Bridge Climb

So, I meant to talk a little more about the Bridge Climb.

First, some facts (as brought to you by www.bridgeclimb.com but used without permission, so please don't sue me, O you nice Bridge Climb people, you):

Bridge Facts

The Sydney Harbour Bridge may not be the longest steel-arch Bridge in the world, but it is the largest and widest. At 48.8 metres (151.3 feet) wide, the Guinness Book of Records lists it as the widest long span Bridge in the world and until 1967, it was Sydney’s tallest structure.

Here are some more Sydney Harbour Bridge Facts:

The highest point of the arch is 134 metres (440 feet). The pylons are 89 metres (292 feet) high. The Bridge was the highest point in Sydney Australia until 1967.

The longest span of the Bridge is 503 metres (1650 feet). The total length is 1.15km (3770 feet).

The Sydney Harbour Bridge is the fourth longest single-span steel arch bridge in the world, behind Bayonne Bridge in New York, The New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia and the longest which is The Lupu Bridge in Shanghai.

The Bridge is 49 metres (161 feet) wide, making it the widest single-span Bridge in the world.

The weight of the steel arch is 39,000 tons

It took over eight years to build the Bridge, between July 1923 and March 1932. Planning for the Bridge began as early as 1912.

The Bridge was opened in Sydney Australia on 19 March 1932.

Dr JJC Bradfield, who lends his name to the Bradfield Highway in Sydney, prepared the general design, and is considered the ‘Father of the Bridge’. The detailed design and the crucial plans for the erection process were carried out by the contractor’s consulting engineer Ralph Freeman, who later received a knighthood.

The girders are made from steel (79% imported from England and 21% from Australian sources). The pylons are made of concrete faced in granite, which was quarried near Moruya, 300km from Sydney. Around 6 million rivets and 52,800 tonnes of steelwork and 17,000 cubic metres of granite have gone into the construction of the Bridge.

The approach spans were erected first, then work began on the main arch. Two half-arches were built out from each side of the Harbour. Steel members were transported on barges into the Harbour and hauled into position with creeper cranes mounted on the arches, which built the Bridge out before them as they inched forward.

The two halves of the arch were joined on 19 August 1930, bringing a well needed smile to the face of depression-era Sydney. The road deck was then hung from the arch from the centre outwards and was in place within nine months.

If you want to find the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Google Earth the coordinates are 33°51′08″S, 151°12′38″E.

Ahem....

Some little known facts about the bridge:

It's fricking tall.

To climb up it takes about three hours. A little over 1000 steps all said.

There are only two drinking fountains located along the trek, so hydrate before you go.

Yes, it's a fully functioning bridge so when climbing down the east side stairs at their incredibly steep 20 degree slope while the train rattles your teeth by passing only a foot and a half away from you, you may want to hold onto the guard rail.

Don't bother holding onto the guardrail, you're already hooked in to a harness and a body suit that makes you look like a spaceman so if you're going to die, you're going to die looking like an idiot anyway so you might as well be as badass as you can by proving you don't need to hold onto no pansy-ass guardrail.

Just kidding, use the guardrail. Did I mention it's really tall? As the guide said, at the apex, you are 134 meters or 440 feet or about 4.4 seconds away from the surface of the water. Think about that for a little bit. I'll wait.

When they were constructing the bridge, 16 people died. 6 from falling, the rest from work-related injuries.

There was a 7th person who fell but lived. He was an Irish guy who survived and became a bit of a local hero: some British royals heard the story and actually came down under to say "wow, that's pretty amazing that you're still alive, mate. Have a medal, my son. We're off to tea. Ta!" He broke a leg or two, some ribs, messed his face all sorts of up and went back to work in less than a month because it was the Depression and he didn't want to lose his spot in line for work. He also lived long enough to tell the story to anyone who bought him a pint at the local pub. Mind you, he was Irish so he loved telling that story. He's also where the myth came from about throwing your tool-belt into the water to break the surface tension before you hit the water, thus saving his life. This myth was later busted by Adam Savage and Jaime Hyneman (those bastards!)

There is a raven's nest about 2/3 of the way up the east side that gets buffeted by strong winds all hours of all days for a few years now but raven engineering keeps it completely sturdy. No joke.

Many celebrities have made the climb; from Glenn Close to Teri Hatcher to Prince Harry to Ryan Reynolds to Nicole Kidman to a whole heckuva lot of people. They said that on a slow day the Bridge Climb can have up to as many as two-to-three hundred people climbing up and down that damn bridge.

And the most memorable little factoid that stuck with me:

There are over six million rivets holding the bridge in place. The way the bridge was constructed, there was a job called the "Rivet catcher". When a rivet cools it expands, fitting into the drilled hole and sealing the steel tight enough to maintain its structure for hundreds of years. So the operation went something like this:

On the side strut, a guy would heat a rivet to near melting heat; several hundred degrees of pure heated steel. In the center area, someone would be drilling holes for the rivets to fit into. Once the rivets were heated in a small metal smelting bucket, the guy doing the heating would reach in with a pair of long tongs and fling the wicked hot rivet across the span to a guy who stood there with a catcher's mitt or a thick piece of cloth or tanning hide who would then catch the bullet of scalding-hot death spit-fire quick and place it in the hole for the hammerer to hammer the hell's donut hole into place. At this point, I'd like you to take a very close look at the picture above and pay particularly close attention to the place where the bridge struts meet in the middle of that x-like pattern that criss-crosses the entirety of the bridge. Also remember the bridge is 161 feet wide or so. That's where the rivet catcher would work, on a platform the size of a small rug, in rip-your-face-off fast winds, rain, sun, nighttime, daytime, 16 hours a day or more, for weeks on end. Imagine if you will a pitch black night, standing 400 feet above a relatively shallow bay (the average depth of the harbor is about 13 meters or so), the clanging of metal and the shouts of men and the hammering of steel on steel all around you, standing on an incline over the edge of oblivion as a streak of blistering hot metal is flung at you at whiplash speed where you are expected to actually snatch this little piece of hellfire out of the ether with nothing but a catcher's mitt and the will of God. Now multiply this by Six. Million. Times.

No f-ing thank you. I'd rather starve please.

Yeah, so...

Here's some pictures! Woot!