hex's experience @ Feltex
Brutal Penetration at Feltex
Alright, this lengthy write-up has been long overdue! Just like many other UrbExers in Christchurch, the Feltex factory caught our wandering eyes, and so our two-man crew decided to check it out.
Now, this was not our first time exploring places like this, but we’d recently discovered SlackNinja and decided to take it a bit more seriously this time. This experience actually took place over the course of a month or so, with us going most Friday nights.
Each time we parked our car on the Brodie St, and did a couple of walkarounds first to check for security. The first night didn’t last long as three or four other people pulled up in a car, parked on Brodie, got torches and ropes out of their boot and dashed onto the property. We stalked after them across the pavement outside the large packing shed on the North-West side of the property and watched them work away on the windows of the rooms that appeared to be the kitchens. We lay low watching for a good 20 minutes until they got inside, then decided to hang back and wait until they came back out, realizing that there’s no point going in while they are, especially as we had no idea who they were and didn’t want to spook a bunch of explorers in a dark building in the middle of the night while we were outnumbered!
We backed off and decided to wait in the bushes along the edge of Athol Terrace. After a while we started hearing noises in our vicinity, then realized that we were only sure that 2 of them had entered the building! So we started to make our way back into the carpark area on the North side, knowing we’d be safer in the open. Just as we were arriving we both heard definite footsteps and saw a distinct human form in the bushes following us.
Needless to say we shat our pants and beat a hasty retreat out of there and nursed our bruised egos by telling ourselves that we were outnumbered and besides, we had some good intel for our next attempt.
Second time; we took two of our buddies along with us, and this time opted to take a rooftop route, realizing that we already knew that there was an entrance along the North face of the factory and we wanted to find our own. By climbing a tree along Brodie St, we made it onto the roof of the packing shed and made our way East carefully along the asbestos roofing towards the water tower and courtyard. We poked around up there a while finding a broken window that we could use to climb down into the shed if we wanted, but a quick wave around with the torch showed that there was nothing of interest in there and besides, it wasn’t the main part of the factory anyway. Moving further, and just as we were about to make our descent into the courtyard, a damn dirty security guard pulls up, clicks on his torch and starts skimming over the rooftops! On our stomachs, we watched as he entered via the front door, then followed the glow of his torch around back to the courtyard we he exited, looking the gate behind him (the one next to the water tower). It started to rain just as he drove off, and our +2’s were starting to moan, so we retreated from Feltex and headed off to our next target (but that literally is another story).
Our additional 2 man crew came back the next weekend with a new plan; a winning one, I might add. This time we climbed up onto the roof of the main building via some trees along the side of Peer St, and on top we found a rather rickety wooden ladder. We continued West back towards the courtyard, and when there we tried some climbing down into it via some pipes and metal bars extending towards the water tower (FWI, at this point we were directly above the kitchens were our friends from our first night entered). After climbing a fair way out towards the tower (from which we could be able to climb down into the courtyard from) we came to some wires that looked a bit too live to mess with. Returning to the roof, we changed tack onto Plan B (which was probably Plan F altogether) and advanced onto the alleyway which runs the length of the South side of the factory between Peer and Brodie Streets. This alleyway is guarded by razor wire at both ends, so an aerial insertion is the only option. The silos leading down to the alleyway were excessively rusty and unstable, so we instead trekked back to the ladder, and begun a long and hard slog back to the alleyway (the entire length of the building carrying a ladder on a sloping path maybe 20cm wide is not easy). We used the ladder to climb into the alleyway, then brought the ladder down with us.
In the alleyway, we slid a roller door open to reveal a large hole in the wall of the factory, maybe 3m up. Lucky we had our ladder! We set it up, climbed in and congratulated ourselves on finding a successful point of entry. However, we knew we needed to find another entry as leaving a ladder sticking out of the building would incur the wrath of security, so we followed the walls around the entire building trying every door and window. Being night-time, there wasn’t much to see or many photo ops, so we resolved to come back one last time in the daytime to actually explore. We couldn’t believe how large the rooms were, and how easy it was to get lost! We found a few windows and doors that had been jimmied open, which we presume to be the entry points of you other Christchurch bastards, but we eventually came across our holy grail, a door we managed to unlock that led straight back into our alleyway! We exited and left a stool leaning against it so it would appear closed, and made our way home for a much deserved rest. The beauty of this new opening was that we had a means of getting into the factory within mere seconds, and we now had two escape routes on both sides of the factory, which would be great if we ever have company while inside. We need only come back once more for photos and sightseeing!
Next weekend, we came back early morning (it was just light outside), hopped into the alleyway and entered via our door. Being light and we had many exits planned out, we felt like Kings of Feltex. We roamed around taking crappy-quality pictures (with a video camera which we screen-shotted; apologies, we have a new camera now, so our next photos will be better). We had a blast climbing things, finding signs of other UrbExers and generally exploring. It was awesome to have finally conquered Feltex, after being in and on it so many times.
This was the first time we had been to Feltex without incident, and we’ve decided to move onto other exploits.
EDIT : driving past today, we noticed that the demolition is now underway, they’ve started on the South side and are going strong; it’ll be gone in a month. And the Tiptop factory was in the news for burning down last night, and that happened to be our next target. I blame karma…
Random Photo
Uploaded by trioxide
Sounds like you fullas had a few more exciting experiences than me. Most interesting thing that happened for us was doing the bolt out your “private” entrance when a police car pulled into the carpark. Probably our fault for getting too noisey. The first couple nights we hit the place the first thing we did is get our hands on various bits of wood and metal to use as weapons in case we met any dodgy bastards like the four you saw, never did though. Shame the place is being gutted.
hex(4 months ago)Agreed. If anyone’s going back into Feltex, we hid some metal bars in the bushes by the speed-bump on Brodie St
quality write-up. i think that a good, detailed account of what you did is often as interesting as the photos.
hex(4 months ago)Cheers. Expect more!
:D