One of the most dangerous and highest points I have climbed (Patreon)

There was a period in my life when I was climbing all the places I had always wanted to. Nowadays I don't have such a desire to climb and it makes me feel bored. One day I thought of traveling to another city to explore it, but I wasn't motivated enough. I'm not going there on my own, I call up my friend Danya and tell him how bored I am that I feel like going to another city or doing something interesting right now. He answers: "I know a place, the second-highest one in the Ukraine. We can try to climb it. The place is highly-secured so if we get caught, we'll be in a trouble". I began searching for the articles about this place in the Internet and found few ones. I wondered if anyone had already climbed it or not.

What is this place like? There is a thermal power station is a power station in which heat energy is converted to electric power. So one of the chimneys is 280 meters high.

It was a spontaneous decision and I started packing up immediately. This factory is located near the place where Danya lives, that is why we decided to stay at his place for a night and to climb the chimney at 5 o'clock in the morning. By the evening, I had got to his place, where I left my stuff and we started making up a plan. As experienced roofing professionals, who have climbed many different places, we know all the possible risks and we can make up a well-detailed plan of the territory. Well, I'm just kidding. We opened Google Maps and used satellite pictures to make sure what exactly was in the territory. Maps are always very useful for me. I can see everything I need. I already knew how I would be able to escape from the territory. We had a couple of ways to the chimney. Moreover, we decided to go out and check it ourselves. We left home not early, but at 10 pm. As it turned out, the place wasn't actually nearby. We had to go through the city, then across the fields and along the semi-abandoned route. After more than an hour, we finally got to our destination. The fence wasn't very high but it was a wire fence. It became clear, that if we got caught, we would unlikely run away. It would be very difficult to climb over the fence. We walked around the fence (where we could get) and found a hole to get into the territory. We didn't know if there were security dogs, where the security guard was, and when they patrolled the area. When I was leaving, the guard noticed me and began asking me what I was doing there. I went away to avoid this conversation. While we were going back home, we were walking in the middle of the route. There was no light nearby so we were using our torch lights. A car was driving towards us, but we could only hear it. I don't get it how the driver knew he was going in the right direction if he could see nothing. When the car stopped right in front of us, on the roof of the car we saw the blue lights being turned on. Yes, it was a police car. I was surprised by the fact that the police car was driving with the lights off, it stopped next to me and I could not find out why it was there at the moment. I carried it off and continued walking. Policemen got out of the car and asked us to stop moving, I didn't stop, I turned round and asked "But why?" while going. One of the policemen came to me and stopped me. My friend also stopped and began talking to the policeman. As we were far in the countryside where nobody goes for a walk at night, the policemen asked us what exactly we were doing there. I said that my friend and I had been going for a walk, then we lost but now were on our way back home. We were asked to show everything we had in our backpacks, it was like a cursory inspection. I show all the stuff I had in my pockets and my backpack and we were let go. It was about 1 am when we came back to friend's place. Obviously, it was not a good idea to go check the territory. I could sleep instead of it. My friend didn't want to sleep at night, but I didn't want to go there at night either.

3 am. I feel worse and worse. I understand that I need to sleep to feel better. I told my friend that I needed an hour to have a nap. I didn't want to go climbing anywhere. Surprisingly, I fell asleep quickly. When I woke up, I felt better, but I still didn't want to climb anything at all. It was already 4 o'clock in the morning and we hadn't much time till the sunrise. We left home and headed to our destination. By the time we almost approached it, dawn was at hand. Now it was much more difficult for us to enter the territory and not to get caught. We had to make up a new plan. I didn't want to catch one's eye so I hid myself every time I saw a car driving by. The guard had seen me before, he understood why I was there so he'd better not notice me this time. There was a guard box near the fence, but the windows were blurred, I couldn't see if anyone was inside. I walked along the fence to check if anybody went out of the guard box. Nobody reacted and I decided to sit near it and watch for a while. My friend was ready to explore the territory, but it seemed to be a very dangerous place. I wasn't afraid of climbing, but of the consequences. If we had got caught there, we would have very big problems. It made me think twice, but my friend was reassuring me and I could not help agreeing because we were right there and we had to climb. As soon as I got on my feet I saw a security guard going to the box. I thought it was a sign and we sat again and waited until he went in. When he was next to it, my friend stood up and began walking along the fence. I caught up with him and asked for what he was doing it. He said: "While he will be entering the guard box, we'll climb over the fence so he won't see us. It's our only option". This idea inspired me and I started going faster. Understood I have little time, I gripped my hands on the edge of the fence and pulled myself up. We choose a part of the fence near a pole to be able to lean on it if things went wrong. I climbed up a fence and stood on barbed wire. I had to imitate a step to prevent the wire breaking and I couldn't really jump as it was a pretty high fence. I pushed off with my left foot and jumped down. Fortunately, I landed on my feet. My friend climbed over the fence just behind me and we began running through the open territory. I was running as fast as possible and looking for any places or corners to hide myself. I came to the huge pipes and climbed over them. I was frightened. I was looking around as I didn’t know if any dogs were nearby. After a few minutes of rest, I decided to continue moving. Then I had to go round the factory. I could see no workers so I didn't have to worry about meeting them, but I should have not to be noticed by the security guard. The pipes were really big and I couldn't go near them, so I had to creep under them. I didn't like this idea at all because I couldn't imagine what could happen in the next minute. I was in like a labyrinth and I could only trust my instincts while looking for an exit. The territory was very vast. After some creeping, I found the edge of the building and saw a building site. I was going through the site carefully and I went around the building. I had to get to the chimney and the most difficult part was over. It was about 6 am, we had already missed the sunrise and we didn't have to hurry up now. I was approaching the chimney very carefully and quietly. It was a complete silence around, it was unusual for such a plant. It was useful for me, though, I could hear the guard going and driving nearby. The closer I was getting to the chimney, the higher it looked. When I was next to it, I looked around and started running towards the chimney. When I was next to it I got it that my only way to get to the ladder was over the building elevator. I had a few seconds to make a plan. I got to the railing and reached out for the ladder. Leaning against a wall, I pulled myself up and began climbing up. It was a relief for me to have a chance to get to the top. I climbed the first 2 levels easily and without taking a break between them.

I see no point in describing my climbing up. I was very difficult and I hardly climbed each level. My arms hurt and it was scary to climb up a wibbly-wobbly ladder. Some of the bolts were literally missing and that's why the ladder was moving a bit. The most beautiful and the funniest moment of the day was when a bus full of people stopped and all of them got out of it and ran away like little ants. I was high enough to see people like small ants. I was climbing there for 2 or 3 hours. When I tell someone about it, they always say "Why did it take you so long? I can do it faster", but when they start climbing such a chimney, it takes them even longer. My arm muscles were so tired that I could hardly straighten arms.

I almost got to the top, I only had to climb up one level and I would got to the highest spot. I had some rest on the previous level so it would be easier for me to continue climbing. I was surprised not because I couldn't achieve the top. Not because I couldn't climb up the ladder, but because the top hatch was under big heavy stones and I couldn't open it. I was really sorry. And again when I told someone this story, they asked me: "Why didn't you climb up the facade? It's easy". Obviously, I answered: "After climbing up the ladder 280 meters high even if you had rest, you can't pull yourself up easily". The problem was also that I couldn't stay there for a long time. I was glad I got there. Few people can climb this chimney, but it's difficult to even enter the territory. I was sitting there and enjoying the view around. It wasn't cold or hot, the weather was perfect. I took some pictures and I was ready to go down. My friend agreed, we began descending. While descending I was making up a plan of our further actions. When we approached the half of the ladder, I looked around examining the territory, looking for ways to escape. It was 9 am and all workers were there. The building site, which I had gone through before, was now full of workers. We couldn't go through it. Some other parts, I had passed by, were working, it made everything more complicated. There was a ladder to the roof of one of the parts of the plant. I started thinking of getting on this roof and then descending somehow. We also had to figure out how to climb over the fence. The territory was open near the fence, the guard would notice me immediately. It's not like a game, it doesn't mean that if I leave the territory, I'll be safe. I won't be safe at all as there is a guard box there. So I continued thinking of other options. And I found one. There was a little bridge made of pipes. If we got there and climbed to the opposite end of it, we could escape. Having this idea, I continued descending.

While I was going down, I hoped no one would see us. There were gates of the fence downstairs and someone was walking there all the time. When I was on the lowest levels, it was much easier to notice me. It was also loud to descend the ladder. Fortunately, nobody saw us, though I saw many people walking on the ground. When I was on the lowest level, I had to estimate how much time I needed to get to the ground and hide myself before I got caught. I told my friend where we would run and asked him to be ready. I began descending, when I was going my first steps down the ladder, I saw workers entering the factory. I stopped moving and making any noise. When they left I descended as quickly as possible. Fortunately, nobody was nearby. I ran to hide behind the pipes in the next moment. I was still nervous and my heart was beating really fast due to physical activity and stress. After 5 minutes of rest, I began acting according to the plan. When I was climbing to the factory roof nobody was there, but on the last stairs, I saw someone walking on the roof. I was at a loss because people from the ground and people from the roof could see me at the same time. I waited a bit, 2 minutes later the worker entered the factory, I climbed up and asked my friend to climb up as fast as possible. I carefully and quickly ran to the opposite part of the factory to see if we could get down there. There was no ladder, but there was construction we could use. It was very difficult to descend as it hardly looked like a ladder. When we got down we had to think of where going next. We looked around and saw a fire truck driving in the territory. It was scary as we thought it drove there to get us out from the chimney. We had to leave at the moment. When we were at the chimney, we noticed that some pipes were about 5-7 meters above the ground and they crossed the border of the territory. We had to climb up them. Thankfully, there was a ladder there. It wasn't really pipes, it was like a bridge for service wires. We secretly climbed up and got in the middle of this bridge. Handrail was half a meter high and it was covered, so I could hide behind it. But people going under the bridge could see us through the open steel flooring. I was holding my backpack by my teeth and going on all fours. After going 5 meters I saw 2 workers watching me. They were probably having a break, they went to the balcony and saw me crawling. I motioned them to say nothing. I was frightened because I was still far from the exit. If I had started running, the security guards would have been waiting for us outside the territory and we would fail. One of the workers nodded me to show that he wasn't gonna tell anyone about me. I continued crawling quickly not to fall into some kind of a trap.

Here is the fence, which separates the factory territory from the road. But I had to get off it. I had only one option, I had to get to the very end and then to come up with an idea of getting down. I almost approached the end when I saw a security guard. I stopped moving to make no noise. The security guard was walking along the road and gathering flowers. It was very unusual of him, he probably was in a good mood. I didn't want to disturb him at all. About 5 minutes later he left and I couldn't see him anymore. I got to the end and faced another difficulty. The bridge had a barbed wire side. It wasn't very difficult to climb it over, but it would make a lot of noise. I got on my feet understanding the guard could see me easily. I stepped over the barbed wire, it wasn't as noisy as I had expected. But when I stood on the pipes, they began creaking very loudly. In the distance, I saw a ladder and started running on the pipes. The main task was to run away from those pipes as soon as possible because if I did everything slowly and carefully, I wouldn't approach the ladder and I would get noticed. When I came to the ladder, I began descending immediately. By chance, nobody saw or heard me. I was surprised. When I was leaving, I had such a relief. I wanted to sleep and my whole body was hurting. But I was so freaking happy I did it. As now I'm one of few people, who have not just been there but have actually climbed the second-highest chimney in the Ukraine. And nowadays it's still a highest spot I've ever climbed.

She helped me with the translation: Sofia Goryacheva