Most students walk across campus without paying any mind to what lies below their feet. To them, it's just cement, grass and dirt. The truth, however, is known by some adventurous souls.

Rumors surface every once in a while about a labyrinth of tunnels, far below campus, spanning its entirety.

Some of the rumors claim the tunnels are remnants of the system of bomb shelters left over from the Cold War, and one even claims that a portion of the tunnels were designed so important figures of the school's administration could escape safely during violent protests.

The truth, it seems, is a little more mundane.

The mysterious tunnels play a purely utilitarian purpose: They transport steam and electricity, and allow technicians to service the pipes around campus, said Mark Kirschenbaum, assistant director of the UW power plant.

The tunnels are still a draw to the more courageous of students, however, so there are numerous accounts of endeavors into the underground by the few intrepid souls who dare to make the trip.

Sophomore Sergey Karayev's story:

There is a grate in the botanical gardens by Bagley. It's covered, so you wouldn't see it unless you knew what you were looking for. I don't know if somebody cut it before us or they just keep them unlocked, but there was no lock on it.

As soon as you're in the tunnels, you're standing on this kind of wire-mesh platform. From there, to the right a ladder goes down. The whole tunnel system works on this descending platform system; some of the levels extend into what seems like endless tunnels and some only go a few dozen feet. I've only seen three of the levels, but I know that there are more.

After we were in we just kind of started walking. We didn't really have any destination in mind. After we had been walking for what seemed like only a few minutes, we saw a sign that said "Hec Ed Building." We were all really surprised that we had already walked that far.

Further along we saw another sign that said "Nuclear Reactor Maintenance." It was kind of weird — I had completely forgotten that this school had a nuclear reactor.

Eventually, we got really lost. We came to this really strange room with a pretty high ceiling, and weird holes all over the place. There was an exit in the ceiling but we couldn't reach it.

This is where it got really creepy. We found one of those yellow rubber gloves that workers wear sometimes covered in blood. I thought that maybe a worker was doing something, cut himself and then just left the bloodied glove. Whatever happened, it really scared us and also reminded us that workers sometimes came down into the tunnels.

A little later we heard some voices a way off, and I don't know if our imaginations were playing tricks on us because of the glove or if there really were people down there, but we just started running away blindly. As we tried to escape we started running through a downward sloping tunnel that just kept going down and down for what seemed like forever.

It's kind of crazy how fast the temperature drops as you go further underground. Nearer to the surface it was really warm, even hot, but down that sloping tunnel it got cold.

Finally we came to another chamber; this one was a little bigger than most. Here we saw a sign that said "Cancer Primate Bldg." — that's right, like tumor monkey. It was bizarre.

Past this the tunnels start getting really well lit and bigger, like 20 feet high and 10 feet wide. We were near the medical school. Finally, we found an exit we could get through, straight into the School of Dentistry.

Sophomore Abigail Kroon's Story:

I went last year when I was a freshman. I found out how to get in through a friend who had done it before. He showed me how to get in near Red Square, and the grate to the entrance wasn't locked so we had no problem opening it.

Once we got in, I was really scared the entire time. It was just dark, hot, uncomfortable and dirty. I knew that I probably shouldn't have been in there because it was against the law.

There were also a lot of weird noises — noises that probably wouldn't have scared me so much if I could see what was around me. All I really saw was a lot of wires and bare, concrete walls.

I don't regret going in at all. I feel like exploring is just one of those things that people should do. I was told by older people that it's something you've got to do if you go to a university. I'd hate not to have it on my docket of things I did when I was at the University of Washington.

Sophomore Kenneth Poitras' story:

We actually managed to get a map of the tunnels with symbols on it showing us where the entrances were. So we waited until late at night and went down to an entrance near the UW Medical School bus stop.

Surprisingly, there wasn't a lock on the entrance grate back when I did it, so we could just walk right in.

The tunnels were unreal. It was completely pitch black; we couldn't see anything. We kind of just felt our way along the walls. Steam was pouring out of the pipes that almost surrounded us in there, and it was really hot. There was also a lot of standing water on the ground, probably from the steam.

Once we were a little more accustomed to the dark, we kind of just walked around exploring. We thought we got lost a couple of times because there are so many different paths branching off into different directions.

I've heard that the tunnels span the whole campus, and according to the map, they do, but we didn't go all over. We just kind of chilled in a place where we could find our way back.

After a while we started to run around in the tunnels and play games and stuff. We played a lot tricks trying to freak each other out as much as we could.

There were a few other exits that we came across that we tried to get out of, but they were all locked. We ended up having to leave out of the same place we came in.

A warning to other potential adventurers:

Breaking and entering into the tunnels is considered a first-degree criminal trespass. First-degree criminal trespass carries a maximum sentence of one year in jail or a $5,000 fine. Getting caught in the tunnels can carry a hefty price tag.

Assistant Police Chief Ray Wittmier also warns against wandering through the tunnels for safety reasons.

"Some of the cable trays down there have hundreds of thousands of volts of electricity flowing through them," he said. "It all seems like fun until somebody touches the wrong spot. Even experienced maintenance workers have been hurt, so it's not something that we want to encourage."

Reach reporter Camden Swita at camdenswita@thedaily.washington.edu.