At the beginning of September, when it hadn't rained in awhile, I returned to Renfrew Ravine Park, and, after pausing to take a blurry photo of it, entered this drain:
I'd been here
before (in sandals!), and had got as far as the junction room. Today I was wearing rubber boots, and meant to go farther. I hoped, in fact, to get at least to the "1950mm-diameter brick-floor pipe," which, according to the beautiful hand-drawn map that I'd found and photographed (as mentioned in the aforelinked post), lay somewhere beyond a "slide" in the "Collingwood Trunk".
I am not going to post that map here (I somehow feel that it's not mine to share), but here are a couple of others of Still Creek and its underground sections. The first I found online (left is north):
The second I found in the neighborhood that same day, after emerging from the drain:
Beside this map is the following text:
Vancouver's Still Creek Watershed Streams of Dreams Murals
"Still a Creek Under the Street"
Today, Still Creek is channeled through a pipe underground for two kilometers beginning at its headwaters near Central Park in Burnaby and finally making its first appearance near the 29th Avenue Skytrain station beside Renfrew ravine. It then passes through a culvert under 22nd Avenue and emerges again beside Renfrew Park Community Centre where it is contained by stonework retaining walls. Still Creek continues eastward, partially hidden in culverts, to Burnaby. There it flows above ground until it empties into Burnaby Lake. The lake drains into the Brunette River, which feeds into the Fraser River which flows out into the Georgia Straight. Still Creek drains about 2,400 acres of East Vancouver and much of the western portion of Burnaby between Kingsway and Hastings Street.
Nearly 2000 Dreamfish on four Still Creek Stream of Dreams Murals remind us that rain falling into the Still Creek watershed flows to the greatest salmon river in the world—the Fraser River. Children from Norquay, Nootka, Renfrew, and Thunderbird Elementary Schools painted the Dreamfish for Still Creek and share a vision of hope for this partially lost waterway.
Inside, it was slow going. The drain is indeed a pipe, and the rounded bottom was slippery with scum (I occasionally saw a tatter of toilet paper float by). I could shuffle carefully forward with my feet in the stream, which sometimes splashed up onto my legs; or else, straddling the stream and its scum, I could waddle awkwardly forward in short, knock-kneed strides—either way, I had to run my hands along the walls, to catch myself if I slipped, as I often did. I was also hunched over, to keep from hitting my head on the top of the tube (though I was wearing my bicycle helmet), and very soon my neck and shoulders were sore, and I was sprinkled with slimy creekwater and dripping with sweat.
I paused at the junction room, then continued down the left fork.
Occasionally I would pass a little chimney-like alcove with stepirons leading up to a manhole cover. In one of these, my flashlight lit up a petrified spider, floating, it seemed, in mid-air, as white as chalk, and bulbous at its joints, as if the mineral dampness were somehow turning it to coral.
Once, I turned off my flashlight and in perfect darkness listened to the many-voiced water rumble.
As I proceeded, the rumble got louder, till I rounded a curve and came to the slide.
It was two or three meters long, and rose at a grade of about twenty percent. Set into the left wall was a handrail, though it was so rusty that sections of it had completely corroded away. As I stood there considering my approach, my boots sent water splashing in every direction. At last, I looped my flashlight onto my belt and stowed my phone in my backpack; then, with both hands on the rail, and planting my feet as high up either side of the pipe as I could reach, I started heaving myself up sideways. I slipped once, but didn't fall. I made it to the top, if barely.
The rest of the story is anticlimax. I found the brick-floor pipe, and shuffle-trudged along it for awhile, happy to be able to stand upright, but aware that each step forward was another I'd have to take back. I went round a curve, to see if anything lay beyond it, then one more, and when nothing did, I started back.
Crouched, arms out for balance, I slid on my heels down the slide.
I sang a few notes, revelling in the reverberations.
As I neared the outfall, I turned off my flashlight and proceeded for awhile by feel. Eventually, I saw glimmers of reflected light.
When I reemerged into daylight and fresh air, I was exhausted, grimy, and wet with sweat, but exhilarated. I had been underground for an hour and five minutes.
