— dream is to travel around the world (@MM__88__05__MM) May 19, 2023
33 Comments on Afraid of Heights?
It’s all fun and games until someone bounces out of the net.
16
I’m putting in a new garage door opener while using a 5′ step ladder and also the dump bed of my ATV…..I don’t like it…It’s too high….
12
Used to rock climb. So, yes.
5
Dang. What’s with that hand and the nets?
That would make a primo hang gliding launch.
5
That’s not high. I recall Ian, my son, saying to his mother, “Dad is not afraid of heights”. Well, I beg to differ. It was my job and I had to do it.
My brother came to me saying climbing on hooks was a big bag of bullshit. I agreed. But you can’t pass Plant School without going to 18 feet and doing four-eight-fours. I sucked at it and had bleeding shins just like everybody else. Just focus on every move you make. I could never climb like an instructor. I got him through it. They don’t even assign you climbers in DC. You will never have to use them again if you don’t want to. Just get through this.
7
@Erik — What’s a “four-eight-four” if it’s not a steam locomotive? And somehow I’m pretty sure from context you’re not talking about the railroad.
7
Still not doing it.
6
“I’m putting in a new garage door opener while using a 5′ step ladder and also the dump bed of my ATV…..I don’t like it…It’s too high…”
Right there with you. I used basically the same method last week end to reach some branches in a tree that border my driveway. I’m still trying to pry the underwear from that day out of my butt.
9
HAA! Not a locomotive. It is a method of getting around to the “back” of a pole. The low side. You climb the high side. And then transition from the high side to where you need to work. The first four is going up again, the eight is slewing around with the belt, and the last four is setting up on the work position.
6
Occupations that require extreme heights are populated with White guys.
Some hispanics/Latin motherfuckers, but very rarely black dudes.
Women? Forget it.
Black dudes fear height & water depths.
Sure, THEY built this country… LOL!
11
Eric: With chicken feet or without?
3
You can’t slew without falling. The concept it to climb above the work position, slew whilst falling, and climb back.
5
right hand goes up… right foot goes up. left hand goes down, left foot goes down. That is how you climb the Bell method.
The marionette.
6
My stepfather was a linesman for a small independent phone company back in the 60s. I saw him go up a pole once; it’s like he gathered himself, and then in a blur of motion with the spurs and belt he just shot up the pole. He was a tough little guy, a Marine that fought the Japs in WWII.
11
Nun ya will ever beat us redskins at ironworking, heights are an Injun thing…
15
I enjoy getting (and being) high.
5
My husband likes to bungee jump.
The higher, the better for him.
He has also done canyon swings.
Me? God made solid ground for a reason.
7
I wouldn’t go up that but I did go on the glass bridge over the Grand Canyon.
It had handrails and glass sides though.
3
For FD purposes we were taught rail slides for speedy descent down ladders, where you’d put your feet to the outside of the rails and grasp the outside of the rails with your hands and let them slip, basically just controlling your relationship to the ladder as you fell and clamping when you got where you’re going. This was made exciting by having 60 odd pounds of worn and carried gear, and even more so by the fact that ladders had multiple sections and you needed to readjust your grip at every one, on a dark wet sometimes frozen steel ladder with a flaming building beside it. We had one 40 foot Bangor ladder with tormentor poles that it took 4 guys to just put this thing up, and had 3 fly sections so it took a minute to get down even in a hurry, and the hose was so heavy over this vertical drop that if you didn’t have multiple guys you often tied the hose off to it if you were gonna be there awhile.
This is a drill so its slow. IRL this goes much faster and you’ve got adrenaline helping you. This thing is still a bitch kitty to raise (ours was steel, not aluminum), and had quite a bit of flex across the fly sections, especially carrying heavy stuff and fully kitted firefighters up and down them.
You didn’t do rail slides with a vitctim though because you needed to control them. Concious and healthy you would let them hold the rungs and descend in a normal manner while you stayed with your hands on the beams to their outside with your legs inside theirs so you could catch them quickly if they slipped and push them back on the ladder; unconcious you would keep your knees inside their legs as that’s where their weight would be resting, kick their feet to the outside so they didn’t get tangled in the rungs, and descend with three points of contact since you needed to keep their face out of the laadder witt one arm.
Again, all I can say about all this is that adrenaline is your friend as far as doing this speedily, as is muscle memory from repetitive training and the energy and reflexes of youth. Yes it was high and leaning on a not particularly stable building that often had flames shooting out of it, but there was so much work load that you didn’t have time to think about how stupid the whole concept of what you’re doing is from a safety point of view or worry about possible consequences. A job needed done, you did it.
Life isn’t safe and can’t be made so. You could die from your next forkful of food so there’s no sense in thinking you can Nerf everything. I’ve carried a few younger men to their graves so I can assure you there are no guarantees.
If you never take a chance, you never really live. Go climb something, the adrenaline is worth it.
…but keep your kids under control or you’ll get a whole DIFFERENT adrenaline rush if they decide a net like that would be fun to bounce on…
3
@Cisco Kid:
Nun ya will ever beat us redskins at ironworking, heights are an Injun thing…
Right you are, @Cisco! The Mohawk high steel men of the glory days of Manhattan (and elsewhere) skyscraper building are legendary. Surefooted, hardworking, and fearless.
7
As an engineer, and knowing where that is located, I wouldn’t take one step on that thing. My fear is that it is cobbled together and not structurally sound at the base and would break free and tip over, spilling me down the cliff.
4
First of all, where is this?
Second of all, do I trust the engineering? It looks like paper mache over chicken wire.
Side note: I love the posts from all of you. I learned a lot of interesting stuff.
3
Every time I go to Grand Coulee Dam in N. central Wash. state, I am terrified looking over the side of that massive dam especially when the floodgates are open, and water is cascading down the side of the dam.
3
I’d like to see Joe Biden do it. Without the safety nets, of course.
3
@Uncle Al & Cisco Kid, my stepfather worked the high steel.
He said that the American Indians were indeed the best at it.
I asked him once if he wasn’t afraid up on those heights.
He said he couldn’t be. It was his job.
5
The one very high scary place that I will never visit is that heavy see thru glass viewing platform over the Grand Canyon in Arizona and look straight down below into the abyss beneath my feet. No thanks, that would scare the hell out of me.
5
I don’t care for heights and I definitely don’t do roller coasters!
3
I worked as an industrial mechanic for about 50 years.
Hid my fear of heights the whole time.
Used to ride up to the roof straddled across fork lift arms.
Now you have to be in a cage with fall restraints.
The shit we did would get you fired now.
3
I forgot to mention doing electrical connections with the power still on.You don’t want to darken the work place while you change a ballast.
2
Optical delusion?
I have jumped out of a perfectly good airplane (20 years old at the time) but going up a step ladder scares me now.
1
I used to install antennae’s. Mostly satellite dishes but a few radar and radio/TV antennae. Sometime I would have to do maintenance on them. I got to climb the 1500′ Radio/TV tower in Walnut Grove CA to change out the strobe assembly that had rotted away. There were two of us and it was a 13 hour day. That was 15 years ago. I decided at 1500 feet high that I was done with towers. It wasn’t the height but the physical exertion of a guy in his late 40’s that finally realized he was getting old. The climb down to the elevator require a lot of stops on my part. The young Buck I was training carried the load that day.
1
Always late to the party…
Grandfather had a roofing company that gave my old man side jobs for many years after the company no longer existed. So naturally I would be drafted into service to work with him on the weekends until I was about fifteen years old. I would get to “hump” the singles up to the top of the roofs and the bundles were about eighty pounds if memory serves. Sometimes second story and we had these very heavy wooden extension ladders that were good to about thirty-two feet up. Once we got started I swear he could damn near pound singles as fast as I could bring them up. Pounding singles was a joy compared to getting all the material up on top of the roofs.
The roll roofing was ninety to one hundred ten pounds per roll depending on whether it was felt or regular roll roofing. Saw him grab two rolls at the same time and simply walk up the ladder with no hand hold and one roll on each shoulder. Was all I could do to take one roll at a time as they weighed as much as I did when I first started.
Once I screwed up on a second story job and slide off the roof landing in bushes below. Bushes broke the fall and wasn’t hurt until the old man came off the roof and raised holy hell with me for screwing up and messing up the home owner’s bushes. Learned later that it was his way of not allowing me to become afraid of heights and chased me right back up on top. More afraid of the beating he was capable of giving than thinking or becoming afraid of the heights. The pitch on the roof had to be pretty good before he would “waste time” scaffolding the job.
Now I get shaky on the top of the ten foot ladder doing the gutters. But then a fat crippled up old man probably shouldn’t be doing that at over three quarters of a century in age.
2
There were two types of climbers, maybe three. I climbed before I was telco with Crackerbaby. That climbing was butt out and flash up. You stuck your butt out and climbed on bent legs.
The telco was test the cutout. Stand with hands at shoulder height. What is your striking foot? Left handed people generally step off with the right foot. Right handed people generally step off with the left foot. Ok, figure that out. I’m left handed and DO step out with the right foot.
You raise the right hand about 12 inches and grip the pole. Then raise the right foot about 12 inches (toes UP) and strike the pole. Stand up on the gaff. That is the lower locked leg. Now raise the left hand about 12 inches and grip the pole. Now raise the left foot about 12 inches and strike the pole. At the heart. TOES UP. Now you stand on the left gaff. That is now the lower locked leg.
On and on.
And don’t pound the gaff in. You pound and you may spend 15 minutes getting it back out.
I have fallen off more poles with the SAFE method.
It’s all fun and games until someone bounces out of the net.
I’m putting in a new garage door opener while using a 5′ step ladder and also the dump bed of my ATV…..I don’t like it…It’s too high….
Used to rock climb. So, yes.
Dang. What’s with that hand and the nets?
That would make a primo hang gliding launch.
That’s not high. I recall Ian, my son, saying to his mother, “Dad is not afraid of heights”. Well, I beg to differ. It was my job and I had to do it.
My brother came to me saying climbing on hooks was a big bag of bullshit. I agreed. But you can’t pass Plant School without going to 18 feet and doing four-eight-fours. I sucked at it and had bleeding shins just like everybody else. Just focus on every move you make. I could never climb like an instructor. I got him through it. They don’t even assign you climbers in DC. You will never have to use them again if you don’t want to. Just get through this.
@Erik — What’s a “four-eight-four” if it’s not a steam locomotive? And somehow I’m pretty sure from context you’re not talking about the railroad.
Still not doing it.
“I’m putting in a new garage door opener while using a 5′ step ladder and also the dump bed of my ATV…..I don’t like it…It’s too high…”
Right there with you. I used basically the same method last week end to reach some branches in a tree that border my driveway. I’m still trying to pry the underwear from that day out of my butt.
HAA! Not a locomotive. It is a method of getting around to the “back” of a pole. The low side. You climb the high side. And then transition from the high side to where you need to work. The first four is going up again, the eight is slewing around with the belt, and the last four is setting up on the work position.
Occupations that require extreme heights are populated with White guys.
Some hispanics/Latin motherfuckers, but very rarely black dudes.
Women? Forget it.
Black dudes fear height & water depths.
Sure, THEY built this country… LOL!
Eric: With chicken feet or without?
You can’t slew without falling. The concept it to climb above the work position, slew whilst falling, and climb back.
right hand goes up… right foot goes up. left hand goes down, left foot goes down. That is how you climb the Bell method.
The marionette.
My stepfather was a linesman for a small independent phone company back in the 60s. I saw him go up a pole once; it’s like he gathered himself, and then in a blur of motion with the spurs and belt he just shot up the pole. He was a tough little guy, a Marine that fought the Japs in WWII.
Nun ya will ever beat us redskins at ironworking, heights are an Injun thing…
I enjoy getting (and being) high.
My husband likes to bungee jump.
The higher, the better for him.
He has also done canyon swings.
Me? God made solid ground for a reason.
I wouldn’t go up that but I did go on the glass bridge over the Grand Canyon.
It had handrails and glass sides though.
For FD purposes we were taught rail slides for speedy descent down ladders, where you’d put your feet to the outside of the rails and grasp the outside of the rails with your hands and let them slip, basically just controlling your relationship to the ladder as you fell and clamping when you got where you’re going. This was made exciting by having 60 odd pounds of worn and carried gear, and even more so by the fact that ladders had multiple sections and you needed to readjust your grip at every one, on a dark wet sometimes frozen steel ladder with a flaming building beside it. We had one 40 foot Bangor ladder with tormentor poles that it took 4 guys to just put this thing up, and had 3 fly sections so it took a minute to get down even in a hurry, and the hose was so heavy over this vertical drop that if you didn’t have multiple guys you often tied the hose off to it if you were gonna be there awhile.
https://youtu.be/or8EUBN0lEk
This is a drill so its slow. IRL this goes much faster and you’ve got adrenaline helping you. This thing is still a bitch kitty to raise (ours was steel, not aluminum), and had quite a bit of flex across the fly sections, especially carrying heavy stuff and fully kitted firefighters up and down them.
You didn’t do rail slides with a vitctim though because you needed to control them. Concious and healthy you would let them hold the rungs and descend in a normal manner while you stayed with your hands on the beams to their outside with your legs inside theirs so you could catch them quickly if they slipped and push them back on the ladder; unconcious you would keep your knees inside their legs as that’s where their weight would be resting, kick their feet to the outside so they didn’t get tangled in the rungs, and descend with three points of contact since you needed to keep their face out of the laadder witt one arm.
Again, all I can say about all this is that adrenaline is your friend as far as doing this speedily, as is muscle memory from repetitive training and the energy and reflexes of youth. Yes it was high and leaning on a not particularly stable building that often had flames shooting out of it, but there was so much work load that you didn’t have time to think about how stupid the whole concept of what you’re doing is from a safety point of view or worry about possible consequences. A job needed done, you did it.
Life isn’t safe and can’t be made so. You could die from your next forkful of food so there’s no sense in thinking you can Nerf everything. I’ve carried a few younger men to their graves so I can assure you there are no guarantees.
If you never take a chance, you never really live. Go climb something, the adrenaline is worth it.
…but keep your kids under control or you’ll get a whole DIFFERENT adrenaline rush if they decide a net like that would be fun to bounce on…
@Cisco Kid:
Right you are, @Cisco! The Mohawk high steel men of the glory days of Manhattan (and elsewhere) skyscraper building are legendary. Surefooted, hardworking, and fearless.
As an engineer, and knowing where that is located, I wouldn’t take one step on that thing. My fear is that it is cobbled together and not structurally sound at the base and would break free and tip over, spilling me down the cliff.
First of all, where is this?
Second of all, do I trust the engineering? It looks like paper mache over chicken wire.
Side note: I love the posts from all of you. I learned a lot of interesting stuff.
Every time I go to Grand Coulee Dam in N. central Wash. state, I am terrified looking over the side of that massive dam especially when the floodgates are open, and water is cascading down the side of the dam.
I’d like to see Joe Biden do it. Without the safety nets, of course.
@Uncle Al & Cisco Kid, my stepfather worked the high steel.
He said that the American Indians were indeed the best at it.
I asked him once if he wasn’t afraid up on those heights.
He said he couldn’t be. It was his job.
The one very high scary place that I will never visit is that heavy see thru glass viewing platform over the Grand Canyon in Arizona and look straight down below into the abyss beneath my feet. No thanks, that would scare the hell out of me.
I don’t care for heights and I definitely don’t do roller coasters!
I worked as an industrial mechanic for about 50 years.
Hid my fear of heights the whole time.
Used to ride up to the roof straddled across fork lift arms.
Now you have to be in a cage with fall restraints.
The shit we did would get you fired now.
I forgot to mention doing electrical connections with the power still on.You don’t want to darken the work place while you change a ballast.
Optical delusion?
I have jumped out of a perfectly good airplane (20 years old at the time) but going up a step ladder scares me now.
I used to install antennae’s. Mostly satellite dishes but a few radar and radio/TV antennae. Sometime I would have to do maintenance on them. I got to climb the 1500′ Radio/TV tower in Walnut Grove CA to change out the strobe assembly that had rotted away. There were two of us and it was a 13 hour day. That was 15 years ago. I decided at 1500 feet high that I was done with towers. It wasn’t the height but the physical exertion of a guy in his late 40’s that finally realized he was getting old. The climb down to the elevator require a lot of stops on my part. The young Buck I was training carried the load that day.
Always late to the party…
Grandfather had a roofing company that gave my old man side jobs for many years after the company no longer existed. So naturally I would be drafted into service to work with him on the weekends until I was about fifteen years old. I would get to “hump” the singles up to the top of the roofs and the bundles were about eighty pounds if memory serves. Sometimes second story and we had these very heavy wooden extension ladders that were good to about thirty-two feet up. Once we got started I swear he could damn near pound singles as fast as I could bring them up. Pounding singles was a joy compared to getting all the material up on top of the roofs.
The roll roofing was ninety to one hundred ten pounds per roll depending on whether it was felt or regular roll roofing. Saw him grab two rolls at the same time and simply walk up the ladder with no hand hold and one roll on each shoulder. Was all I could do to take one roll at a time as they weighed as much as I did when I first started.
Once I screwed up on a second story job and slide off the roof landing in bushes below. Bushes broke the fall and wasn’t hurt until the old man came off the roof and raised holy hell with me for screwing up and messing up the home owner’s bushes. Learned later that it was his way of not allowing me to become afraid of heights and chased me right back up on top. More afraid of the beating he was capable of giving than thinking or becoming afraid of the heights. The pitch on the roof had to be pretty good before he would “waste time” scaffolding the job.
Now I get shaky on the top of the ten foot ladder doing the gutters. But then a fat crippled up old man probably shouldn’t be doing that at over three quarters of a century in age.
There were two types of climbers, maybe three. I climbed before I was telco with Crackerbaby. That climbing was butt out and flash up. You stuck your butt out and climbed on bent legs.
The telco was test the cutout. Stand with hands at shoulder height. What is your striking foot? Left handed people generally step off with the right foot. Right handed people generally step off with the left foot. Ok, figure that out. I’m left handed and DO step out with the right foot.
You raise the right hand about 12 inches and grip the pole. Then raise the right foot about 12 inches (toes UP) and strike the pole. Stand up on the gaff. That is the lower locked leg. Now raise the left hand about 12 inches and grip the pole. Now raise the left foot about 12 inches and strike the pole. At the heart. TOES UP. Now you stand on the left gaff. That is now the lower locked leg.
On and on.
And don’t pound the gaff in. You pound and you may spend 15 minutes getting it back out.
I have fallen off more poles with the SAFE method.