(This message was originally posted to the Underground mailing list on May 26, 1998)

Well, I finally got a chance to explore the UCLA tunnels, and I wasn't disappointed. Jeff (who has also posted to this list) came up from UCSD, and along with another friend, and a guy named Matt who has been in the tunnels several times before, we headed towards Moore hall, which for years had apparently been home to the easiest tunnel entrance. Apparently there used to be a hole in the door that was big enough to reach your hand through and open from the inside.

Unfortunately, in the year since Matt had been tunneling, the door had been fixed. As he tried to jimmy the lock of a nearby door (thinking it might also contain an entrance), we heard a guy yelling off in the distance, "get away from the garbage can!" There was a dumpster nearby, but even then we were several feet away from it. He screamed at us again, and we finally spotted him, hanging onto a ladder on the top of Math Sciences. If he was security, he was behaving awfully strangely. Matt yelled back, "what garbage can?" at which point the man screamed "I'm gonna come down there and you're gonna be in big trouble!" He got off the ladder as if he was heading for the stairs or the elevator to come and accost us. Of course, we had plenty of time to calmly walk away.

We needed another entrance where we wouldn't be pestered by weird guys on rooftops, so we tried getting into Kinsey and Knudsen. No luck there. Matt then suggested we try Franz. We went down to the basement, found the door, and began to attempt to jimmy the lock open. No luck. Matt started taking the door off its hinges, but I knew we weren't THAT deperate. As we were leaving the area, I happened to look into the small window of a stairwell, and saw a sign reading, 'Bomb Shelter.' We headed down there, and found a door that Matt seemed to remember. I'll spare you all the trouble of how we opened that one, but just call us, collectively, "Macgyver."

Okay, so looking back, getting in was probably more exciting than the tunneling itself. But that's what this group is about, so I'll tell you about it. After climbing a 20 foot ladder into the tunnels (we were actually below them), we headed for Powell. There's this one insane spot where we had to shimmy over a bunch of pipes and wires, which probably could have killed us if we weren't careful. The tunnels are basically the same wherever you go (at least in the area we were in), very narrow, low ceiling, and very hot. The most interesting part, of course, was the bridge, which has the appearance of a huge (high school gym-sized) room with concrete supports and the original brickwork of the bridge on either side. The toilet bowls in the 'creek' have been covered with mud, for the most part, but there were fragments and parts of toilets here and there. After that, we headed over to Royce, where we found a door into the sub-basement -- that wasn't locked from the outside. Unfortunately, now that Royce is no longer under construction, and is in use, all its outside doors are locked. But if you could get into Royce, that would be a nice, easy entrance. By the way, that entrance is an unmarked door right next to SB44. Apparently, Royce was a lot more fun when it was under construction (you could even climb up into the bell towers).

We had been under for about 90 minutes, and exited Royce a little after 2am. It's something I probably won't do again for a while, but it was very exciting and I recommend it to any and all of you crazy lurking UCLA-ers. Jeff and Lenore (the 4th tunneller) both took plenty of pictures, and they should be up on the web shortly, including the bridge everybody wants to see! :)