Like Adventure? How About The Highest External Building Climb In The World

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Joe and I have always been up for a little adventure. We’ve gone spelunking on “adventure tours” of several caves and lava tubes:

We went canyoneering and did a 100-foot rappel in Moab, Utah in October, 2007:

We even climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge when we went to Australia in 2014:

So we’re no strangers to adventure with a tiny bit of perceived danger (but probably not a whole lot of actual danger).

Joe likes to do these things because “they’re different.” Me, I like to do them “because I can.” And a new activity just opened in the heart of New York City, in Hudson Yards, and OHHHH, I want to do it!

To backtrack a little, Hudson Yards is a newer mixed-use area that takes up 28 acres in the Chelsea and Hudson Yards neighborhoods on NYC. The area offers residences, shopping and food and drink opportunities, and the Equinox Hotel opened in Hudson Yards in July 2021.

30 Hudson Yards is one of the area’s famed buildings. It’s a super-tall skyscraper; its 103 floors make it 1,295 feet tall. The building is home to several corporate offices, such as those of Wells Fargo, WarnerMedia and Facebook, and it also has studios for several CNN reporters.

The building features an 1,100-foot-tall outdoor observation deck known as “The Edge,” which is located on the 100th and 101st floors. It’s the tallest outdoor observation deck in the Western Hemisphere and the second highest observation deck in NYC, after One World Observatory, at One World Trade Center. Visitors can lean into the nine-foot high clear glass barricade slanted 6.6 degrees outward to safely check out the street and rooftops below. The Edge also features a 225 square foot glass triangle in the floor which looks down to the street, 1,131 ft below. There’s also a grand outdoor staircase on the east side of the deck.

And now, to make things even more interesting, you can climb the OUTSIDE of 30 Hudson Yards. Yep, you can scale the building.

The attraction is called “City Climb at Edge” and allows visitors to ascend an outdoor staircase located at the top of the tower’s crown. It was opened to the public on November 9, 2021 and is the highest open-air building ascent in the world.

How It Works

Obviously, with an activity like this, there are a lot of rules. Climbers are fully harnessed prior to taking their first steps and remain harnessed for the duration of the course. Each climber is attached to two thick cables that move along with them (they had a similar setup at Bridge Climb, in Sydney), which makes it easy to ascend from one step to the next and still stay safe. You don’t need to have any special climbing experience but should be comfortable with both heights and steep steps.

The experience is similar to a real mountain climb, with 3 sections of ascent: the Cliff, the Stair, and the Apex.

The Cliff features only (only!) 32 steps. When you reach the top of the Cliff, you’re 1,190 feet above the ground.

The Stair has 161 steps, and they’re all at a 45-degree angle, which makes them harder to climb.

The Apex is, in mountain climbing terms, the ‘summit.’ When you reach the Apex, you have the opportunity to lean back and get a near-360° panoramic views of the city skyline (which, ahem, is BELOW you).

Tickets for City Climb are $185 per person, and there are age, height and weight requirements that are explained, with other pertinent information, on this page.

Cool huh? I would LOVE to do this…

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