CME Expedition 21

Location: Skien, Norway.
Members: 001, 003, 004, 006.
Type: Emergency Tunnel.
Status: Active.

Sometimes we go looking for places that for all logical reasons must exist. It's like you know they're right by, but you just can't seem to figure out it's exact location. Like other things in life, all of a sudden they turn up right under your nose and had been there all along..just waiting, teasing..luring you in.

This was to be one of those places. As mentioned in early reports there is a train tunnel running underneath parts of Skien city centre. We had already discovered at least one, quite possibly two entrances connecting to the main tunnel from surface level. When building tunnels today, it is required to have emergency exits every now and then, throughout the tunnel, but when the Skien Tunnel was built, safety was almost unheard of, or at least not taken into much consideration. But still, I knew there had to be at least one more, considering the length they had to travel to transport the rubble and rocks if they were to exit through the portals at each end. The more logical thing would be to drill holes through the sides of the tunnel to shorten the distance needed to get rid of the stone they brought out.

Either way..one day while out strolling through my neighborhood I for some reason took a closer look at one of the gardens that were "too large" to match the house...turned out that the "missing entrance/exit" had been there all along, in someone's garden (!), right underneath my nose, litteraly 600 ft. from where I live.

Imagine having this beauty in your back yard!

I popped over the fence to have a closer look, and as you can see in the above picture..the gates inside were wide open. Lady luck had struck again! I naturally called up the other cavies and a few of them were quite eager to go exploring indeed. Flashlights were gathered, cameras brought out and into the darkness we delved.

Caveman 004 leading the way.

We swung left around the corner in the far end of the picture above and were met with 50/50 exitement/ disappointment. The steel door in front of us could either be locked or could turn out to unveil something similar to what we experienced in Expedition 10 . Unfortunately this door was locked real tight with no sign of budging. The disappointment could be felt amongst us all.

Here, but no further.

 
On the bright side of things..atleast now we knew where it was. On our way back out..004, managed to step in some foul smelling dog shit that haunted us for a long time. When we get to august, and have our 1st. year celebration..he is a clear candidate for the shit of the year award! Ahh man, that was some nasty shit..just writing about it gives me nausea.

Do not despair for lack of pictures from behind the door..I managed to figure out that this place was to be permanently sealed, so time was of the essence. I sent a formal request to the head honcho of the norwegian state owned railway maintenance something something, along with their property management office. The result being that, long story short, we were granted access for documenting this emergency exit before it is sealed of and gone forever. But I'll leave that report for another day...  

-Caveman 001-
 

CME Expedition 10

Location: Porsgrunn, Norway.
Members: 001, 002, 003.
Type: Infrastructure, Emergency Tunnel.
Status: Active / Open.

While driving between locations on our trip to check out some sites in Porsgrunn, 002 all of a sudden shouts out.. "Stop the car, I think I saw something!" I pull over and 002 heads on across the road where he has just spotted some concrete stairs leading down to who knows what. We were in the middle of a residential area, so there was no obvious reason for this being here. Still in the car, 003 and I were quite excited and waiting for 002 to show up again. It's hard to describe the smile on his face when he peaked over the concrete wall, so naturally I spun the car around and found a place to park.

The Spot

002 told me to go down and feel the door, and he didn't have to ask me twice. He held the camera, taking a few shots while he was at it. I headed on down the stairs already knowing that this had to be open, judging by the look on his face. I was soon to know why he had such a big smirk on.

001 In Action

Stepping inside we were quite stunned, thinking "what the hell is it we've just found here?" There were lights on in the ceiling and stairs headed further down.

002 & 003 Heading Down The First Flight Of Stairs

The other guys were headed down the stairs the instant we stepped foot inside, while I tried to get some photos of the process and the entrance itself. As seen in the picture above, the stairs continue on down to the right, beyond the corner. As soon as they hit the platform and peaked around they simultaneously said "You've got to come see this s**t!" Still having no idea what this place was I quickly followed. It's hard to describe the jittery feeling you get when you discover something like this. I'll just let the next picture give you an impression of what was around the corner.

Endless Stairs

This had to be amongst the cooler places we had found thus far. We carefully proceeded on down the stairs, after noticing the rocks that had fallen from the ceiling, scattered around the stairs. Next picture is a bit beyond halfway down to the bottom.

Midway Down

Running a scan of my mind, it was beginning to dawn on me what this place was, considering our geographical location, the direction of the stairs and the difference in elevation. But i'll get to that in a moment..

Bottom Of The Stairs

Reaching the bottom of the stairs we were quite cautious about the orange light you can see on the right hand side of the door in the picture above. For all we knew it could be some sort of alarm. None of us fancied running back up all these stairs after setting something off. Getting a bit closer we figured out that in all likelyhood this was no alarm, but we still have no idea of what it's function was. Hearing sounds coming from the other side of the door, my suspicions about the nature of this place were confirmed.

002 Checking Out The Door

Checking the door, we found it was locked from the other side. The place we had found here was an emergency exit tunnel from a traffic tunnel running beneath Porsgrunn. We could hear the cars rushing by at 40 mph. on the other side of the door, and felt no need to step any further. At least we had a new thing on our list while doing research for locations. I'll throw in a couple of shots of our ascent back up to the surface, just for good measure.

Midway Looking Up

Headed Back Out For More Adventures

-Caveman 001-