<p>Anyone know any awesome secrets about UCSC? Come on you can trust me, I won't let anyone else see this thread. Promise I won't tell it's between you and me, plus it's safe on the internet.</p>
<p>Question: has anyone climbed tree 9?</p>
<p>I have heard that it is sort of a rite of passage for all UCSC students to climb Tree 9. I plan to :). And yeah, I want to know if anyone has climbed it as well!</p>
<p>Hey I head theres a morgue with dead bodies near college nine for the anthropology major. True or false?</p>
<p>hahahaa ^ that’d be so cool!</p>
<p>eeeeeeeeee i don’t know if i want to go anywhere near a morgue. but i want to climb tree 9 so bad!</p>
<p>Little known fact: Colleges 9 and 10 were built over what was once called Elfland. It was a collection of student-built huts and other structures that was known as a kind of “zen” place to hang out. </p>
<p>There’s actually a really nice collection of similar facts here: [UCSC</a> Myth Breaker](<a href=“http://ucscmyths.blogspot.com/]UCSC”>http://ucscmyths.blogspot.com/)</p>
<p>no morgue. someone’s trying to creep you out.</p>
<p>The Porter caves are awesome though. Just don’t go during the rainy season.</p>
<p>There’s a morgue on science hill.</p>
<p>I climbed tree 9, it was awesome! :)</p>
<p>There’s no morgue on campus, but the anthro department does have 3-4 human cadavers year round for the anatomy class, as well as an extensive human and animal osteology (bone) collection. Dr. Galloway also has a lab in SS1 and as she is the Santa Cruz area forensic anthropologist, she does get human remains from crimes occasionally. So yes, there are dead people on campus. They are not accessible to most students, but you can volunteer in the physical anthro labs.</p>
<p>The Porter caves are awesome, don’t go in rainy season and I recommend walking west-ish from the Porter Meadow and going to the Hellhole as well. Just don’t get stuck or lost in it.</p>
<p>Up past Crown/Merrill there is another totem pole and a cat graveyard (take the path behind the gate near the path to 9/10) and a lime kiln and koi pond called the Box Spring (the path behind the east end of the Crown/Merill apartments). There are a lot of paths and hiking trails in Pogonip (the state park that borders the Upper Campus) that are accessible from 9/10 and Crown/Merrill.</p>
<p>Wow, I live in Crown and I’ve explored the upper trails, but I’ve never found that stuff. I’ll have to go looking soon before it rains again…</p>
<p>@Liesel If you want the lime kiln you take the path behind the Apt 13 building, walk until it ends (quite a ways down hill), turn right walk another 5ish minutes, then take the right fork at the little meadow. It’ll go uphill and become kinda gravely. The lime kiln looks like a stone house on the right and you can climb up on top of it and tell ghost stories at midnight (my friends and I had our own Are You Afraid of the Dark Midnight Society) or dare people to go inside it (it’s not that scary). If you continue on the path a bit you’ll hear water off to your left. Walk off the path and there’s a beautiful manmade square pond. If you keep going on the path eventually you’ll emerge on High St/McLaughlin behind the East Field. I wish I remembered the name of the trail, but I don’t. The kiln is a remnant from when the campus was a working quarry and ranch owned by the Cowell family. They burned the rocks they quarried there to extract the lime. The Box Spring was a student project, I think. </p>
<p>A few yards from the lime kiln there’s a little clearing surrounded by rock cliffs. Someone goes there and practices rock balancing (there’s all these beautiful little rock columns) and there’s a USGS seismograph array cylinder embedded in the ground (I discovered it by falling over it). It’s pretty cool. </p>
<p>For the totem pole/cat graveyard take the path at the end of Chinquapin road, there’s that cattle gate at the end of the parking lot above the firehouse. Walk up a ways and you should see a path off to the right, the totem pole isn’t far off the main path, the graveyard is in a little hollow right below it. There used to be a tire swing up there too, but the last time I went all that was left was the rope. Someone was building a fort of fallen branches too, dunno how that turned out or if it’s still there.</p>
<p>The Box Spring is also from when the campus was a lime quarry. They used it to get water to the horses.</p>
<p>Also, the lime kiln has metal grates over the openings now :(</p>
<p>^Oh, that’s sad. =( They’re probably worried about someone injuring themself, but it still sucks. That was always the best part about showing it to someone new: daring them to go inside.</p>
<p>Didn’t know the Box Spring is that old, cool. Someone still goes and stocks it with fish food for the fish. I thought it was the prettiest pond on campus, with the little water fall and the pretty fish.</p>
<p>Yeah I guess it’s for safety but it was way cooler before!</p>
<p>And it definitely is a very pretty pond.</p>
<p>so long as one or more of these conditions apply:
1- there are branches within reach somehow or the bark is thick enough, sturdy enough, and with enough gaps between segments I can use my bare hands
2- someone provides tree spikes
3- I’m healthy enough when I arrive to follow up.</p>
<p>I was reading that they chopped down the bottom branches of tree 9 so no one could climb it.</p>
<p>Porter Cave is totally legit. Go for it in the fall or end of spring, once the floor has dried.</p>
<p>It’s hardly a secret, but there’s a cool little ‘cathedral’ kind of inbetween College 9/10 and Crown/Merrill. theres a deep forested area inbetween the two colleges that’s relatively narrow. There’s a path down there, and you can follow it a ways up behind the Social Science building. The Cathedral isn’t hard to spot; it’s just a bunch of branches interlocking between a circle of trees. You can go inside and people clearly hang out there. There are candles and tons of writing/grafitti. Never been at night, but it’s probably super cool. Not your average UC attraction.</p>
<p>A little further up is a meadow, that’s probably typically called the 9/10 meadow or something like that. It’s still close to the college, but secluded enough so that it doesn’t seem like you’re really by civilization.</p>
<p>Tree nine is a little further up (can’t remember the directions), but it has been seriously trimmed back (so I’ve heard), so I don’t think you can climb it anymore. It was pretty sketch to begin with, but plenty of people have climbed it. You probably can’t now.</p>
<p>Also around that vicinity is the Wishing Tree (there might be another name for it, can’t remember). Sorry, no directions; it’s been years. It’s nothing spectacular and really just a big bush that people attach little pieces of paper to that they’ve written really personal things on. I’ve found some to actually really be pretty emotional… still worth seeing if you’re there.</p>
<p>For the mountain bikers, there are some world class trails in upper campus. They’ve got some big jumps and the wood scaffolding or whatever that stuff is called. You’re not allowed to do that stuff, butttttttt there aren’t too many sheriffs around to stop you.</p>
<p>At the base of campus there’s a cemetery; it’s probably not UC property and wil likely be fenced, but its adjacent and easily accessed on high street by the entrance. Never been, but that’d be a cool thing to check out on a full moon.</p>