I've been looking forward to this task ever since I first saw it. I love building climbing but I haven't had a chance to do it lately. And like so many other things that I could do but don't, having an SF0 task assigned with it was enough to give me an extra push. There are several buildings in my local area where I've already found roof access, but I decided to forgo those and search out new territory.

One problem with building climbing (or buildering as I've heard it refered to at least once) and tasking is that building climbing is best done at night, since if you do it during the day people tend to ask awkward question like "Why are you climbing on my wall?" which is usually followed up by "stop climbing on my wall" (this happened to me. See Roof 1). This makes photography sort of difficult. So that's why most of my pictures are dark, blurry, and hard to figure out. Sorry. When possible, I went back during the day and took pictures.

Roof 1

Roof 1 was a failure. I did not successfully access the roof, although it could be argued that I did find roof access. This roof belongs to a nearby set of stores, which have this alleyway running through them.



An alleyway that thin, I decided to see if I could shimmy my way up. I figured that few people were on the street so I could safely try this around midwa.y So I put my back to one end, my feet to the other, and got to work pushing my way up.

And it worked, it worked quite well. The problem arrived when I was about halfway up the wall (almost high enough to grab onto a window sill), when a lady came out and asked me too stop. It turned out that the walls of the building were thin enough that I was shaking things on the other side of the wall, alerting her to my presence We had a nice conversation about the ages of the building, about the alleyway, and about the graffiti before I apologized for the trouble and left.

I considered coming back that night and trying it again, this time closer to the street, under the theory that the wall over the alleyway (as pictured in the photo), would add strength to the wall making it less likely to knock things over. But that has the problem that it'd be really easy to notice, especially for people driving by. So I abandoned this project, although I was pretty confident that if the need ever arose, I could indeed find my way up onto the roof.

Roof 2

This building is close to my apartment, so it was a logical first choice. Now, whenever I'm searching roof access, the first step is looking behind the building. The front of the building is far too exposed, plus it's usually too flat.



The back, on the other hand, usually has all sorts of useful things to climb on.



What I really like about climbing buildings is that on a certain level, you really do have to find the roof access. Every building is like a puzzle, which has to be worked out piece by piece. Take the scene above.

How to get up here? Well, what I did was 1. Put my hands on the window sills and push up, so I was dangling slightly off the ground, 2. Bring my foot up onto the right windowsill, 3. Grab onto the bottom of the roof, 4. Pull my other foot on the other windowsill, 5. Grab onto the bottom rung of the ladder, and 6. Pull myself onto the lower roof. Then it was simply up the ladder to get to the roof.

Once on the roof, I realized a problem that I hadn't expected: everything was covered in snow. Which was only a problem because it meant that I made crunching noises wherever I went, which I feared would draw attention. Luckily I was able to avoid too much snow. Having spent some time up there, I decided to come back down, which basically entailed doing exactly the same thing I did to get down, only opposite. Getting down is easier than getting up, because gravities on your side and you call safely fall farther than you can jump but I prefer going up because you can see what you're doing. Plus hands followed by feet allows more control than the opposite.

Roof 3
Roof 3 was first more difficult and then much easier than the second roof. As you can see, it's right next to roof 2.



But I got up there from an entirely different area.



Now my plan was to get onto the bottom rung of the left side of the iron fence, climb up onto the wooden fence, then climb onto the garage. Once on top of the garage, it was just fire escapes all the way up. Unfortunately, when I actually tried this I found that my shoes didn't have anywhere near enough traction to get onto the wooden fence. But what while I was up there, I did notice that on the other side of the fence there was a ladder that lead up to the garage roof.

So instead, I climbed up on the right side of the fence, where the snow was higher and I could use those iron poles for foot holes, got on top of the fence and climbed back down using a window sill and some electrical boxes that aren't pictured.

Once I was on the otherside of the fence, I simply climbed up the ladder, walked across the garage roof, and up a fire escape ladder until I was onto the roof. This roof didn't have snow on it, so I took some pictures of the street below looking off the edge. Afterwards I simply climbed down and left via the front door, which was unlocked from this side.

Conclusions
I really need to do this more often. These three roofs are all under two blocks away from my apartment, so I'm sure there's more places I could find if I searched around for it. But I'm also thinking I might wait until it gets warmer - it was freakin freezing out there and I know this is easier when you're not so encumbered.