Climbing work: features of industrial mountaineering

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

Glancing at any modern city from a bird's eye view, one can be surprised at the richness of its infrastructure. Almost wall to wall with residential buildings, buildings of various institutions, territories of industrial enterprises, high-rise business centers, department stores and other objects can be located. Not to mention the numerous bridges and various towers. Indeed, the building density of modern cities is amazing. All this complicates the construction and repair work. The more landscaped the territory, the more difficult it is to use special equipment.

This is what climbing works are for, which are often carried out by people with extreme training - climbers, rock climbers, speleologists who decide to make their dangerous hobby their main speci alty. They replace bulky mechanisms with a reliable rope, mounting belt andvirtuoso technique of working on the sheer wall of the "stone jungle".

Although now more and more training centers for industrial climbers are opening every day, climbing work is still in most cases performed by athletes who have repeatedly climbed the highest mountain peaks or descended into the abysses of the deepest caves. Of course, they all receive special construction skills for working at height beforehand.

Work at height, in other words, climbing work - these are various operations performed at a level of at least five meters above the ground, ceiling or working platform. That is, these are working conditions where a person and his insurance are left alone with the space that extends below. Dangerous job! Therefore, labor protection when working at height puts forward special safety requirements. The main means of fall protection, according to the rules for working at height, are a safety belt and a safety rope. To protect the head, a special helmet is provided, which must first be checked and for which a quality certificate must be available.

High climbing has an interesting history. So, back in the harsh blockade times, a group of Leningrad climbers (now they would be called industrial climbers) performed the most difficult task of masking the golden domes of cathedrals, which made it impossible for Luftwaffe pilots to conduct targeted bombing of St. Petersburg churches. Now one can only guess what the cultural and spiritual capital of Russia would look like today, if it were not for the selfless and heroic work of the first domestic industrial climbers.

It is also interesting that high- altitude work was officially legalized in Russia in 2001, when this profession was entered into the relevant register and thus legalized. Although such a complex and dangerous speci alty, of course, existed long before its official recognition.

Today, the services of industrial climbers are extremely in demand for installation, facade, restoration, and cleaning work. And also when lifting bulky goods in hard-to-reach places. Often only a professional industrial climber, who has psychological training to work in an unsupported space and special skills, can install an advertising banner, clean the roof of a high-rise building from ice and snow, or wash the windows of a skyscraper.