We spent Friday evening looking for other entrances to the Canoe tunnel. We entered a manhole on a street north of downtown, in the area of an entrance to the right branch of the Canoe Tunnel. We wanted to get to the waterfall from below, but found only dead-ends. We then went down by the train tracks under what was once 4th Street, but couldn't find anything that looked like an entrance into the North Minneapolis Tunnel (formerly known as the Raging River). Finally, we visited an entrance to the Canoe Tunnel above the waterfall. This one was on the map and had been previously noticed from the surface. We opened the manhole cover and found a 30-foot drop to rushing water. The shaft had a few rungs at the top, and a ledge half way down, but we decided it would be best to come back some other time with a ladder (getting swept away in the water at the bottom of the shaft would result in death at the waterfall). At one point as we walked through downtown at night with our gear, a transit police officer stopped his car along side us. He asked us whether we knew where we were. We said we did. He then asked us whether we knew where we were going. We said we did. He said he was just trying to help and then left. We hadn't had much luck with new entrances, so we decided to go back to the standard main entrance. We walked up the right tunnel to the junction with the North Minneapolis Tunnel. We followed one tunnel near the junction that had not been followed to its end previously. The tunnel was sized for a short walking human, and had a small ditch in the middle of the floor with unpleasant water. As in previous jaunts up the tunnel, we soon encountered rats. These were small brown fuzzy rats but they because increasingly numerous and increasingly aggressive, so we turned back. We normally follow tunnels to their end, but this one had caused people to turn back on several other occasions. We later found out, that had we continued to the end of the tunnel and through a crawlspace, we would have found a very interesting set of huge rooms.
On Saturday night we climbed down behind the interstate fences to look for an entrance to the right branch of the Canoe Tunnel. I had climbed up a 40' ladder during expedition 34 and poked my head out a manhole cover along the highway. There was a small hill separating us from the main lanes of the highway but there was still a reasonable amount of traffic along where we were walking. We spend about a half-hour looking for the manhole, based on what I had seen from the previous expedition, but were unable to find it. As we started to leave, a state patrol officer stopped. We said we were looking for a bag full of flashlights (we did indeed have a bag full of flashlights sitting nearby in the grass). He told us we shouldn't be on the highway and we said we were leaving so he left.
On Sunday around noon we met Greg and John in St. Paul. A storm was approaching, so we ate some breakfast at a nearby restaurant as the rain passed. We then went down to the river. The entrance Greg was planning to explore was one that normally pours down into the river, which would be 5 feet below the floor of the tunnel. Instead, the river water was up to the ceiling of the tunnel. It had been raining for a week, so this was somewhat expected, but it was nonetheless as high as Greg had ever seen it. We then went up the river to another entrance. This one was a series of 8-foot openings that were half filled with water. From above the entrance we measured the water depth. It was over 4 feet on a ledge in front of the openings, and over 12 feet just of f the ledge. The water was moving quickly out of some of the openings, but Matt decided to try climbing into one that was moving slowly. Using a sign as a foothold, he was able to get down to the water which was quite cold and up to his upper chest. He said everything looked fine inside, so we decided to proceed. Matt took EV in on his shoulders and then Greg, Bill, and I followed. We proceeded up the tunnel for a mile or so before reaching what Greg wanted to show us. The tunnel became a spiral staircase. It turned around and around with water flowing down it's cement steps, going up a total of 50 or more feet. There was a central shaft which one could stand at and see the sky through a grate far above. At the top of the staircase, the tunnel once again became straight and flat. We exited through a manhole cover and walked back to the car.
After the Sunday afternoon expedition, we decided it would be very useful to have a rope ladder for the 30' shaft above the waterfall, and perhaps even for climbing down the waterfall. We shopped around a bit and were able to find some rope ladders for children's play structures, but didn't find anything that was of the desired dimensions. So we bought wooden rods and rope and spent an hour using a saw and drill press building the rungs. As the rungs were completed we attached them to the ropes, and by 7pm we were back at my house with a completed 35-foot ladder that could fit in a backpack. We spent a couple hours waiting for darkness and passing thunderstorms. We then went over to the manhole cover we had opened on Friday that went down 30 feet to rushing water. We fastened the rope ladder and proceeded down. The ladder stretched a lot and the rungs seemed a little too far apart, but it was still quite usable. After waiting a bit on the edge, we proceeded down to the rushing water. This was somewhat unpleasant as the ladder was swaying and stretching, and the water was of unknown speed and depth, and the tunnel was one we had never traversed and was above a large deadly waterfall. Luckily the water was only about knee deep and had a walkable current. We were wearing lifejackets and had a system of thick ropes attaching us together, and thus decided that we were safe enough to head upstream, away from the waterfall. Walking up through the current was tiring enough that we decide to turn back after a block or so. We stopped back at the ladder and Matt and I decided to continue downst ream toward the waterfall. After a block or so it started getting deeper (up to our waists). We weren't certain whether this was caused by greater amounts of water or by a change in the tunnel. To be safe we decided to head back. It got shallower again, so it was just a change in the tunnel. From our experiences below the waterfall, we surmised that the current was about 10 times greater than normal. We decided it would be better to return to the tunnel after it had not been raining for a week. Sunday night we went down to the river by the main entrance and explored for a little while, finally locating a new entrance. This entrance had been described by Greg and John who said it connected to the same set of rooms that we could have reached at the end of the rat tunnel.
The Saturday before last, we took a trip back into the Bridge Tunnel to look for a connection to the NMT. We had previously entered the tunnel from the river (Expedition 11) and traversed a couple miles before turning back after deciding that the tunnel was seemed to continue indefinitely in the wrong direction (and noticing that the bubbles rising from the water were getting increasingly unpleasant). It turns out that we were just a couple blocks from the upstream exit, which had been visited by Mike and I two years ago, but dismissed as too small to be important. On Saturday, however, we entered via this small entrance, which quickly opens up to the large main tunnel of that once held a creek. Greg and I walked for quite a while (about half the length of the tunnel) to where the tunnel gets near the NMT. Due to recent rains, the water was deep enough (mostly 2 feet to 3 feet) and the floor was uneven enough that walking was quite tedious. Not wanting to walk all the way back out, we climbed up the first side tunnel that was big enough for a human. After following it for a block or so, a light was visible in the distance. The tunnel was small enough that crawling was the most efficient means of movement (since I was wearing shorts, I found this somewhat bothersome). At the end there was a grate in the ceiling, which I was unable to lift. Another 40 feet further there was another grate which I was able to lift. The last segment of the tunnel (eight feet or so) was too flat for crawling. At the grate, one could stand on the floor of the tunnel and have one's head looking around outside. We were in a parking lot in an unfamiliar part of the city. We walked back to the car. That evening Matt, Ev, and I tried to enter the mill tailrace tunnels, but found them filled with water.
This last Saturday afternoon, we entered the Tuttle Creek Tunnel. The entrance was rather interesting; we used the rope ladder to lower 25 feet into water down a shaft that was wide enough that the rope ladder would swing around (and wide enough that the walls didn't do anything to stop you from falling). The tunnel proceed from the river to Dinkytown and over to my neighborhood. We explored various side tunnels, for a total of about 4 or so miles. At one point the tunnel follows the street in front of my house; it was amusing to be about 60' under my front yard (actually, probably under the street).
The same afternoon as expedition 42, we spent a while looking for the highway entrance to the Canoe Tunnel. Greg and John had bright orange vests and we were all wearing hard hats. After about 30 minutes of searching the grass along the highway, I was getting ready to give up when they found a promising manhole cover. All the other manhole covers were over shallow shafts (as we determined by dropping pennies and pebbles down the holes in the manhole lids), but this one wasn't. It was about two feet from the road, and from it one could see downtown and a double bridge (which fit my memories of when I stuck my head out of the cover last year during the trip we canoed in from the river and got to the waterfall). The manhole cover was a little more than a block from the section of highway we had searched two weeks earlier. The shaft was shorter than I expected (probably 30 to 40 feet), but when we reached the bottom, it was clear that this was the right place to be. To the left was a tunnel under the highway. Forward was a tunnel that proceeds to a junction of several unexplored tunnels. To the right was a long tunnel down to the main Canoe Tunnel, below the waterfall (our desired destination for the day's trip). We reached the main Canoe Tunnel and found quite a bit of rushing water. It was much more than was present when we reached the waterfall last year, but only a small fraction of the amount that was in the tunnel two weeks earlier (when we entered the tunnel above the waterfall after more than a week of rain). We entered the moving water and found it traversable, but just barely. This was frightening because downstream the tunnel becomes steeper and below that is the low-clearance entrance that we had used last summer. (Due to experiences last year, this entrance has been deemed too deadly for use.) To minimize the current, we tried walking along the side, but this was stressful, as the curved tunnel walls were rather slippery. It was often useful to stand on one foot and use the other foot to clear the algae from a patch of the floor which could be used as the next foothold. John's shoes were lacking traction, so he waited in the tunnel (about half way to the waterfall) as Greg and I slowly progressed forward. As the waterfall finally became visible, the water had gotten notably faster, but wasn't too much more difficult to traverse (partly because there was less algae). The waterfall was shooting out into the middle of the 30 foot cube room. It was about 25 feet wide and 25 feet high. The floor was flat with about half a foot of water. Last summer one could stand in the back corner and remain dry; this time one was continually pelted with large drips. Along the side of the room there was just enough room to walk by the pounding waterfall. Behind the waterfall was the driest part of the room (but still not very dry). It took less than 15 minutes to walk back down to the side tunnel. We walked up the side tunnel and exited where we had entered by the highway. We were certainly sufficiently worn out, water logged, and exercised after two long expeditions in one afternoon.
Last Saturday we visited the mill tailraces. We started in a wide rectangular tunnel with a dirt floor (it was once a wood floor and there were still damp, rotting planks visible in some places). The ceiling was the original rock below which the tunnel was carved. There was a line of pillars down the middle of the tunnel. At one end the floor gave way to a large pool of water with several shafts that once carried rushing water down from mills on the surface. We climbed through a hole in the wall and down a small passage to the main tailraces. We were standing on a pile of mud below a drop shaft at the end of one of the tailrace branches. The tunnel was about 15' to 20' wide and had a deep murky water in the middle. Along both sides were narrow ledges, which continued as far as we could see, but not as far as we wanted to go. Scattered in the water and on the pile of mud were huge damp planks covered in mud. I had my video camera and my big lighting system (which includes headlights and a motorcycle battery), but the lights weren't working (it turns out there that the battery simply wasn't charged; it had been charging all night, but the connection to the charger was loose), so the footage I got was mostly rather dark. We inflated two boats and an inner tube and entered the water. We negotiated the logs and got down to an old raft that was split in half but still floating in the water. We turned and floated up a side tunnel. We visited various interesting tunnels, dropshafts, and brick rooms. Sometimes we climbed out of the deep water onto ledges, and sometimes the water became shallow enough for walking. At one point we had found a hole in the wall which was pouring out hot soapy water. Several minutes later we returned to the hole in the wall, and found amazing quantities of hot soapy water crashing out into the tunnel. After getting quite wet in the cold brown water of the other tunnels, this water was a pleasant change, but it was still somewhat frightening (it was making quite a roar and was definitely too strong to stand in if you were in its way). Later we visited the oldest mill tunnels, which were built in the 1850's (which I believe would make them about as old as anything else still standing in the city). We also found the connection to the rat tunnel (which connects to the NMT junction which in turn connects to the rest of the tunnels we've explored under downtown). When Greg and John had last visited this connection (in the 80's), it was dry, but this time it was contained rapid flowing murky water (probably sanitary, which was overflowing because of a violent downpour which was occurring outside (without our knowledge)). The tailraces no longer have a major outlet, so the water rushing in quickly changed the water level. In 20 or so minutes, the entire tunnel system had gained more than a foot. We weren't in any immediate danger of drowning (we still had 10 to 15 feet of air), but the quality of the water was getting significantly worse. Having explored all the major side passages we went back to the mud pile and deflated the boats. We climbed back outside (a 30-degree temperature change) and found everything wet from the rain. I was as muddy and smelly as I had ever been, and hence washed myself off in the slightly less muddy river.
Last Thursday evening, we returned to the waterfall using the roadside entrance. The water level was lower than two weeks earlier (the second visit to the waterfall), but not as low as last August (the first visit). On the way back down from the waterfall we stopped at the side passage and set up a ladder. I climbed up into the side passage despite an unusual lack of handholds. The entire side passage was quite smooth and streamlined. Unfortunately it proceeded only about 60 feet before reaching a drop shaft with a deep pool at the bottom (over neck-deep; I tested it).
Friday night we visited the main tunnels. We proceeded a short distance up the Washington Tunnel and a ways up the Rat Tunnel.
Saturday afternoon we visited the lower end of a creek tunnel in St. Paul. It has old stone walls and a brick and metal ceilings. The red brick floor was covered by crystal clear water. As we reached the river level, we proceeded down a tunnel that was filled with many small (1-3 inch) fish and had one gold fish. From this we proceeded up a side tunnel past several amazing gargoyle formations (if I go back, I'll get a picture of one of those) up to a room with two rows of side-by-side large metal doors. Behind the doors was the main sanitary tunnel for Minneapolis and St. Paul. The doors are probably quite sturdy, but the outer layers were flaking away.
Saturday night we attempted to return to the waterfall. The long side tunnel (down to the main creek tunnel) was (as usual) almost empty. When we finally got to the intersection below the waterfall (where we enter the creek and head upstream a couple blocks to the waterfall) we discovered the most current we had seen in that tunnel. It hadn't rained since Thursday night, but then it had rained quite a lot. We turned back and explored a little at the upstream end of the side tunnel.
We have been gone on several short information-gathering expeditions in preparation for a descent down the NMT. The NMT descent is currently planned to occur in a little more than two weeks. If the expedition is carried out, it will be one of the most complex, intersting, and perhaps dangerous trips we've made.
Last Sunday morning we made an attempt to descend the NMT. We parked one car near the river outlet and another near our entrance, a manhole in the middle of the street on the other side of downtown. After placing cones around the manhole cover, we opened it. We had never been in this part of the tunnel, and we knew that further downstream was a large, easily deadly waterfall (and we don't normally approach waterfalls from above). We only knew this was the right tunnel based on a rough map and the quantity of water rush below. I descended down the 25-foot shaft using the metal hand-holds built into the wall. About half way down, the metal brace under my foot suddenly crumbled away. I was able to hold on to the remaining hand-holds, but I didn't know how long they would last, so I carefully and quickly returned to the surface. I got out the rope ladder and soon was at the bottom of the shaft. The water was knee-deep but moving rapidly. Greg and Matt lowered the equipment then climbed down. As Matt descended, the ladder was supported by a rope that went through the manhole lid and down the shaft to where Greg and I were holding it. When Matt reached the bottom, we released the rope to lower the ladder. The rope was tied up and left in the shaft so that we could raise the ladder later. We saw various side tunnels and vertical shafts as we walked down to the waterfall. At one point there was a tall room with a contraption for closing off the tunnel. Closer to the waterfall the ceiling becomes just two feet off the floor, and then raises again. We didn't know what was below the waterfall, and above the waterfall the water was moving rapidly over the slippery rock floor, so we decided it would be best to set up a hand line. We wanted to tie the handline to a metal bracket in the ceiling, but it crumbled away in my hand. We were fortunate to find a cement pipe extending into the tunnel with a lip of mineral deposits which made a reasonably secure tying point. I descended down the handline toward the waterfall, but about 10 feet from the edge, the rope ran out. I backed up and got another rope out of my backpack. This allowed me to step right to the edge. It was still not possible to see how far down the waterfall went; the water ran off the edge with such force that it completely covered the 10-foot diameter shaft. This situation -- standing deep underground in a dark slippery tunnel with large amounts of water constantly pushing towards a dark, deep, unknown void -- is one of the more disturbing things I've experienced. We concluded that it would not be prudent to descend the water filled shaft with our current resources. We were just blocks from the cave, but decided that it would be better to try yet another time using yet another approach.
For many years we have been attempting to reach a large cave under the middle of downtown Minneapolis. According to maps and third-hand eye-witness accounts, the cave connects in some way to the NMT, a large tunnel filled with lots of water; previously called the raging river. Getting up the NMT is very hard due to the current. So, we have been trying to go down it from above (even though going down a tunnel from above is generally a stupid thing to do). On Sunday Greg and I decided to investigate a side branch of the NMT upstream from the cave. We lifted the lid and set up the rope ladder. The ladder just reached the bottom of the shaft, which means the drop was around 45 feet. I descended to check out the tunnel while Greg remained on the surface. The tunnel was 5.5 feet high and 2.5 feet wide, with rapid knee-deep water. Since I was heading downstream in an unknown tunnel, I tied a handline to the bottom of the ladder. After 100 feet the handline had run out, so I practiced walking back upstream. The current seemed manageable and I decided to continue without the handline. I covered 4 blocks (as was determined later using a map) in about 10 minutes. I wanted to continue so that I could get as much info as possible without having to return again another day, but I knew it would be a long walk back up, and so I turned back. The disruption of up through the water created roaring standing waves that seemed to double the depth of the water. The tunnel was narrow enough that I used the walls for support, but this soon tired my arms. By the time I saw the distant light of the shaft, I was soaked in sweat, despite the cold water and cold air. When I got to the shaft, almost an hour had passed since I last saw Greg. I called up to him and heard nothing. I was afraid he had thought I was lost and was off getting help. I quickly climbed to the surface and found that he was sitting in his car. I explained to him what I had seen; it was potentially very good news: the tunnel was steep enough that I suspected it sloped all the way down to the NMT with no waterfalls. Greg described how that could be possible given the limestone formations in the area. We decided that we would get detailed maps of the tunnel on Monday. The detailed maps confirmed the good news. The tunnel did indeed slope all the way down to the NMT and there was even a detailed diagram of an overflow shaft connecting to our main tunnel system. The ending segment of the sloped tunnel was steep, but according to the elevations, just a 10 foot vertical change. The elevations also showed the depth of the NMT: about 95 feet below the surface. This meant that the sloped tunnel had to cover 40 to 50 feet of elevation change. This was good enough news that we decided to try out the sloped tunnel Monday evening.
We entered just after the sun finished setting. The sky was clear to the west, but there were large storms to the north, so we decided to wear life jackets. We set up the rope ladder in the shaft, I climbed down with an equipment bag, and then the others lowered the parts for a large rigid home-made ladder. The ladder was to be used to climb up out of the NMT into the cave. We proceeded down the tunnel and stopped in a shaft to assemble the ladder (it has two main pieces which bolt together). As we continued, I walked in the front, holding a long rope attached to the ladder which floated ahead of me. We proceeded further than I had been the other day. The tunnel made several turns, and the water became faster. It was soon difficult to keep the ladder from being dragged away from me. At one point, as we turned a corner, I stepped off an edge, and immediately thought I was going to fall down some shaft. Instead I hit a floor that was below chest-deep water. A couple feet further the floor rose again and the water was once again knee deep. The pace was getting progressively faster and at about this point we knew there was no turning back. A combination of fear and the ever-faster water made it hard to think clearly. We passed an overflow shaft (which once lead down to the Washington Tunnel but is now blocked off with cement blocks). Soon afterwards we stopped at a side tunnel. We all gathered there and talked. I said that this was probably the last time we were going to be able to talk before the steep part. We soon stepped back out into the rushing water. It continued to get even faster. The ladder was pulling me down the tunnel at running speed, but I didn't want to let go, because I knew it could be the only way to get to the cave. The floor then became slick. I placed my feet as one would stand on a surf board, and let myself get pulled along the floor. Doing this I was soon moving much faster than was reasonable, so I let go of the ladder (survival was more important than getting to the cave). I tried walking, but it was useless, so I continued surfing on the slippery floor. Then, flying forward on an uneven, slipper floor became too frightening, and so I laid down. When I did this I heard people yelling toward me from behind. I yelled that I was going down, but I doubt anyone heard me. I tried slowing down with my hands and feet, but this resulted only in pain. I tried forcing my flashlight against the wall, but that also did no good, and soon my flashlight was lost. As I flew through the darkness at some ridiculous speed, I suddenly felt the tunnel get much steeper. This was the last segment. An instant latter I came to a crashing halt, hitting the ladder that was floating in the waste deep water of the NMT. My backpack was torn off my back (one strap was destroyed, the other strap was still in the grasp of my right hand), one shoe was ripped most of the way off. I had bloody knuckles, chunks of skin ripped off my hand, and dozens of scrapes all over my body. I was being washed downstream with one leg tangled in the rope that was tied to the ladder. Also, I was in complete darkness, and didn't know the fate of anyone else in the group. Luckily, no one had any serious injuries, and Jason and Tom had both retained their flashlights. (But Jason lost his shoes and Matt lost his glasses.) We spent several minutes struggling to stand in the current, sorting everything out, and reorganizing equipment. We noted that the slide was as frightening as anything we had experienced before, but that with full knowledge of what was involved, and some thick clothes, it would have been quite fun (although none of us were interested in trying it again). We proceeded down the tunnel, keeping an eye out for side tunnels or holes in the ceiling which might lead to the cave. We passed one short side tunnel that led to a ladder and decided it might be worth investigating. We saw that the ladder only went up about 20 feet (we were 95 feet below the surface) so we decided to investigate it further. Several of the rungs of the ladder crumbled away, so we used our wooden ladder and the metal stubs that remained from the crumbled rungs. At the top of the ladder we found the cave. In certain directions the cave led into tunnels of sewage, but in other directions it was quite pleasant, with a dirt floor and a complete lack of bugs. We explored for a while and found that the cave was quite extensive and maze-like. (There were no large rooms; mostly just passages about 8' high and 12' wide.) Much of the cave appeared to be caused by the erosion of the soft sandstone from below a solid layer of limestone (which formed a flat ceiling across the entire cave). However, there were also numerous man-made walls, supports, and tunnels. We saw a long shaft with a rusty ladder to the surface, but it was topped with a huge hex lid which we certainly would be unable to lift. The concept of a complex maze deep under downtown was interesting, but once we saw it, we weren't particularly inclined to sit around and enjoy it. All we could think about was getting out of the dark underworld, returning to our warm, comfortable homes. The prospect of what was further down the NMT was very frightening. We knew that (if we were lucky) we would be able to get to the NMT junction, where the raging river suddenly turns and heads through small holes that (almost certainly) lead to death. We had walked by it before, but we were still shaken by our experience on the slide, and we now knew how easy it was to get swept away by a strong current in a slippery tunnel.
We made it past the junction, continued from there through our normal tunnels, and then swam out to the river. As planned, we had exited far below where we had entered, but since we only had one car that evening, we had to walk back to the car. We were tired, wet, and bloody, but taking a walk on normal ground felt quite good. |
After this we went back to the junction and followed the Washington tunnel
up about 6 blocks to Nicollet. We followed Nicollet for five or so blocks
and then turned back.
We exited the cave, returned to the NMT, and walked slowly downstream,
toward what seemed like impending doom. We discussed reasons not to die. We
discussed what to do if one of us gets swept away. We decided not to tie
ourselves together, lest we all get swept to our deaths. Eventually we
heard the sound of the death holes. We wanted to approach on the left
side of the tunnel, but it was too slippery, so we walked down the center,
slowly approaching the brink. We couldn't stop to prepare ourselves
because the chances of slipping were too great when trying to fight
the current. We were particularly worried about Jason, as
his lack of shoes made the slimy rocks nearly frictionless.