The Land of Ice and Snow

Last fall, I was trading stories with a photographer I met in another abandoned asylum. With two state schools under my belt, he suggested a third. “I’m done for the year,” I told him. “Maybe I’ll go in the spring.” He said “If you wanna go, you better do it soon.”

One week later, this place was slated for demolition.

Abatement began in January and then ceased (I’m assuming?) when a winter straight out of Hell’s 9th Circle descended upon the Northeast. I have no idea when they’ll finish cleanup and start tearing buildings down. A decent day appeared on the forecast, and I decided screw it. How bad could a winter explore possibly be.

Spoiler alert; it was bad!

The first stop was the iconic theater. It became evident immediately that no one was plowing the property roads, and there was way more snow than I anticipated (a local weather site reported 10″ – try, oh, three feet?). Whatever, I’d deal. At least it meant it was impossible for patrols to cruise through.

This is the most frequently visited building on site, and the scumbags have done a number on it as they always do. There was a worn set of tracks leading inside. The collapsing roof and unobstructed windows here let light flood the room, good for photography. All the other buildings on property are very dark.

Spots that weren’t covered in snow revealed at least an inch of built up ice on the floor. This became a reoccurring problem even in the boarded-up buildings where water still got inside. It was like walking across an ice skating rink. You could literally see things suspended in the layers under your feet.

There was so much snow in here. God only knows what was hidden under some of the bigger drifts. Snow also hid weak spots in the floor, which wasn’t fun.

Huge drifts filled all of the side rooms, snow accumulating through a disintegrating roof.

The paint decay on these doors is fantastic.

The rooms that had no snow inside were still covered in ice. Matt and I each fell at least a dozen times.

Stairs posed their own challenges. It was like climbing a slide.

Armed with a tactical light, we moved into the basement. While the stairs weren’t snowy, they were coated in ice. Again. Cool.

Then, we stumbled into a hallway that looked waaaay down over a sunken gym. Mesh caging separated us from the ledge. This was one of those things that I’m sure looked harmless in its prime. Now? Horrifying. Like being present in someone’s fever dream nightmare. Pitch black, vast, echo-y, disorienting, shadows skittering in the flashlight beam…it was amazing down here. We were like kids in a candy store.

We found a way down another flight of stairs to the gym floor, where an exercise bike had been abandoned beneath one of the basketball hoops. If you’re quiet down here, you can almost hear the building “breathing” around you. Just surreal.

Here’s where things started being less fun. I didn’t go all that way to see the theater and nothing else, but it was the only building with a clear path. Everything else was surrounded by driven snow; obviously no one else had done any exploring there in a while. I took one step off the beaten path and sank up to my thigh. We made the trek anyways, taking ten times longer than it should have. By the time we reached the next building, we were exhausted, out of breath, and numb from the knees down.

I was changing lenses by the light of the broken window when I noticed Matt patting his jacket in a panic.

“…Do you have the flashlight?”

I did not. He told me to stay and shoot while he backtracked to see where it dropped. I did for a few minutes, wiping out twice on black ice, and realized I could go no farther in the dark. There wasn’t much in there that interested me, so I packed up and went to meet Matt. We had dropped the flashlight in the snow all the way back at the theater.

I realized then I wasn’t gonna get into many other buildings. The entire north end of the property was a total loss, there was just too much snow. Navigating it wasted unbelievable time. These buildings, all no more than a few dozen yards from each other, felt like they were miles apart. It was getting late, and I had to make a choice, so. On to the infirmaries.

These last buildings were almost completely boarded save for their entry points, so we took advantage of light leaks where we could. I also noticed they were incredibly clean, a total departure from the razed theater. In here, we found rooms similar to other state schools we’ve explored.

This was our last building. I was so out of breath from trudging through thigh-high snow, my lungs ached.

By this point, we were both exhausted, sore, and that awful combination of freezing while sweating through our layers. It was actually a beautiful winter day outside, sunny and in the low 40s. But these buildings were like freezers, trapping the ice and frigid air inside.

I’m still happy with the images I got, and glad I went. I probably could have gotten away with waiting a bit longer, but whatever. Oh well.

I won’t be doing another one of these until the weather subsides. This winter is just TOO terrible. I’ll be back at it late March, early April at the soonest. I need to take some time to move into the new house, and then I want to try and fit in one or two more before my crazy busy wedding season starts in May. See ya soon.