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Suburban Underground Vadders
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Downtown Tunnels - Austin
It all started on the UEA forums when I was contacted by another fellow Texas explorer CMH4 who was making plans to come down to Austin to do some exploring. He told me that he found where to get GIS maps of the city of Austin and more importantly, maps of the storm drain systems.
After figuring out how to use the GIS map reader I was able to find some interesting tunnels that I never knew existed. CMH4 pointed out a tunnel in particular just on the edge of the downtown area. It was funny that he had never even been to Austin, yet he was showing me a place to explore. Nice indeed. This tunnel changed sizes as it ran it’s course but the kicker was that in some places the map said it measured 10ft x 10ft in places.
Click on the pictures to enlarge!
That night I went and checked it out. This is the outfall. Not much really but who was to say there wasn’t more to see. I could already tell at this point that rubber boots were going to be useful because it hadn’t rained in weeks yet there was a steady flow of water about 1 inch deep flowing from within.
CMH4 had asked me to try not to explore the whole thing before he got down here later in the month. I was ok with that and eagerly awaited his arrival and the following exploration. In the meantime I bought a pair of rubber boots and continued searching the GIS maps for more interesting things to see.
When it came time that CMH4 was supposed to come down, his friends backed out at the last moment and he didn’t have a ride. He said it would be ok if I went without him but I didn’t really have anyone to go with at the moment and on other attempts it was raining and we didn’t feel like getting washed out.
Then one day during the middle of the week, I was sitting at home with my room mate, Mortomer Faust, who said he would be interested in going. I warned him about the possibility of getting his feet wet but he was ok with it.
The first section of tunnel is like in the picture above, 2 tunnels running parallel. The tunnel takes a sharp right turn as soon as you enter and then turns back to the left a little way in. It wasn’t long before the 2 tunnels merged into one relatively new looking tunnel.
Later on the tunnel changed. There were so many changes along the way that I can’t recall all of them. The thing that was most interesting was that at several points it changed to an arched ceiling made of rock-bricks. It was very old looking. The picture above shows Mortomer standing next to a tiny hole in the wall that apparently lets enough water seep out that this formation was made. There were lots of these along the way.
This is a picture of one of the tallest sections of tunnel. Mortomer is 6ft+ so you can see how big it is. Also, you can see how the tunnel appears to get smaller ahead. I noticed that the newer sections of tunnel were always smaller, which led me to believe that certain sections of the old tunnel were reinforced with concrete.
This picture is looking up at a manhole probably 12 feet up. Strange there is no ladder and no evidence that one ever existed yet no way to reach it from below. I guess city workers have to bring a ladder if they want to use this and several other manholes like it.
This is more like it, These rungs set into the brick and the wall seemed pretty sturdy.
This manhole was in one of the older sections of tunnel with the rock-brick ceiling. Most of the manholes had droplets of condensation clinging to their undersides slowly oxidizing the metal.
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