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Since I'm going to give a tour of UCLA today, I figure I may as well post a secret treasure map of the university's soft underbelly: the steam tunnels.
The sweet adverturous nectar your departmental overlords don't want you to see!
Legend has it that the tunnels have been sealed since my conspirators and I last explored them, but I'm sure an enterprising urban adventurer could find her way in. There's all sorts of treasure to be claimed and mysterious chambers to explore, like the Toilet Graveyard, the steam plant, and the Royce Towers (as seen on the seal of UCLA).
Dangers await as well, such as certain expulsion (so we hear), rats, burning hot steam pipes, exposed electrical wires, and zombies. Haha, just kidding about the rats. Also: Shelob. Take a flashlight, because the tunnels are mostly pitch black; wear long pants and sleeves, despite the sweltering heat, because there are lots of hot and sharp things that will hurt you. Occasionally the tunnels are flooded with up to a foot of water, and maybe more if it rains a lot. Remember: water + electricity == fun + zombies.
If you go, write up an account of your quest and leave a comment here to let me know how it was.
Anon Reddit Post
As an upperclassmen who's been doing this rather frequently for recreation since freshman year, a few tips;
- Several sections of the tunnel network are actually the basement floors of the buildings above them; most notably this occurs where the northern tunnels connect to the rest of the network under Royce Hall. This means facilities and support staff often have lockers and other functional rooms down here, and they work a three shift rotation. Watch out for the second shift leaving/third shift arriving in these sections around 2am.
- The actual steam pipes within the tunnels under Moore have been getting progressively more and more leaky over my tenure at the school. This section has thus been hot, humid and dark for god knows how long -- can't say anything's bad for certain, but I try not to spend too much time breathing air in here. That said, traversing the obstacles in this section is the closest I've ever come to being Gordon Freeman in real life.
- Ninety percent of the time, any of the exterior doors listed in this thread that you find open have been left that way by another student -- the maintenance men rarely go into the actual tunnels and UCLA has gotten increasingly tight on security, so don't plan on getting in through an errant door unless you want to wander campus late at night full of drunken failure a lot. Some saint made a map of ALL entrances and exits to system, google it.
- Be classy. When I first arrived, the tunnels were absolutely covered in 20 years of graffiti (my favorite author amongst the signatures) and strange, wonderful sights and objects. Now, the school has painted over absolutely everything down there, and more and more student tunnelers steal or break what they find, leaving only beer cans for the next traveller. The place is awesome because of the crazy urban decay just 10 feet from campus, don't turn all that into a cheap walking tour by ruining it like a tourist.
Anon Reddit Post
I actually stumbled upon the tunnels when I was really drunk this year. The best way to get in is through Haines. If you get into the building in any way, then room 45 on the A level is actually a tunnel entrance. You'll have to put some force into opening the door but every time I've tried (~6 or 7 times) it has been open. You go down the ladder on the right, go down the a 20 ft vertical ladder and you reach two doors. The one on the left goes into a locker room. Try to avoid this room because I've been caught there once (at like, 1 am) because that's where all the workers hang out. If you go through the door on the right you'll end up under YRL where there are books that are 100s of years old, pretty cool. Also we got underneath Melnitz somehow after going underneath YRL. That place is super cool cause there are thousands of props there. Thousands. There are at least a 100 TVs ranging from different eras, and everything else you can imagine. I'd recommend going tunneling, it's super fun :)