Search Party

It energizes the Commander. He shows the site to the rest of the guys. He talks about it non-stop at the next smoke break. It's like his mind has begun to morph; he thinks differently about the old factories around his house. He wishes he had X-ray vision; he wonders what's inside those things.

The guys think it's cool, too, but they're kind of skeptical. Isn't this stuff kind of dangerous and, furthermore, illegal?

Jay Bevenour

 

Jared Jacang Maher

Going down: Commander Chainsaw (from left), Subcommander Stretch, The Newbie and agents Borland and Geiger prepare to descend into the Titan 1 Missile base and explore its more than 2,500 feet of tunnels.

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More About

• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
• Star Trek
• Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
• Nature and the Environment
• Environmental Issues and Protection

Well, yes and yes.

Urban explorer Joseph Konopka, aka Derailer, aka Dr. Chaos, is currently serving a thirteen-year federal prison sentence for sending Chicago into a post-9/11 tizzy after being discovered living in a subway tunnel with canisters of cyanide. The 27-year-old, who was charged with illegal possession of a chemical weapon, said that he found the industrial-grade cyanide along with other chemicals during his explorations of abandoned factories.

And earlier this year, a 36-year-old Denver woman died while exploring an abandoned school in the Golden Triangle. It was 2 a.m., and Tracy Rollert was with her boyfriend, a computer support specialist, when she slipped and fell thirty feet off the second story of the Evans Elementary School. Her boyfriend tried unsuccessfully to revive her; she died at the scene.

The Commander says that he understands all the risks associated with urban exploring, and that's why he's such a safety nazi. Like almost all urban-explorer groups, Subciety adheres to a code of ethics that says no breaking and entering (there's some wiggle room), no vandalism, no theft. Use the buddy system at all times. Take only photos, leave only footprints.

Still, the forbidden nature of such infiltration is a large part of the allure for the collective, as it must be for others. The UE Web ring now links more than 152 groups, such as the Sydney Cave Clan, the Vancouver Wraiths and Forgotten New York. Some specialize in subway tunnels, others in abandoned mental hospitals or defunct shopping malls. There are two magazines devoted to the activity, and an International Urban Explorer Conference is in the planning stages.

This unique hobby comes off as a tad odd to the average surface dweller, and the commander's non-Subciety co-workers chuckle uncomfortably at the group's talk. Neighbors raise a suspicious eye. Parents? Grow up, why don't you?

"People either get it or they don't," the Commander says. "Ninety-nine percent of people I know freak out when they can't see a Starbucks. The rest of us seek out places where things aren't so safe and you aren't quite sure what's around the next corner. It's called adventure."

Subciety has fifteen well-screened active members who, in the Commander's well-oiled paramilitary prose, receive daily e-mail communiqués. New members have been inducted from as far away as Pueblo -- but only after an electronic interrogation session that includes questions like "How many flashlights do you own?" and "Are you hard-core?"

So what does Mrs. Chainsaw think about all this?

"It's cheaper than BattleBots, I guess. And it gets him out of the house. He has a whole different set of friends because of it, so I think it's a good thing." She has no urge to do it herself, and except for wanting to know where he'll be and when he'll be back, she takes an ignorance-is-bliss approach. "He does need his outlets," she adds distantly, like a loving spouse who has long humored her husband's eccentricities.

True. But most urban-explorer groups aren't descending forty feet into an EPA Superfund site where the government once stored more than 600,000 pounds of RP-1 rocket fuel and three radioactive warheads.

0200 hours. Location: No. 2 launcher, equipment-terminal silo.

"Last time we were here, this whole area was submerged," Agent Borland says, shining his light through a concrete gap in the floor. "We could probably make it down two or three more levels."

The steel ladder shudders as, one by one, they lower themselves several levels. During the wetter months, this whole area fills up like a reservoir, and the possibility of groundwater contamination has recently become a concern of the EPA and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. The powerful solvents used to clean electrical equipment, the petroleum chemicals from kerosene-based rocket fuel, and the zinc and cadmium from corroded metal have been found contaminating the water and soil surrounding some of the six Titan 1 sites.

Ed LaRock, an environmental protection specialist for the CDPHE, says that the US Army Corps of Engineers is conducting investigations for all but one of the Titan 1 sites. As investigations for each site are completed, a cleanup plan will be prepared and open for public review and comment. The only site not on the Corps list happens to be the one favored by Subciety.

"They haven't done any investigations at 2B yet," LaRock says, although the CDPHE became concerned with the facility in the summer of 2002. "We worked with the Army Corps of Engineers and the EPA and said, 'Wait a minute; nothing's been done here.' There is a little housing development that has sprung up around the site. We got permission from the owners, and we sampled five domestic wells around the sites for solvent."