Above the Gates of Hell

If all human beings on earth vanished tomorrow, 1000 years from now the last human-made structure standing in New York City would be the Hell Gate bridge.  The Hell Gate isn’t my bridge, and means much more to other people than it does to me.     Still, it will always hold a special place in my heart for being the first one I ever climbed.

Climbing the Hell Gate isn’t the tough part – getting there is. Generally, you're looking at about a half-hour haul along the rail tracks.  Trains aren’t really a problem - the bridge is wide enough that there's no real danger of getting hit by a train, and there's no third rail to worry about.  No, my Hell Gate problem was that a few years ago I had chosen the absolute most balls-cold, windiest day of the year to pop my bridge cherry.

Bridge climbing is not really meant to be done in sub-arctic conditions wearing thermal underwear and two overcoats.  But as we drove out to Astoria I couldn't have cared if I had to do it naked.  A passion isn’t measured by enjoyment – it’s measured by how much you’re willing to endure to see it through.  Thoughts of climbing bridges in New York City were literally keeping me up at night, and once I had made the chance for myself I wasn't backing out because of something like the weather.  I was nervous, thrilled, and utterly freezing as we hopped up onto the tracks and started toward the bridge.  We took a flask of whiskey with us not to get up the nerve to do it, but to stay warm enough to keep moving.

One silver lining was that I couldn't imagine there would be anyone else out. A couple years before I went up there a few people I knew ended up getting arrested on top of it - every once in a while there’s complaints of kids throwing things off the bridge and patrols get stepped up a bit. But a cop would have to pull a serious fuck-up to get stuck out on a bridge in the dead of winter.

After an appropriately hellish schlep and hiding from a couple Amtrak trains, we made it up the tracks to the bridge. The stone pillars are hollow, and are a pretty interesting space in their own right. There's stairs from the bottom, to the track level, all the way up the platform on the top.

You can see the interior staircase and just how cold it was) on the right.

Once we got to the platform on top of the stone pillar, I could have hung out there forever. The space was amazing and the view was great. I thought of what a waste it was that this space wasn't utilized as an observation deck, event location, or even just a park. The excitement of getting to experience such an amazing urban space seen by so few was vastly outweighed by my frustration at lack of greater accessibility for all the people who would appreciate it so much, but maybe weren't in the position to take the risks to see it that we were.

Compounding this frustration was the fact that the pillars actually serve no structural purpose. In 1916 the Hell Gate was built as the longest and strongest steel arch bridge in the world in order to provide a direct rail connection between New England, through New York, and to the rest of the United States. The towers were built at the same time, but only for cosmetic reasons. In the Hell Gate's protege, the Sydney Harbor Bridge, the towers serve as a lookout point - and they'll also let you have much the same experience we were having: minus the cold, the walk along the tracks, and a few hundred bucks of course.

But we didn't come to hang out on top of a pillar - we came to climb a bridge, so up we went. It was an easy climb, but I felt like I had ascended Mt. Everest as we posed for pictures at the top.

I by no means consider myself among the superstar NYC bridge climbers, but I’ve been up enough to consider myself a pretty solid journeyman. I can't really say I have a favorite -different ones mean different things to me. Whenever I see the Hell Gate now I think of that bitterly cold day when I first embraced my love of the Bridges of New York County.