Nicollet Island Utility Tunnels

[Oct.03] - Down the chute

Members:  Frozen (me), Locksmith, Skivvy

I'd known about these tunnels for a long time but hadn't yet found the time to search them out.  Then, late one summer night I became bored.  Being bored is an unusual experience for me.  I'm *always* doing something.  At any given moment I have about 20 things I want to do (which doesn't include the other 50 things I should do but don't want to).  In any case, I was bored this summer night.  So I called up Indiana Jones (no, not Harrison Ford) and we went out on a late scouting mission.  Primary objective: Find a way into the Nicollet Island Utility Tunnels.  We had one piece of information - there are two manholes near each other in a field of some sort.  Now, on a map Nicollet island looks tiny...but when you're actually standing on it you realize it might be a difficult task to find two random manholes.  We, however, were lucky.  We drove to the island, started driving around the border, and parked in the first friendly looking area.  Walked a bit to a field of some sorts.  Looked around for 15-20 minutes, and found the manholes!  I couldn't believe how easy it was.  I had expected to search for most of the night and maybe not find anything.  Unfortunately, because we were just scouting, I didn't happen to have my camera or any equipment with me.  And I didn't have a flashlight.  I know, right now you are screaming to yourself

"Wha?? This guy calls himself an Urban Explorer and he goes on a scouting mission without a flashlight??"

Well, yeah.  I didn't really expect to find a way in so fast.  Anyway, we then left Nicollet Island to search for an entrance to the East Kittsondale drain.  We walked along the river a bit and found a construction site where they had been pouring concrete.  There were little and not-so-little blobs of dried concrete littered about the place like so many slugs away from home.  I picked up a modest sized one, tossed it over the edge into the river 30 feet below, and was rewarded with a beautiful "ker-THUMP"  Indiana Jones and I began finding more of these and dropping them in to hear the river make its hypnotic noise.  The slugs we threw in kept getting bigger and bigger until we were lifting and throwing extra-large sized slugs in tandem.  Finally we found the ultimate Über-Slug which must've weighed in near 150 lbs.  Scraping our hands and lifting with the strength of twen....er...two men, we managed to slide it over the edge to watch the river engulf it with a deep, solid

ker-THUMP.........fizzle fizzle fizzle fizzle.....

It was a good noise and the highlight of my night.

Oh, but you wanted to hear about the NI Utility Tunnels, not how I pushed concrete blobs into the river?  Well, okay.

Fast forward to late in a mid-October day.  It was raining outside.  The cold kind of Minnesota rain you get in October.  A rather dreary night if you ask me.  Locksmith was back from Duluth for the weekend and Skivvy was free, so I asked them to accompany me to the manhole Indiana Jones and I had found months prior.  Indiana Jones was, unfortunately, stuck in Decorah, Iowa.

We drove out to the island, parked in the same place I remembered and walked to the water-soaked field (me trying to look as inconspicuous as possible while carrying a 3 foot crowbar in my jacket).  I found the manholes again with minimal effort, and we proceeded to drop in one at a time, down into the dank (diabolical?) darkness.  I dropped first and upon reaching the bottom I peered down the tunnel I entered:

(looking right)

(looking left)

A large, rusted pipe (water main?) ran along the bottom of most of the tunnels.  It looked old enough to burst at any moment and instantly flood the tunnels with a torrent of freezing cold water.

(a joint of some sort on the water main)

(Skivvy giving you some idea of how short the tunnel is)

(hard stalactites dripping from the ceiling)

At this point we entered the first cave:

(first cave)

(odd piece of metal sticking from the ceiling)

The first part you see above connects directly to another large cave-room.  In this room we found some old cans, a bat (the mammal), a cave drawing from 2000BC (in my expert anthropological opinion), and some rotting wood that looked like a sign.

(a cave drawing)

(a bat!)

(Skivvy ducks as a bat flies over her head)

(Locksmith carves "Dragons ^" into a sign to
warn people of the dangers that lie ahead)

The two pictures above are poorly pasted together in an attempt to illustrate this section of the wall.  There was a section of tunnel about 9 or 10 feet off the ground that we couldn't get into.  There were two handholds/footholds carved into the rock and this log had been placed against the wall to assist people but because of the angle of the wall we had trouble getting in.  Finally Locksmith made it in with a little help from me and said it just lead to a dead end anyway.  Oh well.

Exiting this set of caves and walking a short way down the tunnel we found two entrances to Satan's Cave!  The first is a hole in the side of one of the tunnels which you can drop through and the second is a long crawl-tunnel which is really an easier way to get in (and out especially) because you don't have to drop anywhere.  But I took the hard way both times for fun.  And oh it was fun.  Once inside there are two large caves/tunnels.  Here's a diagram of the cave:

The tunnels are white, walls are invisible, if you didn't notice that yet :-)  Some additional clarifications:  The 'Bats all along here' part really means there were about 4 or 5 bats in various places on the walls in that area.  That crawl tunnel extends off farther to the left but ends in a rubble pile.  Most of the wall carvings are around the shrine area but they also extend down the right side, below the shrine area, and also to the left on the top-most of the two horizontal parallel caves.

(There are carvings like this all along the cave walls,
some complete with a small ledge to set a candle on)

(The shrine before we lit any candles)

(a *very* poor shot of the shrine after it was lit.
I thought I had some good takes of it, but sadly,
 most of my shots didn't turn out too well)

(more faces in the wall)

(Locksmith navigating the cave with only the light of his single candle)

(Locksmith adding candles to the triangle)

(Frozen (me) digging for dead bodies by the cross...
I dug down for about 3 feet but came up disappointed)

(another bat, hiding in its hole)

After relaxing in Satan's Cave for a bit we decided to explore down the crawl tunnel.  If you look at the diagram way above, that crawl tunnel continues left for quite a ways.  About halfway you will reach a hole in the ground (not too deep).  Continuing on it dead-ends with a (caved in?) bunch of rocks and rubble.

(a few stills of the hole partway through the crawl tunnel)

After reaching the dead end we continued on, not finding much of interest.  We passed up the next manhole, hoping for another cave or something interesting:

(passed up this one hoping for better things to come)

(but all we found was this mold)

(so we left out the next one, about 30 minutes later)

We attempted to retrace our route from above ground using the notes and readings Locksmith had taken with his compass, but we had some trouble.  While retracing our route I was peering down the small 1-inch hole in the center of many manholes with my flashlight.  At about the 4th or 5th manhole (this time a sewer one) I laid down to peer in the tiny hole and to my great surprise I saw a huge raccoon staring back at me - this guy was big!  He had gotten into the sewer tunnel somehow and had climbed the rungs to the top of the shaft!  But before I could decide if I should let him out or not (and while Skivvy and Locksmith were trying to look at him), he got scared by my light and went back down the shaft.

Locksmith was kind enough to construct a rough map of the path we took:

Before retiring for the night I took some nice shots of the city and the Hennepin Ave. Bridge from down by the river.  I pasted two of the better pictures together to make a panoramic shot:

(click to enlarge)

     

---[Utility Tunnels]---