Sydney Harbour BridgeClimb

Sunday 17 April
     Today it was 2 of my closest friends birthdays, so to celebrate they wanted to climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and of course I was totally down to go as it was on my list of things to do while I'm here. We decided to do the night climb because it was the cheapest and we thought the city would be so pretty at night.... we were right.

Harry Potter climbed this bridge! =D

     We got to the BridgeClimb building about an hour before our start time and that was good because we got to calm our nerves and look at the all cool souvenirs and pictures of celebrities who climbed as well. Then we went upstairs and were shown a video of people getting ready for the climb and then started ourselves.
    This part took way longer than I thought, like 45- 1 hour for all 14 of us to get ready. We started by signing off release forms and were given a breathalizer test. The legal limit is .05 here and if you're over you can't climb the bridge, all of us were fine haha. Then we went to another room where we introduced ourselves and got our jumpsuits. We went to yet another room where there were lockers for our things and changing rooms. Just so you all know you cannot take anything up on the bridge that is not firmly attached to your body. i.e. no dangly earrings, no bracelets, no bobby pins in your hair, and nothing in your pockets. We then put on the lovely grey jumpsuits provided and proceeded to another room to get harnessed up and all of the attachments in place. We were given so much stuff to attach to these suits is was unbelieveable! We had a hat, gloves, the key to your locker, a walkie with headphones so you could hear the leader, and 2 jackets. After this we did a small simulation of climbing the ladders and then we started off.

Getting ready to climb! Fabulous jumpsuits!

    One of my friends is extremely afraid of heights so we were right up front by the instructor. I was right behind Kirsten (the one who was afraid) and so to keep her mind off her fears the rest of us decided to entertain her. This included singing, dancing, and booty popping (the 2 jackets were right on our butts) all the way up and down the bridge. I'm sure the instructor, and everyone else for that matter, thought we were insane but we had so much fun we didn't even care.

Opera House!

City!

     On the way up the bridge we got to see the end of the sunset over towards the mountains which was beautiful. The climb wasn't hard, to start you're on wooden beams, almost like scafolding, and that was a little intimidating for most of us, as we're not too fond of ladders, and it didn't seem like we should be walking on the wood area. But after that once we got to the arch is was super easy and the view was fantastic.  We slowly made our way to the top the crossed to the other side of the bridge over the traffic, and proceeded down. The whole thing took probably 2 1/2 hours to walk. There were 1390 stairs and it was a 1.3 miles long walk, but you didn't even notice because the stairs weren't steep, and the view was to great to notice anything else.
    I also learned that although the bridge looks like a perfect curve none of the steel beams putting it together are curved. The bridge is made out of 18 meter long beams that are place at slightly different angles which make the curve look perfect. It was really cool to see that up close.

We climbed all the way to the red light at the top. 

     I highly recommend this to anyone coming to Sydney and I plan on coming back and doing it again! It could have been really boring, but with the right people I had the Climb of my life! (Ha corney, but that's their slogan, so I thought I'd throw it in!) Also, next time I want to do the Twilight climb where you get to see day, sunset and night all in one climb! Wouldn't that be something!

Our climb instructor Mike!