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Greg Brick explores the sewers and caves that lie beneath the Twin Cities. Sometimes what he finds is beautiful. Sometimes it's just gross.

PHOTO BY TONY NELSON

Standing atop a grit-coated concrete platform some 90 feet beneath downtown Minneapolis, Greg Brick shines his flashlight into the blackness. It's a grim scene. To his left, a flaccid condom dangles from a corroded protuberance on the tunnel wall. "Must have been an overflow," Brick cracks dryly. He then directs the light beam beyond the edge of the platform into a fast-moving subterranean river that, at high tide, carried the condom to its current perch. Beneath us, there is a small waterfall, where a metal ladder extends down into gray, translucent fluid; the raw product of innumerable toilets flushing from Brooklyn Park to the IDS Tower.

On city maps, this significant stretch of sewer is called the North Minneapolis Tunnel. Among those who explore the Twin Cities' nether regions, however, the NMT has a host of nicknames, including the Raging River, the Roaring River, and the Death Hole. "To me, that's dumb and uninspired," say Brick of the menacing monikers. The pet name he prefers pays homage to the tiny, shredded strands of toilet paper that line the walls of the tunnel and make it extremely slippery for anyone who ventures into the foul water. "The Silk Road," he says. "That has a better sound." Brick likes to engage in irony now and then. The sewers will do that to a person.

Accompanied by Brick's regular exploring partner, John--a lanky 31-year-old who prefers not to use his last name because he works in private security--we arrived at the NMT easily enough: Armed with no special gear aside from a few extra flashlights and gloves, we first meet at the Stone Arch Bridge on the downtown side of the Mississippi River. After waiting for a passing police car to disappear, we scamper along a rugged embankment through a construction zone, then duck through a cavernous opening in the hillside. Hopping into waist-deep water, wearing just our street clothes, we begin trudging through the storm sewer.

At first our excursion is, while not pleasant, not disgusting. There is the occasional whiff of a disturbing sanitary odor. Brick assures me, though, that the water is reasonably clean. For decades, he explains, the Minneapolis Public Works Department has been working to separate the storm-sewer system, which drains rain and groundwater into the river, from the sanitary-sewer system, which carries more noxious excrement to the Metro Wastewater Treatment Plant in St. Paul. The storm and sanitary sewers do occasionally come together, however; in periods of heavy rain, water will leak into the sanitary sewer, which can then overflow into the storm sewer (and then, sadly, into the Mississippi River). The spot where we spy the dangling condom is one place where this has happened.

Here at the concrete platform, the sanitary fluids don't smell like shit, per se. But they don't smell any better. I try breathing through my mouth. It doesn't help. I feel a queasy twinge. The research I've done into Brick's past trips down the Silk Road don't help either. On three other occasions, he has endured vomiting and diarrhea for up to 48 hours after coming into contact with the NMT's water. True to form, Brick has coined a couple of terms for the affliction: the self-explanatory Tunnel Fever; and the more obscure Rinker's Revenge, a backhanded homage to the city engineer who designed the NMT in the late 19th Century. I ask Brick whether, just by breathing the air, I am in danger of contracting Tunnel Fever. He says as long as I stay out of the rushing water I'll be fine. He then assures me that we aren't going to be doing any major "sanitary work" today.

This is a prospecting mission. Brick is looking for a new connection between the storm sewer and the NMT, which could provide him with a new means to reach one of the Twin Cities' most forbidding underground voids. The size of a half a city block, Schiek's Cave lies in a maze of sandstone some 75 feet underneath Schiek's Palace Royale, a down-town strip club. If one has sway with the public works department, there is an easier and far less hazardous way to access the cave, via a manhole near the intersection of Fourth Street and Marquette Avenue. But Brick is determined to find a route that won't require a blessing from officialdom. And that means locating a new access point upstream. "It's like Murphy's Law. If there's an interesting cave, you can be sure you have to go through some sanitary to get there," he explains. "All you need is an intestinal tract and the ability to puke your guts out, and you're ready to go."

 

Greg Brick has been going down under for more than a decade PHOTO BY TONY NELSON

Brick has been exploring, mapping, and researching the Twin Cities' subterranean voids for the better part of 12 years. The 38-year-old St. Paul native had no particular interest in the underground as a child. He admits to always being a curious sort, however--a "proverbial pocket-protector-wearing nerd." By the time he'd enrolled at Cretin, a private St. Paul high school, Brick was spending most of his time with books by 19th-century authors such as Arthur Schopenhauer, a philosopher known for being particularly pessimistic.

But it wasn't until 1987, when Brick was pursuing an undergraduate degree in biology at the University of Minnesota, that he stumbled across the book that would inspire his greatest passion: Horace Hovey's 1882 caving classic, Celebrated American Caverns. Hovey, a Presbyterian minister and geologist, was famous for his explorations of Kentucky's legendary Mammoth Cave, which features more than 300 miles of passageways, breathtaking limestone formations, and underground rivers. "Hovey was the great figure of 19th-century speleology," Brick explains. "He described things interestingly--wrote about caves that exhale music and sunlight. After reading him, I just thought, there's something I'd like to try."

In short order, Brick began visiting some of the state's best-known subterranean spots, including Mystery Cave, a 12-mile maze of corridors dotted with stalactites and stalagmites in southeastern Minnesota. But while Brick had the caving bug, he also had a problem: no reliable car and a dislike for long trips to prime caving country. So he began exploring manmade spaces in the metro area: everything from storm sewers to old brewery caves to the vast network of steam tunnels underneath the University of Minnesota. Since some of his favorite spots were located in the old milling district near St. Anthony Falls, he rented a cockroach-infested apartment in the neighborhood.

After getting a degree in biology from the U, Brick began taking geology classes. He then enrolled in a master's-level geology program at the University of Connecticut and stayed for two and a half years (Brick wound up spending nearly 18 years in pursuit of a higher education). While there, Brick read The Mole People, a book by Jennifer Toth about the denizens of Manhattan's vast network of underground spaces. Brick and a friend took trips to New York City and made several forays into the city's underworld. As it turned out, Toth's book proved to be an imperfect guide. "There was a lot of truth in it, but there was a lot of bullshit mixed in," Brick says. He was able to locate a few notable subterranean landmarks, however, where he remembers treading over "carpets of crack vials." He also had his one and only run-in with the law, when a subway cop wrote up a trespassing citation. "Somehow, I never did manage to pay that ticket," he says.

Brick's affinity for the urban underground sets him apart from traditional cavers, who spend most of their time in country settings, exploring natural spaces. Most of them shun storm sewers and recoil at the prospect of sanitary work. Brick says his peers' distinctions are specious. "The natural caves are all full of animal shit," he observes. "It's just a question of what type of shit you're rolling around in. And it's a matter of dealing with it to get where you need to go. To me, it's just not a big deal." He also points out that while those who explore natural caves may not get Tunnel Fever, they do run the risk of contracting serious illnesses such as rabies and histoplasmosis.

Whether it's done in a natural setting or beneath a strip club, spelunking remains an obscure pursuit. The largest national organization for cavers, the National Speleological Society, boasts a membership of just 12,000 people. The Minnesota Speleological Survey, which is based in the Twin Cities, is lucky to have 20 people at a monthly meeting. "Most people don't go caving, because they think it's scary and dangerous," notes Calvin Alexander, a longtime member of the MSS and a professor in the U of M's geology department.

Still, for those who do cave, the passion runs deep. One member of the MSS purchased more than 300 acres in southeastern Minnesota, just so he could explore a vast network of natural caverns. Many others will spend every weekend for months attempting to find passages into voids that may or may not even exist. And most cavers, Alexander theorizes, are driven by a common impulse: "Most of the mountains have been climbed. The poles have been reached. Caving is one of the few activities left on Earth where, if you are serious, you have a good chance of seeing something that no one has ever seen before--and knowing that you are the first person to see it."

The deep muck in Chute's Tunnel will swallow your shoes (left); the flowstone in a nearby cave will take your breath away PHOTOS BY TONY NELSON

After his stint at UConn, Greg Brick returned to the Twin Cities in the mid-Nineties, more determined than ever to explore Schiek's Cave, a place that very few people had ever been. On and off since then, Brick has systematically explored downtown's storm sewers, looking for a way in. Then in 1999, Brick contacted Peter Sand, a college student who had been making forays into the city's sewers and posting the accounts on a Web site called the Minneapolis Drain Archives (www.aberrant.org/~sand/drain/). Sand, Brick discovered, shared his goal.

Soon, Brick and Sand were out prospecting for access to the North Minneapolis Tunnel that would put them in proximity to the cave. That summer, they pinpointed a manhole in the Warehouse District. Satisfied, Brick went home to map out a detailed trip. Late that same night, Sand and three friends made their way to the NMT and, in a harrowing act of either derring-do or simple foolishness, entered the raw sewage, waded a few blocks downstream, and then rode the current down a steep drop. Eventually, the three reached a shaft that led them to Schiek's Cave. One of the three swallowed a mouthful of sewage.

Brick decided he would try to emulate the adventure. After going down the same manhole three weeks later, however, Brick and his longtime sewering companion John were alarmed to see that NMT's flow had increased. "I just started feeling so fucking weird," Brick remembers. "Then John looked at me, and he said, 'Let's get out of here.' He said it. But I probably would have if he hadn't. We just hightailed out of there." It was a bitter setback. "I just steamed about it all winter," Brick says now. "It was like I'd been shown up by some greenhorn."

In May of 2000, Brick, still determined to find an alternate route, located a breach in the wall of one of downtown's deep storm sewers. Climbing through the hole, he discovered an access point to a stretch of the NMT that was in close proximity to Schiek's Cave and downstream from the turbulent rapids where Sand had entered. Fearful of contracting a case of Tunnel Fever, he and John donned respirators and rubber waders before entering the waist-deep sewage, then carefully crept to a shaft that eventually led to the cave.

After poking around the cave, Brick was surprised to find the floor of the cavern littered with soda straws and feminine hygiene products. Apparently, a sewer line from Schiek's Palace Royale had ruptured. Brick also began to develop a theory about the cave's origins, which has long been the subject of debate. After examining assorted features, he concluded that it was neither manmade nor natural, but anthropogenic, meaning it was created as an unintended consequence of human activity. Specifically, Brick surmised, the excavation of the NMT in the late 19th Century had changed the groundwater flow, which would soften and ultimately erode the sandstone, creating the cave. Brick hoped further explorations might reveal the presence of other anthropogenic spaces nearby. But his "easy" access to Schiek's proved short-lived. Not long after he and John videotaped a second visit, the city's Public Works crews bricked up the sewer-wall hole that Brick had passed through to gain access to the NMT.

When I first hook up with Brick and John, they are looking for a new opening to the NMT. After inspecting the concrete overflow platform, Brick decides we should travel further up the deep storm sewer. Eventually we head south, traveling beneath Nicollet Mall. As we trudge through the water, the tunnel seems to shrink, owing to an accumulation of sediment on the floor. Soon, we are hunchbacked. It is uncomfortable, especially for Brick, who recently sprained his ankle in a caving accident. Here and there, he pauses to examine some subtle change in what, to him, is a familiar landscape. A small access panel on the side of the tunnel arouses his curiosity. "Maybe I'd fit through, but not fit back," he jokes. "They say you swell up when you get panicked."

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