yep me too
yep me too
Yep. Had to coax a couple off of some 500' smoke stacks. Two steps off the elevator, one look down, and they get a grip on the hand rail that would require cutting off their hands to relax.
I have a harness and zero fear of heights. Used to climb to the crown of the rigs for fun.
I'll loan you some gaffs, a belt, and a scare strap. If you fall you didn't get them from me.
Climbing is not the hard part, especially a step pole. Gaffing and leaning back and trusting your strap at the top is the hard part. Probably going to be up there a while and those gaffs start to hurt after an hour or so. The climbing part wouldn't bother me, standing up there and working would, I'm too fat for that these days.
Climbing is not the hard part, especially a step pole. Gaffing and leaning back and trusting your strap at the top is the hard part. Probably going to be up there a while and those gaffs start to hurt after an hour or so. The climbing part wouldn't bother me, standing up there and working would, I'm too fat for that these days.
Had a guy tell me one time, if you can do it I can! I pulled my hooks off and gave him my belt, he got around 7 feet and said this is hard to do and came down. Takes faith in equipment, stepping correctly and using muscle that normally are not used . You got to have the rhythm baby!
OGE has a lineman festival in OKC every year. Part of the festival is a climbing contest. The different crews put much importance in how they finish in the competition. Part of it is rescue of another lineman. Its fun and bragging rights at the festival, but these guys do this in the middle of thunderstorms in the middle of the night.
The competition's equal training.
Training equals saving another linemans life in bad situations.
We do hurt man rescue every year, I can put hooks on the belt, grab handline and hit pole to the top, loop handline around cross arm then attach lose end to dummy, then cut his belt and lower him to ground in under 2 minutes
I worked with two guys that were lineman in Ponca city in the late 60's at the Ponca city power plant in the summer after high school. During a thunder storm they were both on the same crew that were fixing a downed line. One was fixing the line, and for some reason the power came back on electrocuting one leaving him hanging from the line with one hand frozen. His bucket buddy used an axe to cut his hand off the line and drop him to the ground. They both ended up alive although one had only three fingers on his left hand. Red ended up being the line crew manager later on, and the other ended up as supervisor over all the linemen.
One of the most dangerous jobs in the world.
I watched a guy climb a 65' sailboat mast at sea to retrieve a lost halyard. He had done it once before and did a great job at it this time. But, it was terrifying for me to watch. Trust me, when the "pole" your climbing is swinging and dancing around like crazy, it adds to the excitement some.
