Basejumper.com - archive

This afternoon before my night
class opened a new antenna:
solo, 300 foot freestanding
cell tower, kind with 3 legs.

Climbing it was a bitch!! First off,
taking a break involved hugging
the thing, the safety cable was a
pain, and exit point = sketchy.

Did a go & throw from about 280
with a funky launch, opened 45
left, and stood up the landing.

GoPro photos to be posted soon.

right on tom! love those 10'' ladders

no thank you. sounds scary.

last nite i did my first antenna wsbase from 1680... flippin fantastic

Congratulations bro!!

http://www.GoProCamera.com

how have you never done an outside climb? must be nice...and how many breaks do you need to climb 280ft...so much for putting in a bit of work for a jump

Climbing pegs are weird.
Was the safety cable in your way or were you using it?
Take care and congrats.
space

Regular but skinny ladder or a Peg ladder?

If it's a peg ladder, put a length of webbing around your chest strap and hook it on for a rest.

Another good trick is get a larger carabiner and remove the gate. Larger biners fit over most ladder rungs so you now have a great hook. You can grind part of it off if you need to as well. Attach it to a piece of webbing. Taping around the biner itself will muffle the sound hooking over the ladder rung.

Rest, remove, climb... enjoy.

Pretty interesting jump. Nice work

My buddy opened this up so i went to check it out, now that was a funky climb as you couldnt go under or around the outcrops. It was all structure climbing, no ladder or pegs. When a buddy pushes off something that skinny you'd better hold on to something, i was standing PC in hand when he left and i about fell over and took a knee.

To top things off we had a brutal cross wind and i'd only seen the landing area in the dark. Good time.

Jeez hookit, it was only 280'
take care,
space

I use a quickdraw clipped to my chest strap, then clip the other end on to the ladder / peg / structure when I want a break.

I bought a used fall arrester on ebay
but did not have it with me and have
heard they are slow and heavy.

I did climb the peg ladder where the
cable was and snapped a quick link
onto it which was connected to my
chest strap via a homemade sling
of finger trapped dacron.

Next time I would climb one of the
two other ladders without the cable
because holding on with one hand
and knocking the cable out of the
black rubber thingy sucked.

Yeah, 280' is cake, even for an old
arthritic married guy like me, but
needing to hurry for time constraint,
the new obejct, new type of ladder,
and so on caused me to tense too
much and by the time I got to the
top I had Popeye forearms.

shiiiiiit, son!

haha... that's about all i ever jump it seems. you most likely won't be able to climb another leg other than the one with the safety climb due to the fact that the pegs rarely go to the top. you will get a little surprise when you're half way up with nowhere to go.

once you get used to those peg climbs, they're really no big deal. every other section or so, i'll usually make a real quick pit stop. lower on the tower where the wire is further away from the leg, i just swing in between it and the leg and hang out. some towers have a big enough gap you can actually climb like that, at least for a while. probably not a bad idea to have a quick draw or something, but i don't sit around long enough to make it worthwhile. a cable grab is just a plain waste of energy.

if you want sketchy climbs, ask Matt F about some of our adventures... hahahaha!

have fun!

Nice job. Come jump the 275' freestander near my house if you're in the area. It's an AM tower. No safety cable, outside climb, and there are missing pegs every now and then. When the first jumper leaps, the tower sways about 12" at the top.....yee haw!

I used to think there would be nowhere to go if you ran out of pegs until I followed Scott up Monkey Queen one night. We ran out of pegs at about 150' and instead of asking me to climb down he looks around, then climbs up one side of the X, swings his leg over and climbs down the other side of the X to the other leg. I thought, hmm, that didn't look so bad. After I spent the next 5 minutes white knuckling myself to the other side I thought hmm, that's the scariest shit I've ever done in my life.

I was there for one...

We went out to this generic freestanding 220' sketchy ass cell tower with an outside climb; three people climbing up in the middle of the night, first time on the tower for two of them. There is not enough room at the top for more than one person at a time so we are staged about 25' apart so that the person at the top can route his bridle and figure out how to get to the outside edge of the cell array (did I mention we're all going handheld?)

Matt is the first one off, he's all ready to go and then suddenly he calls down to blitzkrieg and I and says "Oh, I almost forgot, if you get an on heading opening you have to watch for the barb wire fence that cuts across the landing area!"

This sentence is immediately followed by a "C-Ya!", the whole tower shakes like it's having a seizure and you hear the 'khrracck' of a canopy.

The good news is that he made it; the bad, now it's my turn.

I climb the remaining 25' to the array, spastically clutch a pipe to keep my balance while I route my bridle, climb out to the wobbly exit point and jump.

Perfect on heading opening! Shit! Barb-wire fence! Crank a 90 left! Shit! Feed trough! Flare! Cool, I made it, that was intense.

Matt and I began to take bets as to whether blitzkrieg would see the fence in time or not....

Good times.

That reminds me of 300'r guyed in Deland. Launch was a hard kickoff and the tower flexed.
Take care,
space

Congrats bro!

My first outside climb was a couple weeks ago on jump 29. It's the same one PikeyBASE posted up. Calling it sketchy is being nice, this thing sucks We opted to climb the side without the safety line as there was less stuff to climb around. About a hundred feet up I ask Fastlights if the whole climb is this bad. He says no, it changes around 250. I took that to mean it got better. Unfortunately it got worse. As PikeyBASE mentioned the sturcture doesnt have pegs or a ladder, but the legs supports are similar to a ladder (imagine a metal bunk bed ladder, now cut it in half and put half the bars at a 45 degree angle) until you get to 250. At that point you are just reaching for anyting you can to get under between and around everything. The exit sucks big ones too. Single foot exit off this little round pipe.

Good jump though, makes me appreciate our easy ladder climbs so much more

and that was one of the nicer ones! but, definitely the first time i had ever heard you're fucked if you have an ON heading. haha!
good times.


oh, and Gregor... FUCK MONKEY QUEEN!

Pegs suck ! Pass.

 

Jeez stitch, it was only 280'
take care,
hook

count me in for that pole jump, hopefully I'll be in town within the next few weekends.

Hahaha, yeah, we have had a few. I still think the sketchiest was the outside peg climb where the first 60ft was completely covered in ice.

The random one in GA was pretty entertaining as well. I crack up every time I think about that one. That thing was a jungle gym from hell. All of the antenna booms were mounted directly to the leg so every time we came up to one, it was like a giant steel maze to squeeze through, over, and around. And then once we got to the top, the exit point was a wobbly boom that was 8ft out from the structure.

Good times!

haha, hell yeah buddy. that was a great one. i don't think either of us spoke for a solid 5mins after we reached the top.

never mind the grid of power lines that we had to jump straight over.

Blitzkrieg, you were right, climbing up
without the cable was a bit easier, but
by the time I got to the top I still had
lead in my forearms.

Only posting them because I got a
few PM's with comments/questions.

Dude, your exit is a picture perfect copy of the one in the uber-cool Miami BASE video. Perhaps something to work on ?

You are right, my exits need work.

just thought i'd point out the obvious...

you can see in the Climbing.jpg picture that the pegs stop on the other two legs like previously mentioned. those diagonal supports can be a bitch to cross, especially since there are no horizontals on those sections.

The words "he was right" actually ran
through my head on the second visit

Nice work dude - although what happened to "no skydiving or BASE branded clothes" rule when out and about?

First outside climb was my 5th jump, 220' pylon. I swear that the last 50' feet were overhung, although I think there might be a few people who would dispute that (and call me a pussy ). I only jumped because there was no way I was climbing down that thing!

Long retired now, but memories of that climb still make my palms damp....