I'd scoped out the Drumpf Dauer about a dozen times before I seized opportunity.

It was probably about 7 p.m. on a weekday and the security fencing down to underground parking was ajar. There was a security guard in a yellow jacket sitting in the window fifteen meters away, and he looked up just as I passed through the gap, but no one came running after me and no alarms were sounded.

P1 was empty. None of the elevators would take me anywhere but the lobby, which is where I did not want to go. (There were notices posted for construction workers about who to text if you wanted to ride the elevator to the residential levels, but I did not take advantage of this service.) The two stairwells I tried also led me only to ground level.

I paused to study an emergency evacuation route map, and saw that there was another stairwell leading up to the mezzanine levels. I took that.

The third floor exit was locked, but the second floor was not.

I circled the floor, which was thickly carpeted like a hotel's conference center, but dirty and still under construction, then passed through a door where a guy was working on the flooring. He apologized for being in my way. I said, "No problem."

I walked past him -- to a dead end. I returned immediately, and entered the elevator beside him. I rode this up to the third floor.

I passed a couple of guys speaking Spanish over a vacuum. I said, "Hi," and entered a stairwell that took me all the way to the top.

The three penthouses are on floor 68, but each has an upper level (69) and a rooftop hot tub (70). From this level, also home to some mechanical stuff, you can climb a ladder to the flat central part of the roof. In fact, however, I was not quite 71 storeys up, since 13 and anything ending in a 4 were skipped in the numbering. Call it 64 storeys. The nearby Shangri-La looked to be about a floor higher.

(Posted on the balcony of one of the penthouses was a sign warning that going out there could expose you to falls of greater than ten feet (10'). So be sure to adhere to safety regulations.)

The view from the top was lovely, but obstructed by the surrounding lower roof, so that you could not see anything nearby or straight down. Which gave it a strange remote feeling, almost like being on a mountaintop.

It was raining lightly. The black trees of Stanley Park were indistinguishable from the black water of English Bay.

Coming back down, I was afraid that I would by now be locked inside, and would have to explain myself to security. But, going against my usual habit, I took a different stairwell down -- which let me out the front of the building on Georgia Street to freedom.

This was fun!

There are fifteen floors accessible by elevator in this place. Then there is a sixteenth floor, which appears to be mostly offices and training rooms. (When last I visited, this floor was under construction. I could not get in, but maybe you'll have better luck. Go visit!) The seventeenth floor appears to be a mechanical floor. (I could not get in.) The eighteenth floor I managed to get into.

It has many fan units, as big as garden sheds. They hum along. One had no cover for its belt, which was cordoned off by red caution tape.

I badly had to pee (it always seems to happen to me when exploring), and peed on the concrete floor, I'm sorry to say.

Here is the guestbook to this floor, located right by the entrance:

I climbed a grated stair to the nineteenth floor, where there was a gigantic ... hot water tank?

There is a five-foot-diameter tube passing through this floor. It seems like a smokestack (I imagine an old derelict coal furnace somewhere in the bowels of this place), but then I cannot figure out why it opens here to a grating, with bars spaced like a jail-cell's:

These floors are quite well lit:

The twentieth floor is my favorite.

It has been variously carpeted, and has a few hung photos from the good old days of the hotel:

There are also some chairs around a coffee table, covered in dust in which the word "DEAD" has been fingerwritten:

Each floor is, of course, smaller than the former. There is not much of the twenty-first floor to speak of.

The twenty-second floor must be reached by a ladder -- which, though old, seems very sturdy, I must say.

Here the smokestack is covered in insulation with a thin black surface, which when scraped, with a key for example, extrudes a white interior.

There is, no shit, graffiti here from 1959. And the stack is by no means completely covered with names and dates; so I could not refrain.

From this floor, I climbed a ladder -- equipped with a cable you could clip into, if you were climbing safely -- for about two floors, to the very tip-topmost lookout, where that smokestack debouches, incidentally.

I did not take a photo. I do not like heights much. But I was here:

There is a new building going up at the West Burnaby Nonspecific Sickhouse.

It was pretty easy to get into. There was someone working there, making periodic loud noises.

This is a view from the roof down into the center court.

This is a view across False Creek from the roof. You'll have to take my word for it.

Here's the most heavily secured park bench I've ever seen.

This enclosure is also where an apiary is kept.

I wanna sit on the bee bench!

Always lots to see at the West Burnaby Nonspecific Sickhouse.

There is a kind of utility tunnel system connecting some of the buildings, it seems. I found an entrance into one of these. It wasn't very comfortable: I had to get down on my haunches and waddle through it.

Here's a picture of the tiniest (< 3 feet high) fire door (sign reads "Fire Door, Keep Closed"):

I emerged, down a ladder, into a kind of machine shop room, which had another tunnel opening, and a normal-sized exit to the "Tunnel" level hallway that runs underneath the hospital. Lots of opportunities for exploring there for the intrepid.

I totally infiltrated a closed-down, relocating Dick's Lumber.

I totally infiltrated a new condo building.

I climbed 50 - 6 = 44 floors to a couple of firmly locked doors, then rode the elevator down with some of the tenants, feeling a little trespassy.

One evening, I bicycled right into a wide-open condo construction site near the North Arm of the Fraser. There wasn't a soul around. I felt obliged to climb one of the cranes.

I returned the next night, when I wasn't drunk, and established my credentials as a rubbernecking innocent by using my camera and tripod. "Oh, this presentation centre is pretty. I'll photograph it."

Then I entered the site. First I used a portable toilet near the entrance, giving onsite security, if there was any, ample opportunity to shoo me away. No one did, so I grabbed my camera and took another photograph. "Oh, this crane is pretty."

Then I sauntered into the development next door, of which only the foundations have been laid. Picking my way past stacks of rebar and coils of wire, I descended a ramp to the basement. I circled around to the base of the taller of the two cranes, took many deep breaths, and started to climb.

Very slowly. I had to pause at each level to calm down and give myself a pep talk. Also to look around for flashing lights.

At the top, I found the cab locked. Hunched over, clutching the railing, I shuffled halfway out on the machinery arm, placing my steps above the crossbars while refusing to look further down through the catwalk grating under my feet.

I had to sit down to fumble my camera out of my bag and take a couple of shitty, unaimed photos.

Then I climbed down. Very slowly.

Altogether, it took me an hour. The crane was maybe fifteen storeys high (I counted ten sections). I didn't have fun, and I wouldn't do it again. Indeed, far from making me feel proud and powerful, that crane-climb emasculated me.

I was too late for the condo towers at Mrn Gtwy, which are now lived in, but a roundabout passage up from the parkade got me into the stairwell of the still-empty office building recently.

It was a weekend, and no construction workers were on site, but the place was locked up tight as a drum. Only the eleventh floor, a crossover, was open for viewing.

Still, I had fun.

Passing by a large condo development one weekend, I noticed that the security fencing had been taken down on one side. Most of the doors on that side were closed, but there was one open stairwell with nothing but some caution tape and a board in the way. Very inviting.

I knew there was security on site, so I went furtively down the stairs to the lowest parking level, which I hoped would connect me to one of the two towers. On the way down, I had to (quietly) move a couple of sheets of remesh out of the way -- another "Do Not Enter" obstacle.

The first few stairwells I climbed ended at ground level, and I didn't want to emerge if I could help it. Eventually I did find a stairwell that went all the way up the second, incomplete tower. I took a couple of cell-phone photos from the "roof."

Then I went down to about the seventh floor and crossed the bridge connecting the two towers. I could be seen from some spots on the site, but I just had to hope the security guards weren't gazing up in my direction at that moment.

A couple more photos from the top of the completed tower:

It was starting to drizzle. Satisfied, happy, I retraced my steps exactly to my entry point.

The remesh had been replaced!

I could hear voices!

I quietly freed myself, and padded quickly up the stairs, and escaped apparently unseen and unheard.