Members: ToXiC & Brute
Pictures by: Brute

It just happened to be one of those days where It wasnt too bad outside in the middle of a freeze week in Minnesota's January being about 5 degrees outside and sunny instead of being -15 the previous day. We decided to take advantage of the "good" weather and go check out Island Station before it got to late.

(Left: Exterior shot of the Island Station)

(Right: ToXiC swinging on a 50 ton hook)

We had been there a month before checking out a new site and stumbled across the Island Station, the front door had been open so we hadnt really anticipated any new problems, of course we were wrong, the front door had been resecured. So i had to perform a fun little stunt to get into the inside and my hands were numb by the time i was done performing this stunt. Finally getting inside i was able to open the front door for Brute, we're in!

Once in we saw a couple hooks and we swung on them for awhile. It was an interesting experience swinging on a hook capable of holding up to 50 tons. We then decided to work our way from the top of the Island Station to the Bottom. There was alot of wind that day so when things started moving and making noise it didnt surprise us when a door slammed real hard and scared the shit out of us, not to mention Brute stepped on some ice and broke so loud you'd have thought that a 5'x5' piece of glass had fallen 10 stories above you and broke right next to you.

(Left: Interior Pic)

(Right: Interior Pic)

Once at the top and working out way down there wasnt much of interest to report at the top besides being able to take an incredible shot of the Schmidt Brewery. We had found evidence of Copper Thieves being around including a crude work station for them. It however appeared to have been abandoned for some time. We got to the other side of the top floors since the crane room separated the buildings interior. The other side was probably more interesting in the sense that you would have to balance on rusty beams in quite a few areas to be able to get to certain parts of the building. However this was very quickly fixed with the finding of a complete set of concrete stairs which was much more preferable.

(Left: Rusting beams, had to walk across a couple, SCARY!)

(Right: Brute analyzing a scrappers work desk)

There are quite a few questions I want to know about the buildings history and purpose that i cant seem to figure out yet from what I know of it but im sure that wont take me long to figure out. Finally, hitting the basement of the building we found what I had heard was down there, a dead body! It probably would have scared the shit out of me if I had not known it was down there. For those of you wondering what the hell it is, its merely a formed body full of what Im guessing is ground up tire chunks.

(Left: Brute, this is why we call him that, see how Shrek looking he is?)

(Right: Dead body!)

After exploring the building thoroughly we decided to call it a day being satisfied with our exploration instinct for the day. We were also happy that we found the fake dead body and took a great picture of Schmidt's.