Ogilvie Flour Mill

The imposing, 11 storey tower dominates the street with its torn and burnt face. Even the powerplant's stack seems dwarfed by the building towering behind it.
After jumping the fence, I walked in one of the open doors on the ground floor. Inside, the two-storey room contained some large pipes and large concrete pillars, with graffiti on almost every surface. The floor was covered with old grain mulch, rubble, and debris. A couple staircases led down into a dark, flooded basement that I didn't explore. Climbing upward was the main attractiong, so I looked for a way up. The wooden staircase was now completely gone, and Lone Ranger had advised me the only way to get up to the higher levels was to climb the the rails of the old Belt-O-Vator. Essentially a single person lift, my understanding is that one would embark onto a step connected to a belt, which would then take you up on one side, down on the other. Now, fire had removed all but the metal rails, so I was forced to climb these. The rails went from the ground to the top floor, passing through holes in the floor (where there was a floor left!). The higher I climbed, the scarier it got. It was a straight drop underneath, and on some of the levels that were fire-damaged, the wooden floors were burnt away completely.
I climbed straight up to the sixth, because the lower floors were covered with debris that had fallen from above, and didn't look interesting. The view from here was okay, but I knew I had to go higher and see the top of the silos. Leaving my backpack on some solid flooring, I carried only my camera as I climbed the tracks to the seventh storey.
Here, most of the landing had been burnt away, forcing me to cross a 9" wide concrete beam to reach what was left of the floor. An open door lead into a huge room with a concrete floor, over the back of the building. This was a distributor room of some sort, and was filled with large metal pipes that went into holes in the floor, interspersed with numbered metal trapdoors. I ventured into the room overtop of the silos, which bore the remains of a conveyor belt. The belt itself was gone, but the rollers and distributor-machine remained. I stepped mindfully around the metal trap doors in the floor- some of which were open. Apparently, these "inspection hatches" led directly into the seven storey silos below- not a fun trip to take.
At the end of the conveyor room, I went through a door into the skyway that joined the main silos with some adjacent ones. The corridor was mostly occupied by conveyor rollers, and had a noticeable slant to it. At the top, I went down some stairs into another distributor room. I noticed the trapdoors here were covered grates. Most of the windows were smashed out, and there was a pretty good view in all directions. A doorway tagged with "Door to Hell" led to a rickety fire escape that ended couple stories above ground- not that I would even attempt to climb it.
After going back into the main tower, I took some photos and spent time looking both up and down inside the building. The lack of floors between the exposed beams and pillars was pretty frightening, even from seven stories up. I went back to the Belt-O-Vator rails and stared upward at the climb I faced. From the 7th until the 11th storey, there were practically no floors left. The tracks, bent into a wavy shape (from the heat of the fire?) were completely exposed. Below was a seven-storey fall. I froze up, and sat for some time, looking up, then looking down, then out at the exposed building skeleton. I was caught- my fear of exposed heights and sense of self-preservation battled with my desire to climb higher and continue exploring. Time passed, as I sat on a concrete beam, gripping the rails, debating my next action, feeling the wind whip through the building.
Somehow, I managed to put fear aside, and I climbed to the eighth storey. I went directly across a beam into the safer back of the building, which had concrete floors. Here, most of the room was taken up by a huge metal tank, but I was more excited by the sight of another Belt-O-Vator! This one only went from the 7th to the 11th floor, and the landings were all concrete- plus, the tracks weren't warped. Somehow I'd missed finding this on the crowded seventh floor, but I was more than happy to use it to get to the remaining levels. I quickly ascended and briefly explored the other levels. These had a few odd pieces of machinery here and there, but I was more interested in getting to the top.
The 11th storey was the best, beacuse even the floor at the front of the building was concrete, and there was an excellent view in all directions. A couple holes in the floor allowed me to look down into the building's skeleton, and see the debris sitting on floors far below. I was excited when I found a ladder leading up to a roof hatch, and happy to see the roof still looked solid. The view was excellent from the roof, and luckily it hadn't started raining yet. There was a big tank up here, and also an old air-raid siren. After getting some photos, I went back inside and prepared myself for the climb back down.
Going down the tracks was slightly more difficult than climbing up, but it didn't take too long to get down. Switching from the "safe" Belt-O-Vator to the dodgy one on the seventh floor, I went down to the sixth and stopped to grab my backpack. After one final look inside the building's skeleton, I climbed down the remaining levels. By the time I reached the ground, the rain had started. As it drizzled down, I jumped the fence and left the site.