Urban Exploring

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Back when I was in high school, I used to do a lot of urban exploring. Several of my close friends were into it, too. We'd all get together from time to time and go explore the forbidden places of the city: drains, rooftops, construction sites, abandoned buildings, etc.

Any other UE'ers here? I'm sure we've all got plenty of crazy stories we'd like to share about our expeditions.

Here are some pictures I took from two of our trips a long time ago, now. Most we didn't bring a camera along for, regrettably; and even when we did, most of the photos we took were crappy due to poor lighting conditions.

Barracks Stairwell
Top of the Tower
Down the Shaft

I'm actually looking to get back into it again, now that I live the state with the highest number of cataloged UE destinations. They're just not all in one place nearby, like where I used to live.

I'd never actually go down in drains unless they're short and connected to basements of buildings but yes I have and do enjoy exploring buildings, roofs, construction sites whenever the opportunity arises.

I have dreams of going to Russia and exploring many of their abandon buildings, places and sites. I would love to go to Pripyat and Chernobyl in Ukraine too.

No, I am not an urban explorer. But when I was younger I used to do a lot of cave exploring.

marking the thread for later - i have pix!! !!

No, I'm not, but it sounds really exciting. The videos I've seen of it on youtube make me wanna go exploring too... I only learnt about the trend earlier this year, when I was looking for ghost towns.

Hyperlexian, I'm looking forward to seeing your pics!

My university is right in the middle of the city and I love walking around and seeing all the different places. I don't go any place unsafe or "forbidden" though.

When I was in college I helped form a group that searched for "Uglies": bizarre, old, abandoned and ramshackle buildings and sites. That sounds like Urban Exploration long before the term was popularized. We photographed and otherwise documented our finds, researched their history and sometimes returned to picnic or party. We avoided breaking and entering, though we were often sorely tempted. It was great fun.

I found the rest of the photos I took at the location in the first photo: Abandoned Army Barracks

Sort of. I've sneakily visited some places, though not "urban", technically.

i first started doing some urban exploring around the late 1980s, when i would check out condemned buildings with my friends. my former husband used to travel the storm sewers from one neighbourhood to the next (dangerous!).

didn't do too much in the interim, until about 3 years ago when i moved close to an abandoned army base. it is technically trespassing, but it is a popular spot for crack smokers, transients, skateboarders, gang members, photographers, people walking their dogs, etc.

i prefer to take macro (closeup) pictures of the trash and such, but i do have some pix of the buildings too. some are pictures i took, and some are taken by my ex-husband. the first pic is me snowshoeing in winter on the base.

and more:







i also had pictures of an old 2-storey administrative type building we ummm made our way into but the pix were in a batch that got deleted from our hard drive.

Pretty decent photos, there.

Ha. I do that all the time. I visited an abandoned mill a couple months ago where to get in, you had to climb two stories up a drainpipe on the outside of the building, swing over onto a tiny window ledge, then squeeze your way in through a small barred window and onto a small metal platform crowded with pipes and machinery. Then you could climb down (or fall down, if you' weren't careful) the machinery back to the ground where, then, you could explore the building. Oh, and the window you had to climb in through still had chunks of broken glass in it, as well as there being sharp edges of rusted metal on your way up to it and inside.

Here's a photo my dad took of my brother and I standing on that window ledge. I'm the one one the left, with the duffel back and water bottle.

there was a tv show "cities of the underground" ??(name escapes me) built on ruins of previous one.

As a kid I was a bit of a free runner. sorry but no I don't do flips. We would explore bridges, retaining walls, parking garages roof tops and the like looking for new challenges.
We would climb/scale bridges hop on moving trains and run down the top of them.

So I guess we were exploring

omg that looks fun! i am not athletic enough to get up like that... i am more ermmmm... crafty. that is a great picture of you and your brother!

Yeah, it was fun, but it made me realize just how freaking out of shape I was, compared to how I used to be. Just before that picture was taken, I climbed to the top of that wooden wall in the background; and boy did that put a strain on my muscles, having to mantel up the cross-beams while avoiding the inch-long nails sticking out of it. I was shaking by the time I got back down again, and not just because I'd narrowly avoided being stabbed through my palms by rusty nails half a dozen times). We (me, my brother and my dad) all like how that photo came out, too. My dad's an amateur photographer.

I've always wanted to do urban exploration (or at least since a friend introduced me to the concept several years ago). I'd need someone to go with me, obviously and I can't think of anyone who'd be up for that sort of thing. It's a bit of a bummer.