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Arachnoslide Drain type: The drain is a five-foot corrugated steel pipe for some distance and then turns into a slightly larger RCP. Year: We have no idea what year this drain is, nor could we guess. The entrance is located in a park which borders on some person's backyard and we didn't really look for any manholes. Region: The drain is located in a North Eastern park on the outskirts of Toronto. Drain accessibility: From the downstream entrance of the drain access is a breeze. One must simply squeeze through the space between a bar and the top of the pipe -- the rest of the mouth is barred up. I should note that unless you are really full-figured the squeezing part is nothing at all. Drain exitability: Most, if not all, of the manholes appear to be located underneath a road, which makes popping them rather dangerous. That being so the only exit we currently know about is the entrance as well -- so count on a long journey back. Traversability: The drain is about five feet high when you first enter and doesn't get much bigger than that, in some places it is even smaller due to asphalt lining the bottom of the corrugated steel pipe. However, the asphalt creates great drain-walking sides in comparison to the curvy-slippery-riveted terror that is the original pipe. Once you get into the depths of the drain you will encounter several slides, the first two are concrete and not so bad, the third is corrugated steel and looks much more intimidating than it should. While in this general area of the drain you will come across places that have been heaved up, or messily covered over, by rocks -- also if you look really hard you might find the flowstone cavern where the spiders of doom are building their city. Once you are into the real heart of the beast you will come to a sharp junction, at this point the tunnel on the right turns into an RCP and the one on the left remains a corrugated steel pipe. If you follow the pipe on the left for a short time it too turns into an RCP. We ran up the tunnel on the right for a little while and it proved to be interesting, there are several pipes flowing into the main canal and one which looks like it a was a afterthought spliced in without a care in the world. Interesting features: Amongst the most interesting features of this drain, such as asphalt, caverns, and all that good stuff, resides the "white spiders of doom", as they have been dubbed. Hazards: Other than the usual drainin' risks, like flooding and smashing your head when you fall backwards down a slide, you must watch for uneven paths -- such as asphalt when you least expect it -- and spiders of every imaginable species. Recommendation: While the drain itself goes through a lot of shapes and sizes, includes several slides and is, by all definitions, extremely cool, I personally wouldn't recommend this drain to everyone, especially those with overactive imaginations. If you do decided that this is a place you would like to see do capture one of those little white spiders so that we can show them to someone who will tell us what exactly they are. Or you could tell us. White Nightmare Spiders of Doom View the photo gallery for the Arachnoslide. By the end of the weekend Static, Flame0ut and I were still in Toronto and decided that on the way home we would find a drain. Once again with my mad drain locating skills we found a nice park in some GTA suburbs and walked along the banks of a small creek until a drain made itself apparent. We first found a giant culvert, only a few dozen feet long, passing under the road, which gave us great hopes of finding a massive RCP pouring out from one of the many cul-de-sacs shown on the map. We trotted further down stream for sometime, maybe ten minutes, and then found another stream - this one leading into the one we were following. Flame0ut and I followed it upstream to where we found a not-too-shabbily sized corrugated steel pipe. We yelled back to Static that we had found something and once he ran up it was decided that one of us would scout the drain, as in the past we have found pipes like this to be unpromising. Flame0ut said he would run down the pipe for a short time whist we wait. After a few minutes Static said that he was going to enter the drain and after twenty minutes I decided I was going to 'scout' the rest of the park, I didn't have a torch you see. On my way back I met up with Static and Flame0ut and then we decided to go get some drinks and cameras and then come back to run the pipe. They told me that the pipe had some slides and had a high water table in some places. Once we got back to the drain we all entered, still only armed with two LED lights, and proceeded down the tunnel. I ran ahead, not knowing what awaited me, while Static got in, at which point I found a huge black spider. I pointed it out to everyone else when they got in and then we all made our way upstream in the drain. After making it across the high water table portion of the drain, which seemed to last forever, we made it to a manhole chamber. The chamber had a slide leading into it, which was made of concrete. After a short stop in the small chamber we walked and walked until we came to another chamber, which had a slide leading out of it, it was also concrete. We soon came to a large slide, this time it was made of corrugated steel and much longer. I pondered how I was supposed to make it up, as it was very slippery - finally I found that my safety boots would catch the rivets holding the pipes together and that would secure my feet. Up I went. After the corrugated slide the pipe seemed to be in a great state of disrepair. In some places the pipe was lifted approximately halfway up the pipe due to large rocks, I think. The way that the pipe was covering the rocks without breaking struck me as a design decision rather than a sign of loss-o'-structural-integrity. At any rate, as we walk along I noticed a hole into what looked like a cavern, it was, and upon closer inspection it looked like water had been washing out the area - in hindsight I wonder, if that is the case, why on Earth would a piece of the pipe be messily torn out exposing this. The only conclusion I can come to now is that it is the lair of the white spiders, where they will build up their colony and strike against the inferior human race. The pipe comes to an abrupt junction; at this point there are two choices, left and right. Flame0ut ran a short way up both and opted for right, so onwards we went. Soon the pipes became RCP's, rather than a nasty old CSP. Flame0ut got to the first chamber, where he beckoned me to - like a good dog I obeyed my orders and made my way to where he was. Just before I entered the chamber he told me to keep my head low, because there were lots of cobwebs -- and were there ever. I went in and decided that I would be better off sitting in the pipe on the opposite side of the chamber, that was until Flame0ut shined his light up to the wall and said, "look". At first I only saw little black spiders on the wall, but I soon noticed the white molecule looking thing. Neither of us knew what we were looking at, so we stared for a while, and then Static came in so we told him to blow on it -- it moved in a very alive way. Once I saw that I decided that I might want to leave, RIGHT NOW. I'm not arachnophobic, per se, I just imagined a swarm of those pouring down the tunnel ready to devour us at first sight for invading their lair and thus destroying the webs so vital to their mission. Anyways, we were all in agreement to not disturb the little critters and get out. Flame0ut, who had already passed through the chamber, said he wanted to leave a tag of where we turned back, so Static tossed him a marker before turning around and going back through the pipe with me, leaving Flame0ut to his own devices. With the light from our flashlights gone, his LED light suddenly made it obvious that there were, in fact, dozens of very tiny spiders in the tunnel with him -- he could only see their shadows. As he reached to the wall with the marker, it apparently disturbed several of their webs, and as their little shadows started descending he made the decision to come join us, fast. On our way back Static tried a few manholes, but they were all on roads, so we trudged back to the entrance and bailed. No, we're not arachnophobes, but we'd been in there a very long time and the white spiders had us all a bit freaked out. The obvious interpretation of their nature was that they were each a single component of a massive hive-organism, which was about to come galloping down the tunnel towards us, collecting the little critters and growing larger as it came, then running us down and eviscerating us. You understand. See the Arachnoslide photo gallery! -Asher Archive [Note: We want to know what the white spiders are! Tell us if you have any ideas.] Contact: [email protected] .