Maritime Meet-Up 2014 - Part One

The first regional urban exploration meet organized on the Urban Exploration Resource happened on the Natal Day long weekend (August 2-3). We hoped for a larger turn-out, but were ultimately very happy with the group that came out. The Halifax Defence Complex was the theme and a rough itinerary was put together for both days.

We started with fortifications in mainland Halifax on Saturday, landed in Eastern Passage that evening for a ferry to McNabs Island, where we spent the night inside a World War II battery. On Sunday morning we hiked the island stopping at all the sights along the way.

I was late to the party on Saturday morning. Loading my pack was difficult and exposed a dire need for replacement before the next trip. Before I caught up with the group near Fort Chebucto they had already been through York Redoubt, to York Shore Battery, and up to Chebucto's dilapidated RDF station.

After talking briefly with the group upon my arrival, we trudged through a bit of swampland to Fort Chebucto's underground bunker. The entrance to the bunker is so well hidden that you can be right in front of it and still not see it.

I didn't take many photos inside the bunker, and the few I did weren't worth writing home about. I did find a few pieces of graffiti that stood out as familiar. Little had changed since '08.

After a nice conversation with a land owner outside Fort Chebucto's bunker, we moved on to our mystery location. It's a mystery because of where, and how, this ruin sits today. It's behind a fence, and nobody goes in there. Nobody. You can tell nobody goes in there because people litter, and they have.

This was the type of litter we found. Vintage litter. There weren't any Tim Horton's cups, or anything from this century, really.

Bushwhacking to the mystery location in the heat was brutal. I was questioning whether or not it would be worth the hike, and the climbs, and the branches in the face. It was. It isn't often you crawl through a literal hole in the ground, and fall into a relic of two world wars. This place was very well preserved. Garbage wasn't abundant, and there was no graffiti. What we found was a long, narrow brick structure that was scattered with tonnes of metal and stone debris. There was very little light to see the plethora of spiders clinging to the walls around us.

This mystery location group shot courtesy of Trevor Beckerson.

Our next stop would be McNabs Island. I'll cover the trip to the island in a following post.