21 years ago, I got to go up to the top of the southern tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. Three of us spent about 45 minutes up there, on a warm September night. It was one of the greatest thrills of my life, and also the first time I used a digital camera (a small Fujifilm model).
When I get some more time (if ever!), I’ll post the story, along with the photos.
And also, the story of my friend Jeff starting on the roadway of the north tower at dusk, going up along the cable (with carabiners attached to the handrail cables), climbing to the top of the northern tower, back down to the roadway, up to the top of the southern tower, and making it to the toll gate by dawn the next morning. Not for persons of the faint hearted persuasion.
Here’s what I wrote about it originally (the format is weird because this was when I was using Blogspot, and it’s not compatible with WordPress (or something like that):
blog.shelterpub.com/shelter/_lloyd/bridge_top.html
About Lloyd Kahn
Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the
Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include
Shelter,
Shelter II (1978),
Home Work (2004),
Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008),
Tiny Homes (2012), and
Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:
How friggin’ cool…!
Incredible! Thanks for sharing. Would love to hear the story.
very curious to hear more! I walked across and biked, but climbing – not for me….
Oh boy… I grew up in Marin (Tam Hi class of ’75) and there were several stories (all unconfirmed) of daredevil guys climbing the bridge tower late at night , always in a howling wind with fog blowing through. To this day I don’t know whether any of those stories are true! Makes for a good urban legend though.
These stories are totally true. Jeff McWhinney clipped on carabiners to the cables, started at the north side of the bridge at sunset, went to top of north tower, down to roadbed, up to top of south tower, down to toll plaza area, arriving at dawn. 20 + years ago.