll get to posting about in good time but I wanted to post about my latest adventure while it was still fresh in my mind; the Transforming Tunnel – one of the longest drains I’ve explored to date. An accidental discovery While examining some GIS maps, I came across what I thought was Continue Reading