COMPANY: Rope Guy
YEARS IN BUSINESS: Nine
JOB DESCRIPTION: Using highly skilled climbing techniques,
Dief scales buildings to change light bulbs, replace fire
sprinklers, photograph floor plans and perform various other
jobs. “Getting up there is quite difficult, and on a lot of jobs,
you can only go up and down in certain spots so we have to
plan that out.”
TRAINING: 34 years of climbing experience.
EQUIPMENT: Rope, harness, modified seat, helmet, c-clamps
and custom trolleys. “Since we started our equipment has
changed a lot. No one had anything to do these jobs, so we
started modifying and developing our own gear. Now I’ve
got gear that no oneelse on the planet has.”
LAUNCHING THE BUSINESS: The business was originally formed
to repel from cliffs for geological survey companies. In 2000,
they were hired to do a job at what is now Chase Field to
climb the steel beams above the bleachers to replace fire
sprinkler heads that had been recalled. “We started doing
that, and we’ve been doing it ever since.”
DELIGHTS: “The adventure, going places
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that are just incredibly wild. Even on the jobs that are brutal, where we get really
sore, when we’re done we have a big grin on our face.”
WORST PART: “It can be physically brutal sometimes. You’re
up there trying to change a sprinkler head and you’ve got
no leverage. You’re trying to get it undone, and it’s hot and
dusty. After a couple days of that we’re pretty sore and pretty
worn out, but that’s just part of the job.”
DANGERS: “It’s not really dangerous if you do it right.
Everything is backed up; there are no short cuts. Most of
these jobs we could do independently, but we always do
it together because if one of us ever got injured up there,
no one could get to us, which is why we got hired in the
first place.”
HOURS: “It varies. We’ll go for months without a job, and then
we’ll get several in a row. Once we leave the ground we’ll be
up there for maybe an hour, or up to five to six hours, before
we come back down.”
PROBLEM SOLVING: “The only job we ever had to turn down
was a building that was all drywall, so there was nothing to
hang on to. Other than that, every job we’ve gone to we’ve
been able to complete.” COST: Fees start at $3,000 a day for the two-member crew
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