tunnels at UC Berkeley?
Suzanne Patricia Johnson
I've been enslaved by UC Berkeley for many years now and have never
encountered any tunnels. However, this is California, and there may simply
be no tunnels because the sun is always shining and the buildings are
never heated.
You have to wonder about where all the streams that flow off the hills
go, though. At some point they stop being streams and become underground
creeks, flowing under city streets. That might be one avenue for ex-
ploration. Check the weather forecast, though.
Then there are various highway tunnels, the most famous of which is the
Caldecott. The Caldecott tunnel bores through the east bay hills, allowing
Baysiders acess to the inner valley, and the unique experience of feeling
a ten degree temperature change in just a few hundred yards. The
art-nouveau concrete edifice of the east side of the tunnel can be
scrutinized at close range from Fish Ranch Road, and of course there is
the Old Tunnel -- now closed? -- nearby, as maps mark it, but I have
never found the exact location.
Caltrans has extensive facilities built underground around the Caldecott,
including I think one of their major traffic control centers and supply
depots. A few years ago, the East Bay Express ran a feature article on
the lure and mystique of the Caldecott. Due to general public safety and
my policy of non-hasslement of public employees, I wouldn't recommend
casual explorations -- but WOULDN'T it be GREAT if someone could make a
deal with the appropriate person/agency to give a tour to tunnel aficion-
ados!! (hint). Anyone out there have a relative working for Caltrans?
I heard a rumor several years ago of a social club that ran something like
a holloween tour of Bay area tunnels, full costume dress and flashlights
required. Knowledgeable (I assume) leaders led the group (or at least
on person survived to pass along the story).
Benjamin Gold
>Yes. A friend of mine once was able to appropriate a blueprint which
>showed a whole bunch of the tunnels on campus. There's one which
>goes from the south side of LSB, east toward the Campanile underneath
>that path, then at California Hall cuts southeast, goes _underneath_
>Wheeler, and ends up at the south fork of Strawberry creek at the
>power house. It is HELL of hot in there.
>I also knew some people in high school who supposedly would go way up
>in the culverted creeks and ride their skateboards down them. I cannot
>verify this.
>Daniel Bucher
Hey Danny! This is Ben Gold.
I can vouch that there are some steam tunnels under UCB. It mostly
consists of one long tunnel (a few citie blocks) with shorter, curvier tunnels
leading off the sides. VERY hot, but it has lights inside of it that are
usually on, and can be switched on if they are not on all ready.
We found one little "room" with just a chair sitting there, like someone
had been hanging out there. There were also some doors that lead to bulidings,
but all of them were locked.
--Ben
.
Matt Judson
can get into the kitchens, the bell tower, etc. There are entrances
inside of most dorm buildings...
--
Barbra Streisand == Rat's brains bread
Will Marchant
the Hearst mining building. I would think that
was close enough to a "tunnel" to satisfy Usenetters! 8)
--
Will Marchant Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Astrophysics
marc...@cea.berkeley.edu University of California
KC6ROL@N0ARY 2150 Kittredge St., Berkeley, CA 94720 USA
Partha S. Banerjee Cnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus
Daniel Bartholomew Bucher <b...@uclink.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>
>Yes. A friend of mine once was able to appropriate a blueprint which
>showed a whole bunch of the tunnels on campus. There's one which
>goes from the south side of LSB, east toward the Campanile underneath
>that path, then at California Hall cuts southeast, goes _underneath_
>Wheeler, and ends up at the south fork of Strawberry creek at the
>power house. It is HELL of hot in there.
>
yes, that's correct otherwise. The main tunnel runs from the steam plant
[gee surprise] north for a short distance and then uphill under the path
that goes between LSB, Dwinelle, California and Durant Halls and up to
the Wheeler area. There is a side branch [or at least there used to be]
into the basement of LSB where all their enviroment control stuff is.
There is another side branch in the Wheeler area but it isnt very intersting.
You can come out of one of those buildings just North of Sproul [you know,
where the CPs are] too.
These are well-lit large tunnels you can walk upright in ... not all that
exciting ... just good for photo sessions really.
The real excitment is elevator surfing in Evans ...
... or so i've heard ...
--psb
--
/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\
|* Partha S. Banerjee Sic volo, Sic jubeo; *|
|* <p...@Berkeley.EDU> || <{spine}!ucbvax!psb> Stat pro ratione voluntas *|
\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/*\*/
Keith Vetter
Suzanne Patricia Johnson <alph...@uclink.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>
>I've been enslaved by UC Berkeley for many years now and have never
>encountered any tunnels. However, this is California, and there may simply
>be no tunnels because the sun is always shining and the buildings are
>never heated.
>
>Caldecott.
Under the hills behind UCB are at least 7 tunnels that I know of: 3
bores of the Caldecott, 2 bores of the Hetch Hetchy aqueduct plus two
callapsed tunnels.
The first is the old car tunnel off of Old Tunnel Rd --surprise--
there's a marker hidden in the bushes where the road name changes to
Skyline Blvd. It comes out above the east entrance of the Caldecott.
The other is an old railroad tunnel that went between Sheperd's Canyon
on the west and Pinehurst Rd (just before the hairpin heading up the
canyon side).
Both tunnels have had their entrances collapsed but you can definitely
see where they used to be.
Keith
--
Keith Vetter kei...@cs.berkeley.edu
Research: Extracting sunbeams from cucumbers.
Partha S. Banerjee Cnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus
Matt Judson <wbri...@obelisk.uucp> wrote:
>Well, there is a pretty big tunnel system under Dwight-Derby. You
>can get into the kitchens, the bell tower, etc. There are entrances
>inside of most dorm buildings...
>
nice to see someone call it by the *proper name* ... Live Free or Dwight Derby!
the largest network of tunnels runs under building two [we went under there
and would bang on teh pipes under the RA suite] ... by Bldg3 ... there is a
long tunnel running the length of 3 that we named the River Styx because it
had about 2 feet of water in it. It then runs along the side walk by bldg 1 on
the grand court side [with an entrance into the basement of bldg 1 and access
to the clock tower [we went up and changed the time once ... i suppose it was
a good thing no one saw the arms moving. also at the second level of the tower
i have probably my best sign in ... somewhat tough climb up a pipe running up
the corner ... maybe 20 feet. also, if you go up to the "balcony" level
of the clock tower, you should know you can even go above that into the
"attic" area ... i think we named it "heaven" ... it's probably one of the
more pretigious places to sign in.
if you go along bulding two [and i'd worry about this if the floor is wet ...
the pipes say "20,000" voles or something like that] you will get to the
Dinning Commons. You ought to know that there are cameras back there.
I understand they got a lot more paranoid later on when someone who shall
remain nameless went in and ... how shall we put it ... defecated in a
ceral [or was it a salad] bowl [he didnt know about the cameras]. One kinda
fun thing to do is to climb the ventillation hood above the entre serving
area ... but it gets kind of greasy about 25ft up.
there is also a network under bldg 9 and 8 ... these are kinda nasty and not
very intersting ... except it turns out there is a stair case under the
staircase between 8 and 9 ... so its worth doing the underground stairs
the-on-the-ground strairs and then the roof above the stairs ... the
Dwight Derby "Divine Challenge", if you will.
the roofs arent too fun at DD ... bldg 12 tower is kida nice ... the
trapdoor weighs a ton ... and RA once asked me to leave it open for him so
he could take a date [another friend of mine] up there. I think we also
left a large pumpkin up there. if you really are feeling stupid, go up
into the tower [maybe it's harder to get in now ... some dumb RA fell
though the skylight [or at least partially did]] ... step onto the walls
of the tower and try to go all the way around on the outside ... you have
something like a 3inch ledge. it really builds character.
another thing to build character is to see if you can climb up the
rain/drain pipes on the south parking lot side of bldg 12 and the do
an arm over arm on the rain gutter and then swing into a window of one
of the floor 2 1/2 rooms ... i did this 5 times and after the last time
was afraid of heighs for about three months.
i used to study in the basement of 12 ... in the storage area. you might also
be able to get into the bldg 12 weightroom "after hours" this way ...
otherwise it's fun to just jump up and down on the mattresses stored there ...
i used to call it "my office" ... no real tunnel access that i remember.
otherwise, a few of the bldg's had attics with access either in utility
closests, or from the random panels you see in halls and suits. we once
jumped up and down above our neighbors' room and apprenetly the "girls"
though it was an earthquake [DD is supposedly on top of a fault]. you can
also easily do the roof of a couple of the non-residential bld ... the
maint shop, the gym by tge pool etc. also, it's worth going by the "haunted
gym" at the intersection of "sports lane" and the "steam plant road" ...
looked like the stanists and various others had gotten in there first ...
pretty creepy place ... the empty swimming pool is intersting to see.
hacking at DD is really much better than main campus hacking, IMHO.
i'd love to hear any other dwight derby tales.
--psb [aka mephistopheles]
Daniel Bartholomew Bucher
Benjamin Gold <b...@cats.ucsc.edu> wrote:
>
>
>>Yes. A friend of mine once was able to appropriate a blueprint which
>>showed a whole bunch of the tunnels on campus.
>
Ben! How the hell are ya! Attention net-hackers, this is the man
who _lost_ the aforementioned blueprints :) (at least that's what Rob
said, Ben...)
So how's the tunneling down there in Santa Cruz?
-Dan
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Daniel Bucher | "Nothing surprises me...
| I'm a scientist."
b...@uclink.berkeley.edu | --Indiana Jones
Kevin Fox
Judson) wrote:
Okay, so I live at the aforementioned Dwight Derby (Clark Kerr Campus) now,
and what I want to know is, where's an entrance to these tunnels?
Thanks,
Kevin
Andrei Cogan
Kevin Fox <kf...@ocf.berkeley.edu> wrote:
: Okay, so I live at the aforementioned Dwight Derby (Clark Kerr Campus) now,
: and what I want to know is, where's an entrance to these tunnels?
Well, the building I'm most familiar with is Building 12 -- access
to the basement in there was from floor 1 -- as you faced east, at the end
of the hallway, there is a door that is usually kept locked (directly to
your left should be the piano lounge with the elevator) -- if you can manage
to get down there, that has access to the storage rooms all underneath the
building. They've got storage rooms down there that correspond to each room,
but the only ones I saw in use were one holding the RA's ski's.
Another interesting place is the basements underneath building 16 (I
think that's the number) and the basketball court in the south-west corner
of Dwight-Derby. And, as Partha said, do check out the abandoned gym up by
the track. Finally, another fun thing is roof-top jaunts -- access if very
easy from many of the Clark Kerr buildings -- the easiest is from the floor
2 kitchen-lounge. And, will somenone tell me if the football players are
STILL on the ceiling of room 12/101? I checked there after my second and
third years here, and they were still there, but I haven't been back since.
: Kevin
-Andrei, who would NEVER advocate such activities...
Andrei Cogan (coga...@soda.berkeley.edu) ||| When in doubt, panic.
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you think it will take, |
| even if you take into account Hofstadter's Law. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| "Be kind to your brain cells, I say" - Joe B. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Andrei Cogan
Theresa Marie O Connor <t...@uclink.berkeley.edu: wrote:
: In article <2kopcc$o...@agate.berkeley.edu: ,
: Will Marchant <marc...@sdp1.cea.berkeley.edu: wrote:
:: Uh, nobody has mentioned the training mine behind
:: the Hearst mining building. I would think that
:: was close enough to a "tunnel" to satisfy Usenetters! 8)
:: --
: Can you please explain where this is? I walked all around the mining
: building this afternoon after I saw your note and did not see a single
: tunnel.
The entrance to this is a small shack. There is a small hill between
the Hearst Mining Building and Donner Lab (on the east side of Hearst
Mining). The shack goes directly into the side of this hill -- it's door is
padlocked, and there are a couple of grilled ventilation shafts coming out
of the tunnel. Entry into there is, obviously, discouraged, but about four
years ago, some friends of mine broke in to do some exploring. The UCPD
wasn't all that happy about this, though ;)
: Theresa
-Andrei