Awesome view! But it that's not for me. I will keep my feet on the ground thanks.
Holy CRAP! Awesome pics, but you have to be half insane!! What happens when the legs slip!? I will always be happy to work at Ground Elevation!
You are a brave soul Scott. Every time you post pics you surely show a different side of surveying. I am like the others and believe I will stay on the "GROUND" level.
Were you clipped in with a harness when the second photo was taken? No way I'd step outside the barriers without being tied off.
I don't think so, anyway. Last year I hiked to the top of Mt. Conness, and there was one short stretch of the trail -- maybe 15 feet long -- near the top that required side-stepping along a narrow (18"?) ledge, with a sheer drop of 50 feet or so onto jagged rocks and no handholds worth mentioning. On the way up I hardly noticed it, just breezed across without breaking stride, but on the way down I stopped and thought, "Holy cats, did I come cross that?" I looked around and concluded that the only other available routes were at least as dangerous, so I nervously shuffled across and went on my way without incident. But I got chills for the next couple of days whenever I thought about it.
Awesome, Scott, Thanks for posting.
I had the good fortune to get a tour before anything was far into the sky. I can never go that high, even in a finished building.
I once went up in the old WTC, and sat on the floor by the elevators while my family enjoyed the view. I'm much more comfortable hanging from a rope at the top of a 60' sailboat mast.
Awesome as always!
Doesn't a building that tall sway, back and forth? How does that affect your measurements?
I would be fine being up there. Just don't ask me to climb a ladder more than three feet. Weird, I know. Just how I am. I hate ladders but have no problem with roof tops, helicopters, overlooks, etc. I guess I am assuming the ladder will fail, while anything else is solid and secure.
Just when I thought I had my vertigo beat.....
Did some high rise in the '80's. The views were awesome. But frankly, I don't miss it at all. The cold wind is what I really remember. Cuts right through ya.
Amazing people that build them though. Met some very interesting characters. One of them was a self-professed warlock. Claimed he had all kinds of potions. Weird. Another guy did night work as a mortician. Lots of creepy stuff.
I suppose you have to be somewhat careful not to drop your pencil, or anything for that matter. Thanks for sharing. W
Great photos!! Thanks for posting.
That third picture just about makes me dizzy just looking at the photo. For some reason it brought to mind this portion of Poe's short story "Imp of the Perverse":
"We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss-we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness and dizziness and horror become merged in a cloud of unnamable feeling. By gradations, still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape, as did the vapor from the bottle out of which arose the genius in the Arabian Nights. But out of this our cloud upon the precipice's edge, there grows into palpability, a shape, far more terrible than any genius or any demon of a tale, and yet it is but a thought, although a fearful one, and one which chills the very marrow of our bones with the fierceness of the delight of its horror. It is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height. And this fall-this rushing annihilation- for the very reason that it involves that one most ghastly and loathsome of all the most ghastly and loathsome images of death and suffering which have ever presented themselves to our imagination-for this very cause do we now the most vividly desire it. And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore do we the most impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a Plunge. To indulge, for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore it is, I say, that we cannot. If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed."
Great photos
You are one brave man if you stepped outside those cables. It makes my toes tingle just to look at it. I'm sure glad you like and are good at this stuff 'cause there's no way I could do it.
Andy
Like many others, I couldn't handle it. Heights never used to bother me at all. I can handle an 8' ladder until I get to the top step and then I can feel myself tightening up. I have climbed some stuff that would make me dizzy just to look at these days. Nowadays I can be watching something on TV from the camera inside the cockpit flying along the ground and then crosses a canyon edge and it about makes me pass out.
I guess as I/we have gotten older we realize that stuff [heights] can hurt. That, and I have taken a few high falls. Amazingly, I have never broken a bone or had stitches. Guess I don't care to tempt fate.
Funny though, I have no problem getting in a plane or helo. Hot air balloons? Forget it.
Awesome pics Scott - as usual. Keep up the good work.
E
I move Scott prepares a book of his work with pictures.
Seconder ?
Absolutely astounding work Scott.
Cheers,
Derek
Just imagine if he and Daryl Moistner worked together!
Great pictures but it is hard to imagine the reality of taking the pictures at that height.
Tallest structure that I ever surveyed atop was One Shell Square in New Orleans around 20 years ago.
It is the tallest building in New Orleans and I went up to do NGS monument recovery under contract. Also used one of the ref.marks atop for a back site for a traverse in the city. That was interesting. Close to 700ft
Tallest structure that I was on was when you took SC and myself atop Seven World Trade Center after it topped out in 2004. I guess that was about 750ft or so.
Strange but both of those buildings designed by S O M.
My favorite NYC skyscraper was and is the Citicorp building.
It just amazes me to no end. To be street side or see it in the skyline from the jersey.
Then when the story came out about the design flaws, that was very interesting.
http://www.damninteresting.com/a-potentially-disastrous-design-error/
WOW!
No way, no how for me. I just could not be up at that height, much less trying to work...
> Just imagine if he and Daryl Moistner worked together!
I want the first autographed copy!! :-$
