Access All Areas: A User's Guide to the Art of Urban Exploration

INTRODUCTION

This book is meant as an introduction to the hobby of urban exploration, a sort of interior tourism that allows the curious-minded to discover a world of behind-the-scenes sights like forgotten subbasements, engine rooms, rooftops, abandoned mineshafts, secret tunnels, abandoned factories and other places not designed for public usage. Urban exploration is a thrilling, mind-expanding hobby that encourages our natural instincts to explore and play in our own environment. Urban exploration inspires people to create their own adventures, like when they were kids, instead of buying the pre-packaged adventures too many of us settle for. And it nurtures a sense of wonder in the everyday spaces we inhabit that few local history books could ever hope to recreate. Perhaps because the hobby combines straightforward appreciation of a site’s aesthetic beauty and historical significance with elements of risk and creative problem solving, explorers can feel a vivid, exhilarating awareness of the urban environment that can be almost overwhelming in its intensity during and following an enjoyable expedition. It’s a rush.

For too many people, urban living consists of mindless travel between work, shopping and home, oblivious to the countless wonders a city offers. Most people think the only things worth looking at in our cities and towns are those safe and sanitized attractions that require an admission fee. Their alertness has atrophied due to the lack of any real adventure in their lives, and their senses have dulled to help them cope with the cacophony of noise and meaningless spectacle that surrounds them. It’s no wonder people feel unfulfilled and uninvolved as they are corralled through the maze of velvet ropes on their way out through the gift shop.

Rather than passively consuming entertainment, urban explorers strive to actually create authentic experiences, by making discoveries that allow them to participate in the secret workings of cities and structures, and to appreciate fantastic, obscure spaces that might otherwise go completely neglected. There’s certainly more to the hobby than just having a good time: the new and deeper perspectives explorers can get from standing atop the city, or peering up at it from underground, or just coming to appreciate the extent and complexity of the world behind the scenes, are truly incredible. But it’s also just unbelievably fun. When you fully embrace the urban exploration mindset, the city becomes a wonderful playground, and playing in it seems like working your way through a fun and challenging adventure game — except it’s real.

Urban exploration is an incredibly enlightening hobby, and the world would be a better place if more people thought of themselves as urban explorers. In part, this guide is intended to encourage more people to engage in the harmless exploration of the urban environment I’ve always promoted in Infiltration. In addition, I hope this guide will help expand some people’s definition of urban exploration, so that they can broaden their horizons and enjoy the hobby more. Since abandoned buildings are probably the most obvious and photogenic places explorers frequent, many have begun to think of the hobby as encompassing little more than exploring abandoned buildings, with maybe the occasional tunnel thrown in for good measure. As I hope to point out in this guide, such places are wonderful and beautiful, but they aren’t the end-all-and-be-all of urban exploration. Structures and infrastructures are interesting in all phases of their life cycles, and places that are under construction or in use can hold as much wonder, beauty and opportunity for adventure as abandoned places.

As I’ve disclaimed before, I don’t pretend to be the world’s most talented or most experienced urban explorer, just an enthusiastic chronicler and booster of the hobby. As well as spending a lot of time exploring a wide variety of settings myself, I’ve also spent a decade corresponding with a few hundred explorers worldwide and paying close attention to their expedition reports. Much of my advice in this guide is based on what I’ve heard from others. It’s mainly written for people who are relatively new to the hobby, but I hope experienced explorers will get something out of it nonetheless, even if it’s just the inspiration to write better guidebooks of their own.

Hey, What Are You Doing Down There?

So, what is and isn’t urban exploration? Speaking broadly, urban exploration consists of seeking out, visiting and documenting interesting human-made spaces, most typically abandoned buildings, construction sites, active buildings, stormwater drains, utility tunnels and transit tunnels, though with lots of other possibilities on top of those basics. The areas explorers are interested in are usually neglected by or off-limits to the general public, though there are some exceptions to this, and it’s certainly not the case that urban exploration always involves trespassing. Explorers flock to opportunities to see interesting buildings and tunnels that are temporarily opened to the public, and most are quick to take advantage of chances to visit special areas with permission from friends and relatives. Explorers are also quick to take advantage of legal grey areas, such as touring stormwater drains which in certain municipalities isn’t technically illegal. So, exploring isn’t synonymous with recreational trespassing.

While urban exploration is often grouped with or even called infiltration or urban adventure, in reality those are three different activities that share a great degree of overlap. All three are great, and many people who enjoy one branch enjoy them all, but they have some distinctions.

Sneaking into a pool, a movie theatre or a concert is infiltration, but it isn’t really urban exploration, since your primary goal isn’t to see a place but to engage in or watch another activity. Often with infiltration the focus is on overcoming a human element, sometimes just for the strategic pleasure of doing so. Playing hide-and-go-seek in an abandoned building or climbing up a bridge for the joy of the climb is urban adventure, but it isn’t really urban exploration, since it’s more about playing somewhere cool rather than exploring somewhere cool. With urban adventure–type activities, the challenges (if there are challenges beyond having a good time) are usually self-imposed, rather than being simply the price one must pay in order to view a particular location. They’re often more stunt-oriented and focussed on the fantastic final picture or story of the adventurer’s achievement. On the previous page is a rough Venn diagram showing where different infiltration/urban adventure/urban exploration activities might fall in relation to one another.

While infiltration and urban adventure are both worth checking out (indeed, infiltration’s even worth publishing a whole zine about, in my humble opinion), this book is primarily concerned with the activities that fall into the top left circle: those that are focussed on finding, exploring and documenting locations off the beaten path.

The Risk to Reward Ratio

It’s probably fair to describe urban exploration as a somewhat dangerous hobby, though it’s less dangerous than many would have you believe. From what I’ve heard anecdotally, only a couple of self-described urban explorers have ever died while exploring, so statistically speaking urban exploration is slightly less likely to kill you than lawn bowling. But explorers do get injured or trapped from time to time, and if we weren’t extremely careful we’d probably get killed every once in a while.

One common argument against urban exploration is that someone might get hurt and then society would be responsible for saving them, but if this logic worked for urban exploration, it would presumably hold true for far more dangerous activities like white water rafting, contact sports, bungee jumping, parachute diving, downhill skiing, driving, cycling or mountain climbing, which all have much higher fatality rates. Yet people do those things all the time, and as long as they get proper permission from the authorities, no one condemns them for risking their lives and the lives of those around them. What the people who say urban exploration is wrong and bad because it’s dangerous really mean is that it’s wrong and bad because it’s dangerous and they didn’t get permission. This is a weird way to think.

In life, there are needless risks and acceptable risks. If practiced carefully, urban exploration need involve only acceptable risks, but all exploration activities should be evaluated in terms of the risk to reward ratio. This hobby isn’t about stunts, and something doesn’t become more worthwhile simply because it’s more dangerous. It makes sense to run through a gauntlet if the reward awaiting you at the end is likely to be a really tasty slice of fresh, warm, homemade blueberry pie topped with high-quality ice cream with little bits of vanilla bean in it and everything, but it’s foolish to do so if it’s likely that all that’s waiting for you at the end is a dried-up slice of generic, store-bought apple pie. You can get that anywhere. My parents buy it all the time. It’s not that good.

Similarly, don’t try to climb over a razor wire fence and run past a pack of hungry dogs unless you’re confident that they’re guarding something pretty incredible, because you’re going to be really annoyed if you lose a foot just so you can stare at a nondescript electrical closet. While it’s true that danger isn’t the ultimate evil, this hobby isn’t about the quest for danger so much as a willingness to accept certain levels of danger in the course of the quest to discover and document forgotten or neglected realms. You know, like Indiana Jones or Lara Croft, but without the stealing.

Conventional wisdom holds that tension is bad and to be avoided, so many people will suggest that a good way to choose the right risk to reward ratio is to do only what you feel comfortable with. In my humble opinion, this advice is on par with telling an aspiring Olympic athlete to exercise only until he or she feels tired. It is good and healthy to push yourself a little and to do things that make you slightly uncomfortable. If you continually stretch the boundaries of your comfort zone by doing things that make you a little nervous and a little uneasy, you’ll gradually expand the range of activities with which you feel comfortable. (This is how that whole gateway drug business works, too, I think, but you should go exploring instead of doing drugs — both activities are addictive and mind-expanding, but exploration is cheaper.) Most people feel extremely nervous the first time they climb a fence into a construction site or stroll past an employee into an off-limits area. But after you’ve done these things a dozen times they become second nature, allowing you to save your stores of nerve for larger challenges.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that you fully abandon your comfort zone and leap towards what terrifies you. If you’re claustrophobic and afraid of the dark, don’t try to cure yourself by single-handedly wriggling through a narrow drain without a flashlight late one night — the mantra mind over matter may lose some of its potency once you’re enveloped in darkness and finding it difficult to breathe. Nor should you assume you’re braver or more rational than you actually are: don’t suddenly realize that your morbid fear of insane ghosts with chainsaws isn’t as suppressed as you thought it was when you’re deep in the tunnel system under an abandoned asylum. Rather, figure out with what you are and are not comfortable and gradually work on getting more comfortable with some of the things that make you nervous. This strategy works because when you have a realistic idea of your strengths and weaknesses, your common sense will function much more reliably. It’s when you start deceiving yourself and telling yourself that you’re the biggest bad-ass in town, when in reality you’re easily shaken, that your common sense starts becoming unreliable. Get an honest picture of what you can and cannot handle, both mentally and physically. People get caught or hurt less because they were doing something that made them nervous or scared than because they did not have an informed and realistic sense of their capabilities.

A lot of people, including a lot of people I’ve gone exploring with, deny their own nervousness because they think it’s embarrassing, but personally I much prefer to go exploring with people who get nervous and admit it. Nervousness is like fire. If it gets out of hand, it can consume and destroy you, but if you keep a little bit of it under your control, it can help guide the way. Look at the word itself: nerv-ous. It means fearful, but it also means full of nerves.

When you’re exploring, your nerves are your allies. Being full of nerves makes you acutely aware of your surroundings, and that is both a very pleasant and a very useful state of mind. If you are keeping quiet and moving carefully, while looking and listening intensely, you are much less likely to fall into an unseen hole or run into an unexpected guard. One reason I hesitate to explore in large groups is that people tend to relax when they’re around three or four friends, because they feel secure in a group and perhaps also because they don’t want the others to see that they’re nervous. But five relaxed people are a hell of a lot more likely to run into trouble than two nervous people.

TRAINING

As tempting as it is to quickly gather up your ten closest friends and head into the subway tunnels on your inaugural expedition, that’s a recipe for disaster. As in videogames, you should start with basic training missions to get a feel for the controls before you attempt apocalypse-level difficulty. While most explorers train themselves by just going out there and exploring, a little advance training doesn’t hurt, and knowing what you’re doing could keep you from making things worse for yourself and others later on. At the very least, it’s a good idea to know what you and your cohorts are and aren’t capable of before your skills are tested under more stressful conditions.

Training involves both off-the-job and on-the-job pursuits. Off-thejob, exercising and practicing certain exploration-related skills need not be tedious; if you do it with games and competitions, it can be a lot of fun in itself. On-the-job training is even more likely to hold your attention, since it is actual exploring, just in a setting where you’re unlikely to face injuries or other punishments if something goes wrong. And sometimes you make some pretty interesting finds on those little practice missions before you level up.

Fitness

Urban exploration isn’t a sport — anything that requires so much nerdy research and geeky aesthetic sensibility doesn’t fit with our culture’s understanding of a sport — but it can occasionally require some physical fitness. Endurance, strength, speed, balance and flexibility are all useful to explorers. Endurance will take you those four kilometres up the storm drain to the waterfall, or get you up that 34th flight of stairs that takes you to the roof. Strength will help you pull open that door that’s rusted shut, or hoist yourself up onto that ladder that’s dangling two feet overhead. Speed will help you run away when the alarm sounds, or when someone decides to chase you. Balance will help you walk along the rafters without falling five storeys to your death. Being flexible and in good shape will help you make it through those awkward climbs and squeezes and make you less likely to strain muscles or otherwise injure yourself while exploring.

There’s an additional benefit to exercise. While the world of public spaces is increasingly built to comfortably accommodate people who are between 50 and 100 pounds overweight, the world behind the scenes hasn’t yet caught up to this exciting new trend. Being skinny is a major asset for an explorer. If you haven’t done a lot of exploring you may not appreciate just how often you’ll come across spaces where just a couple inches of surplus girth will make the difference between triumph and defeat. Explorers squeeze, or try to squeeze, their way through slightly ajar windows, between pipes in steam tunnels, through narrow hatches, up air ducts, through tiny chatieres (cat holes) carved into stone or bricks, between stairs in staircases, through the metal grates of storm drains and into all manner of tight tunnels never meant to accommodate people. In these situations, the only thing more frustrating than being the only one in your group who can squeeze through a particular opening is being the only one who can’t. If you’re significantly heavier than the rest of the people you go exploring with, you may want to bring a good book.

Occasionally explorers have to squeeze themselves through inhumanly small spaces in order to get to their goal.

Giving Up Smoking

While it’s certainly true that many explorers smoke, smoking and exploring aren’t very compatible, for a number of reasons. People who insist on smoking while exploring can potentially create a number of problems for their group. Smoke and lit cigarettes reduce your stealthiness. Dropped ashes and cigarette butts leave clear signs that someone was present. Improperly extinguished cigarettes are a fire hazard in old wooden buildings.

Even smokers who are smart enough not to smoke while they’re exploring face a few disadvantages. People who smoke regularly generally have diminished senses of smell, and tend to get out of breath more easily than non-smokers. Many smokers have coughs that are prone to happen at the wrong time. According to many scientists, smokers are at least four times as likely to suffer health problems due to asbestos as nonsmokers — some estimates are a lot higher. So, smoking and exploring aren’t ideally matched to one another.

Climbing

The ability to climb fences and walls is among the most useful skills an explorer can cultivate, and it’s not a tricky one to practice. Climbing trees is pretty fun, and it’s also decent climbing practice, at least a decent warm-up to the more advanced practice you would have to pay to get in a climbing gym or at the Y. The basic concepts of searching for, finding, evaluating and then finally employing different hand- and footholds, while navigating a vertical path towards the top, are the same whether you’re climbing a tree, a rock wall, a mountain or a building. If you dislike nature, or don’t have access to it, you can practice your climbing skills in a playground. This doesn’t involve just crawling up the tube slide backwards; there are also monkey bars to fool around on and swing sets to climb.

Ethan demonstrates the proper technique for chimneying up a building, with the back to the wall and his legs pushing.

After you’ve graduated from this first level, grab a friend and find some fences that you won’t get in trouble for climbing — maybe a wooden house fence, wire fencing around a local basketball or tennis court or the vertical steel bars fencing in a local school — and just practice safely hauling yourself up and over. Practice both solo climbing and climbing with the help of a friend. Experiment to see if a running start helps you or not. Pay attention to how your clothing and footwear affect your climb — if you find a wire fence with narrow spacing in which you simply can’t get a foothold, try taking off your shoes and tucking in your socks between your big toe and the rest of your foot for an improvised set of tabi socks. Try sticking a board between the links in a chain link fence to make an improvised step. Try climbing with and without gloves. Notice how you occasionally need to employ different climbing tactics on different sides of the same fence: getting out isn’t always as easy as getting in. Work on your speed — maybe have your friend pretend to chase you over the fence. Move from shorter fences to taller fences, and from easier ones to harder ones. If anyone comes along and asks what you’re doing, just say you’re practicing climbing — there’s no law against that. (Throwing a ball over a fence also provides a good excuse for you to climb over and retrieve it, but you probably won’t need an excuse.)

Ensure that you have hands and feet before attempting a difficult climb.

For your next trick, work on rope climbing. Even if you hated it when you were in gym like I did, you’ll find that being able to shimmy up a rope can be a truly useful skill in situations where getting up to a second-storey window or a fire escape is the only possible way into a building. After you get to the point where you can use a knotted rope to help to climb up the side of a building without too much trouble, try free climbing the rope without bracing yourself on anything. Practice dismounting from the rope onto a staircase or fire escape. You can either work on this until you think you’re good enough at it to do it while exploring, or just admit to yourself that you’re not much of a rope climber. The one thing you don’t want is to assume that you’ll be able to climb a rope while exploring without any problems, only to find out you just don’t have it in you when it’s too late.

Playing Games

Being successful in urban exploration requires a huge variety of skills, ranging from hiding to climbing to fast-talking, and sometimes it’s helpful to cultivate those skills while you aren’t actively exploring. Hobbies tangentially related to urban exploration, such as trainhopping, geocaching, parkour and buildering (see Glossary for definitions), can all teach handy skills useful in exploration. So can simpler fun-oriented pursuits. Hide-and-seek is a classic urban exploration training game. The basic idea behind hide-and-seek is for one person, dubbed it, to count to a preset number (say, 30) while all the other participants scurry off and hide anywhere they wish within a given area. Then they are sought. For explorers’ purposes, this game works especially well when played indoors somewhere with multiple levels, and tweaked in such a way as to allow stealthy players to move from their hiding places and sneak back to home and become safe (this propagandistic terminology was clearly worked out by parents). In another hide-and-seek variant, played in the dark and sometimes called Bloody Murder, each person who is caught treacherously joins the dark side and aids her captor in seeking out her erstwhile colleagues in concealment. This game is totally awesome.

My friend Sean and I used to play a game of our own invention called Can’t Be Seen. It probably should have had a cooler name, but oh well, at least it’s memorable. Wearing dark clothes and equipped with two-way walkie-talkies and flashlights, we would attempt to travel across town by as direct a route as possible without anyone spotting us. There was no precise way to measure our level of success, since people who did see us probably didn’t realize the greatness of their achievement and thus generally failed to tell us they’d spotted us. But we usually knew and admitted to ourselves when we’d screwed up and taken too long to dive behind the hedges or roll beneath the truck, and we kept a mental tally of our failures. This was not only one of the most fun games of all time, it was also a risk-free way to practice our skills at orienteering, running, hiding, scouting ahead, moving stealthily and communicating either silently or with walkie-talkies. Only its two-dimensional nature, and the difficulty of playing it in a highly populated urban setting, keep it from being the perfect urban exploration training game. It is, however, fun.

Laser tag is also fun. While urban exploration does not generally involve the use of futuristic weaponry, it does involve hiding, moving stealthily, navigating complex multi-level mazes and thinking three-dimensionally. Paintball, while a little more messy, painful and expensive, teaches many of the same skills as laser tag, including working as a team. The only big problem with the shooting games is their focus on aim. Aim is one of the few skills that’s of not much use to explorers. An old-fashioned game of capture the flag, played in an urban setting, might be better training. Capture the flag is cheaper and requires less silly clothing and expensive equipment, and it’s damn good exercise, especially if you’re competitive.

On-the-Job

It would be nice if we could all train until we were in peak physical and mental condition, but of course it’s tough to resist the temptation to get out onto, or under, the street and put your skills to the test in a realistic setting. Until such time as proper urban exploration training academies can be founded