Yesterday night, some group of people of the Blacker house were conducting tunnel tours so I decided to go too. Underneath most of the buildings on campus are a network of tunnels used for piping and wiring. The tunnels are large enough so that maintainence people can go down there and fix things. Consequently, this also means that students can roam around down there.
The small adventure played out like a fugitive/spy movie.
It was 1AM on a dark night as 3 Caltech prefrosh students (including the infamous Mike H. known for installing Wordpress blogs in less than 2 seconds) stole quickly but quietly across the campus. They were being led by a member of Blacker house to a discrete location known for being an uncompromised entrance to the tunnels. “Can you guys run?” The guide asked. “If you see security officers around or if we get caught, we gotta be able to get out of there as quickly as possible.”
Soon, they arrived to the side of a building. While it looked innocently enough, there was a ventilation shaft running from the side of the building to the room. While the prefrosh lurked in the shadows, the guide ripped off a panel of the ventilation shaft exposing a small ladder running up through the shaft to the roof two stories above. As one student (not Mike H. of course. Oh, never him!) reached for his flashlight, the guide quickly stopped him. “No lights,” he cautioned. “We want no one to see us.”
The guide led the way up the lightless shaft while the students groped their way up through the darkness smashing through cobwebs and layers of dust and dirt. The climb up was tough. The each student had to time the climb so that he would not run into the person above him and also had to rely on the higher person for directions to the exit. One mistake, one misstep, or one slip of the hand could send a student tumbling down into the deep pit of darkness taking down his comrads below him. Fortunately for them, they all made it to the top without any mishaps.
The roof of the building had a door that was unlocked. Grinning, they went through the door and quietly moved down to the first floor where there was a door that led into the tunnels. But the door was locked.
“Hm, this might have been compromised. We have to find another way in,” whispered the guide as he led the way to other potential access points. Unfortunately, they were all locked. “Well,” he said. “I’d resort to some more drastic measures, but I’m not supposed to show them to you. We’ll take another entrance.”
With the first plan foiled, the group lurked through the shadows again to another building where beneath a staircase was a small door. The guide had a key to this door and the group followed him through. They crossed a wooden plank laid across a 1 story drop, and they were in.
The tunnels were hot since the pipes carried heat and hot water. Scrawled over the walls and some of the pipes of the tunnel were messages by Caltech students all the way from the 1930s. In certain areas, there were entire murals painted by students. The guide explained: “There are some legends that come with these murals. For instance, this one was painted by a student when he was in depression and retreated into the tunnels. Although he was anti-social, he was a member of all of the houses (which was rare since most students are only a member of one house) and so he painted aspects of each house into the mural.” The mural itself was a mix of darks and lights with images of humans captured by a twirling mix of dark colors. In another area, there were flowers.
As they moved through the tunnels, the guide suddenly stopped, opened a door, and stepped into another building. Again, he cautioned us to be quiet. Journeying through the building, the group went through another door that led back into the tunnels. At a certain point of the tunnels where “Beware of the Tiger” was scrawled on the wall in red, a sharp decline of stairs led down into a a wind tunnel. In the sheer darkness, the guide said: “I’m going to run directly into the wind which is coming from a long tunnel. Run directly behind me.” As the group ran, the wind power increased. But not being able to see anything, the group turned back and continued the tunnel tours.
With that, the rest of the tunnel tours were fairly uneventful although the guide made sure to avoid the certain areas of the tunnels were motion and thermal sensors were installed. He told the group that there were, in fact, areas of the tunnels that were still not largely explored. He encouraged the group to do their own exploring and mapping of the tunnels.
Mission completed. The group exited the tunnels and made their way back to the houses running through fields of spraying water. Fin.