“This is by far the tallest structure I’ve climbed so far. I later found out that it’s the tallest residential building in the world. Crazy, huh? It took me about an hour and a half to get to the roof of the building using the crane to get up the first 50 meters or so. It was then about an hour of stairs while trying not to die of dehydration. It was the warmest/driest building I’ve ever come across and I only had a small bottle of water with me. I came across a few workers on the way up who wished me a good day and shook my hand. The workers in Dubai seem to mostly be from India and are some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. When I reached the rooftop the sun still hadn’t risen so I had a bit of time to explore the place and take some pictures. The crane that runs up the side of the building must be somewhere over the 450 meter mark as the building itself is officially set at 426 meters and the crane arm sits above it by quite a distance. Put it this way… you’d be dead if you fell off the top of the crane and landed on top of the building. It started to get lighter so I climbed up to the backside of the crane. This is the part where the cranes counterweights are located and I stayed there for about 10 minutes taking in the view and watching the sun creep over the dusty horizon. Out of nowhere the crane fired up and things started twisting and moving. I had no idea what was going on so I climbed back down to where the crane drivers cabin was to see if I could see anyone. Turns out the crane driver had managed to get up the crane and into the cabin without neither of us seeing each other haha. I gently knocked on his door and poked my head round so I didn’t scare the guy, we had a nice little chat and he actually let me climb to the end of the cranes arm which is something that would never happen in most other countries! I then made my way up to the tip of the cranes arm. It was pretty steep and was completely covered in grease/dust as it had been there for so many years. It was the slipperiest crane I’ve ever been on… parts of it were like ice! I finally reached the top and as you can see, the view was incredible. Stay tuned for the climb down as Ill be releasing it soon along with a few more stories!”
– James Kingston
