Another crappy vid

I didn't think it looked too bad. Once you've got the confidence in
your ability to physically climb it then there's no difference between
climbing that and climbing 50' because if you fall from either height
you're dead.

I've done just over 500' lightweight caving ladders and didn't worry
about a lifeline because we didn't have one long enough and we
couldn't be arsed knotting two or three shorter ones together. Those
things used to twist and flap about all over the place but once you'd
got the technique sorted they were actually quite easy to climb and as
long as you didn't lean out from the ladder there was no real weight
on your arms.

The biggest bastard of them all is when you clip into a rope with
about 150' above you to the attachment point and then step off
whichever ledge you're on without thinking about the 10% stretch in
the rope. That 15' fall before the stretch is taken up seems a long
way and your first thought is that the fucker has ripped out.

 

Using the patented Mavis Beacon "Hunt&Peck" Technique, ogden

****.

That.

 

There's not really very much to catch the wind and make it way is
there?

I wouldn't want to be near it if it got some seriously icy rain or a
snow storm hit it because it'd build up on one side and then it'd
start wobbling if the wind got hold.

 

Using the patented Mavis Beacon "Hunt&Peck" Technique, Andy Bonwick

There fucking is! You'd get *much* longer to think about it all on the
way down.

 

All the money in the world wouldn't get me up there. Even the promise
of a bj from Natalie Imbruglia wouldn't get me up there.

 

I thought he'd only ever got halfway up a telegraph pole?

 

That's worse than the old footage of Dibnah doing his stuff. At least
this bloke's not lashing his own ladders as he goes.

 

Don't you use static ropes in caves? 10% would be quite a lot for a
climbing rope, depending how much you weigh.

 

The BT tower has a good wobble too. I was working there the day after
my brother's stag do, it was a while before I realised it wasn't
totally due to my excesses from the previous night

 

My granddad used to be the deputy manager of a cotton mill (Holdsorth and
Gibbs) in Lancashire when I were a sprog and he asked me if I wanted to
climb the chimney when the thing was next due a cleaning. I've no idea how
high it was and I can't ask Fred Dibnah who dropped it years later, nor me
grand dad coz he's dead but it was an experience I wasn't and still aren't
in a hurry to do over.

The higher you climb, the more it feels like the ladder is leaning backwards
trying to tip you off and it was the fucking scariest thing I've ever done.
Come to think about it, it still is. No cage around the ladder either an
definitely no safety line, but I had granddad right behind (underneath?) me.

As for the bloke in the vid, well he's obviously just a total nutter,
although it'd be a pretty good jump off point for and aspiring base jumper.

 

Half the time (or more), he wasn't tied in though.

 

It's also like sliding your hand up a tarts skirt for the first time. It's a
lot further to the prize than can be imagined.

 

That makes me feel decidedly ill.

Ironically I can look down from the Empire State Building observation
level with no great problem - note not the very top bit where there is a
radio mast.

There was a splendid programme on BBC4 [1] on Tuesday night which showed
30 mins of historical footage of Newcastle upon Tyne. In that they
showed the men building the Tyne Bridge. How the hell they walked along
narrow metal beams with no H&S equipment at all I do not know. I
struggle to walk across the bridge on the pavement!

[1] there were actually several good programmes about Newcastle over the
one evening.

 

For SRT we used to use static which 'd have about 3% stretch but you
can't use that on ladders because if you fall on static it hurts a lot
and the anchors tend to rip out. 'Lifeline' type rope for ladders
would be max 10% (this is from memory so +/- a small bit) but you'd
not expect to fall far if the guy on the line knew what he was doing.

The time when I found out how much stretch there is in dynamic rope
we'd been arsing about on a ledge with the ladder a bit of a swing
away from where I was standing and I tied into the rope then took a
jump for the ladder. I missed and went into free fall then bounced a
few times before I grabbed the ladder and climbed up. The sensible way
to do it would have been to have left a tether on the ladder holding
it where it could be reached easily but that would have required a
degree of common sense and I was cold & tired so couldn't be arsed.

 

Wasn't that what happened to the Emley Moor mast?

 

I honestly don't know but I've been on a site where the whole place
was evacuated after a flare stack suffered icing then started to
misbehave and that was only about 150' tall.

I got conned into cutting the tip off a much bigger flare stack in
Kazakstan and when we were stood on the platform at the top doing the
cut the cables supporting the tip were shrouded in ice. When we cut it
the fucker shot several feet up in the air, the ice popped off the
wires and it came back down with a big bang. Laugh? I nearly pissed
myself.

 

Well, the answer for that is that you're just as dead falling from
1700ft as 50ft, you just have more fun on the way down.

 

"This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by
TheOnLineEngineer.org."

 

Yeah - did anybody download it ?

 

I'd be up there like a shot, if a bj from Natalie was on the cards. I'd do it
without a cord, there and back inside of half an hour.