We study nonlinear pulse propagation in an optical transmission system with dispersion compensation. A chirped nonlinear pulse can propagate in such a system, but eventually id decays into dispersive waves in a way similar to the tunneling effect in quantum mechanics. The pulse consists of a quadratic potential that is due to chirp in addition to the usual self-trapping potential and is responsible for the power enhancement and the decay. (C) 1997 Optical Society of America.