Three men from Russia and Ukraine climbed to the pinnacle of one of the world’s tallest towers, bare-handed, to take selfies at the top. Again.
The group, including Vitaliy Raskalov and Vadim Makhorov from photography collective On The Roofs, scaled the Shun Hing Tower in Shenzhen, while most of the rest of the city was enjoying Chinese New Year. The building is the southern Chinese city’s third tallest and, at 384 meters (1,260 feet), the 28th tallest in the world.
The video below details their ascent, including the sweat-inducing climb up the building’s antenna, which accounts for the final 60 meters or so:
The climb was not the group’s first in China. Around the same time last year, On The Roofs climbed Shenzhen’s Ping An Finance Center. The 600-meter-tall building is the world’s fourth-tallest.
In 2014, the group collaborated with some Hong Kong-based videographers to document their climb in the heart of the city’s downtown. The inclusion of drone footage among the top of the city’s forest of skyscrapers provides some excellent angles. And, as an extra touch, the group rewired the building’s multi-story electronic billboard to remove the sponsor message and replace it with their own.
But it was an earlier 2014 climb on the Shanghai Tower—the world’s second-tallest building—that gained On The Roofs the most attention and inspired them to make such daring climbs a tradition.
Since then, the group has clambered over buildings and monuments worldwide, from towers and bridges in Russia to Christ the Redeemer in Brazil.