PlayFrench spiderman scales new heights
Published: Tuesday, 15 April 2008, 10:45PM
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It's the French spiderman!
French climber Alain Robert scaled the 45-storey Four Seasons Hotel overlooking Hong Kong's historic Victoria Harbour in a bid to promote awareness about climate change.
Hong Kong office workers out for their lunch break watched with awe and some worry as Robert slowly made his way from the ground up the glass and steel structure with no ropes or safety devices.
Robert used the building's steel rods for support and for pulling himself up to the top.
He had kept his location a secret before the climb for fear he would be arrested after his attempt. But police stood calmly below the scene with a few ambulances awaiting.
"What's a little bit worrying is you can see him scaling sort of horizontally instead of vertically, which means he's having difficulty getting past that next level," said one onlooker who works in a nearby office tower.
Robert is known for his "free climbing" and has scaled some of the world's most famous buildings including the Eiffel tower and Shanghai's Jin Mao Tower, after which he was briefly jailed.
He has been arrested and fined more than 100 times for climbing skyscrapers around the world.
The 46-year old climber polished his rock climbing skills in the French Alps before turning to buildings in 1994.
Robert told reporters that the climb was an attempt to promote attention to the impact of global warming.
"I think to make understand the world that we don't have any time in front of us. We do need to act right away," said a calm Robert to a journalists at a nearby hotel before the climb.
Robert said he wanted to talk to reporters before he climbed because afterwards he would "feel a little shaky".
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