Risking your life climbing skyscrapers: "When I do it, I'm not afraid of anything."

BarcelonaWhen they were little, many of them were afraid of heights. They couldn't go on fairground rides with their friends, and when a school trip involved climbing the tower of an iconic building, they couldn't look down. Now they scale the tallest buildings on the planet without ropes.

In recent years, new trends have emerged in which many people test themselves by engaging in high-risk activities. Methods such as parkour –discipline that consists of moving around cities overcoming obstacles along the way by jumping from roof to roof or over objects – or climbing skyscrapers. Sports such as freediving –descending to the depths of the sea without an air bubble– or extreme skydiving –jumping without a parachute and, mid-flight, being given a partner–. One of the most spectacular and dangerous is the attempt to climb skyscrapers without ropes.

In this case, it's about bringing climbing from nature to urban settings. Some consider it a sport, others a madness. We're talking about extreme climbing or free solo, a practice that emerged in the 1960s in the United States when some climbers decided they wanted to climb mountain walls without a safety rope. It's true that ropeless climbs were already documented in the late 19th century, but they were done on mountains where the risk was lower. Staring at a straight rock face hundreds of meters high, where you know falling means death, began to become popular in the late 1960s among young people fleeing the consumer society and searching for their place in the world. Hippies and adventurers who lost their lives in many cases, but who set a standard. Jeff Smoot, who practices this discipline, interviewed many to find out the reasons that led them to do so, and came to the conclusion that it was a mixture of love for nature, seeking pure sensations, overcoming fears and having self-control. In addition, many spoke of a kind of addiction, which had brought benefits to their lives. "Are these free climbers crazy? Maybe they are. Are they crazier than the others? I don't think so, just in a different way," says Smoot.

Californian Alex Honnold would be a good example, when he became the first man to climb the 914-meter wall of the famous El Capitan, a peak in Yosemite National Park, without ropes. A milestone that he immortalized in a documentary, Free Solo, In this article, he reflected on the deaths of friends and underwent medical tests that showed that when he climbed, his body didn't react: he wasn't afraid. His heart rate was as normal as when we exercise at the gym: he had been born without fear. Now, as the father of his first child, Honnold admitted that for the first time, he was slightly afraid of climbing. It had changed his life.

Climb the Eiffel Tower

Most climbers did have fear, like British climber James Kingston, who explains that "the moment you have to wear safety equipment, that's when you're afraid." "When you don't wear safety equipment, it changes your perspective on things and you don't see so many limits anymore. I'm not afraid of anything when I climb like this," says Kingston. This Englishman has climbed some of the most famous buildings on the planet without ropes, such as the Eiffel Tower and the Marina 101 skyscraper in Dubai, overcoming his childhood fear of heights. Social media has helped to greatly promote these disciplines, and Kingston has a YouTube channel with 300,000 followers. Some were already doing it before: the craze for climbing buildings was already practiced at the end of the 19th century at Cambridge University, a kind of ritual to demonstrate courage among university students.

The person most responsible for making building climbing fashionable, however, was the Frenchman Alain Robert. He is the most famous urban climber. A man who is now also successful on social media, but who used to be the terror of police officers around the world when they received a phone call saying that a man with long hair was risking his life by climbing a building without permission. Robert has been to police stations around the world, in fact. He's been arrested hundreds of times, but he doesn't plan to stop climbing, even now that he's 62. Raised in the south of France in an area where climbing was common, Robert explains that as a child, "he had nightmares in which he saw himself falling." He couldn't climb any walls, but everything changed the day he saw the film. The snow in mourning, Directed by Edward Dmytryk, based on an adaptation of the book by Henri Troyat, which tells the true story of a group of French mountaineers who attempted to rescue potential victims of the Air India Malabar Princess plane crash that crashed on the summit of Mont Blanc in 1950. They eventually found the plane at 4,600 meters with no survivors. Most people would have admired the feat, but wouldn't have wanted to imitate it. Robert, on the other hand, decided at that moment that he wanted to be a mountaineer. He began training in the area and at the age of 12, one day he was returning home and had left his keys, he decided to climb up to the family apartment: it was a seventh floor.

Artist and activist

Robert defines himself as an "artist" and "activist" who sometimes uses his adventures to denounce climate change or criticize the French far right. Today, Robert still combines climbing in nature and urban climbing. Many consider him crazy, as he has even climbed skyscrapers in hiking boots. cowboy and dressed like a rocker. But he explains that he spends months preparing for each new adventure. On adventures he's recorded with a GoPro camera in recent years, he says as he climbs, "I trust in myself, I will succeed." Robert has climbed all the world's famous skyscrapers, including the Glòries Tower in Barcelona, ​​and has suffered accidents, like in 1982, when he fell 20 meters and injured himself. In that case, from a natural rock wall. Christened Spiderman FrenchRobert celebrated his 60th birthday by climbing a 48-story skyscraper in Paris. He was stopped on the way down, just as he was when he climbed the famous Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the Eiffel Tower, and London's Salesforce Tower. In Dubai, however, he received permission from the authorities to climb the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. This summer, he returned to Barcelona, ​​where he scaled the 116-meter Meliá Sky Hotel.

Also in France the fashion of the emerged parkour, This urban sport involves young people jumping between buildings and completing circuits in which they must go as fast as possible, overcoming obstacles. Despite being less dangerous than climbing, its practitioners have taken it to the extreme, creating more complicated tricks. "What I liked most was the feeling of freedom, because to practice it you don't need anything, just your own body. When we discovered it, it was like an explosion." Marcel Camp, who practices it in Catalonia, explained to ARA. "There is a modality of parkour, he freestyle, in which many stunts are performed, although the primary objective of the parkour "It's about getting from point A to point B as efficiently and quickly as possible. There's also a creative side to it, because a good idea about how to jump can give you a huge advantage," he says of a sport that has become a sport with rules and competitions, although many people still practice it freely and sometimes end up arrested when they enter buildings without permission to jump off the roofs. ~BK_SLT_L

Some university studies have examined the reasons why these activities are practiced, such as one by Matthew Wallace and Ruyike Kilili in Cyprus, which concluded that "it provides emotional, physical, and psychological development, health benefits, the development of new skills (e.g., pushing personal boundaries), an increased sense of personal identity, and a heightened sense of belonging," as lonely people can join urban tribes or groups. Participants feel they are healthier mentally and physically, but the study also warns that if it all began as a search for limits and a way to escape the conventional norms of society, social media is changing: many do it to gain followers, which leads them to take risks. In fact, every year hundreds of people die around the world from entering tall buildings without permission in search of a spectacular selfie. The difference with some climbers is that they reach the same place by climbing outside the building. "You have to be patient, you have to think about it a lot, and you don't take unnecessary risks. Obviously, you're aware that people will look at you and talk about you, but you have to do it because you want to. If you do it for others, for fame, and you're looking to take risks to make it spectacular, it's a mistake," Honnold warned. "I think many of us do it to turn our backs on society and the people in power. Now many people do the same thing to stand out in society and be popular," Robert complains.