In the months following Action Squad's first trip into the West Bank Tailraces, the state decided to take an interest in the historic vicinity. Declaring it the future site of a "Mill Ruins Park," they began to do an extensive excavation of the area, revealing long buried structures from the area's heyday in the 1800's as the milling capitol of the country.

In the process of their archeological dig, they excavated huge amounts of earth, including the ground that the spiral staircase had descended down into. The once-buried entrances to several tailrace tunnels, including the Cataract, were exposed, and open at river level to the outside world.

It was a freezing day in the middle of winter when Action Squad returned to the Tailraces, as a part of Mouser Week II (a convention, of sorts, of local explorer types).

We simply walked through the construction zone and into the various tailrace tunnels that had been opened up by the dig. There was still quite a bit of mud, but it was frozen into semi-solid dirt slush.

We explored the non-flooded parts of the system pretty thoroughly. The most impressive things we discovered were the various ice formations. Near the mouths of a few of the tunnels, there were perfectly cylindrical stalagmites growing up from the floor, some as tall as we were.

At the mouth of one tailrace was a beautiful frozen waterfall. By the end of the trip our hands and faces were freezing in the subzero temperatures, so we headed back to the warmth of civilization. And that was that. Until the next trip, of course ...

TO TRIP LOG #3  >