The EdgeWalk
Urban Thrills for Windless Days
The CN Tower, one of the Canada’s most recognizable icons, is not just a “pretty face” of our city of Toronto but it also has a few things to offer for athletes and thrill-seekers like me.
In 2011, the CN Tower opened the EdgeWalk, the world’s highest, full circle, hands-free external walk on a building. It’s a walk on a 5-foot wide ledge around its restaurant’s roof at 356m, (1168 ft) above the ground. Even though I found it a bit pricey, it was a cool, thrilling, adrenalin-fueled experience worth the money and I would do it again. My buddy Chris and I enjoyed our time out there freely suspended half a kilometer above the hustle and bustle of the city.
Apart from the well-known facts about the CN Tower, I enjoy the more obscured ones such as the fact that the CN Tower is almost perfectly vertical. It’s only 2.79 centimeters (1.1 inches) off-center. I find that fascinating, hats off to the builders. By the way, the tower is designed to withstand an earthquake of 8.5 on the Richter scale and winds up to 418 kph (260 mph).
On a different occasion, I also climbed 1,776 steps of the CN Tower’s main stairwell as a part of CN Tower Climb For Nature – WWF fundraiser. Without any special preparation, I leisurely climbed the stairs in 18 minutes. I didn’t stop, I just kept going and weaving through other climbers from one narrow stairwell to the next along the cold cement walls. Even though my time was much better than an average of 30 minutes to reach the top, I was very far behind Brendan Keenoy, who climbed it in just 7 minutes and 52 seconds in 1989 and set the record.
So far, my hardest stair climbing exercise that I have ever done was in our air traffic control tower at Pearson International Airport where I work. The tower has 20 flights of stairs, 15 stairs each, 300 stairs total. I started at the bottom, climbed the first flight of stairs, turned around, and went down. Then I climbed 2 flights, turned around, and went all the way back down. Then I climbed 3 flights and went back to the ground floor. I repeated the process for each floor all the way up. How many stairs did I climb? Yes, 3150 stairs up and 3150 stairs down. It took me 58 minutes to complete the exercise. After going up and down the concrete column, saying “Cleared to land” seemed like an avant-garde activity.
THE CN TOWER ____________________________________________ - 553.3 m-high (1,815.3 ft) concrete communications and observation tower - Project to build the tower became official in 1972, the construction started in 1973, it was completed in 1976, and the construction costs of approximately $63 million CAD ($270 million in 2018 dollars) were repaid in fifteen years. - World's tallest free-standing structure till 2007 when it was surpassed by the Burj Khalifa - World's tallest tower until 2009 when it was surpassed by the Canton Tower in China. It is now the ninth tallest free-standing structure in the world. - Lightning strikes the CN Tower an average of 75 times per year. Long copper strips run down the CN Tower to grounding rods buried below ground to prevent damage. - Wind resistance (swaying) of various parts of the Tower in winds of 120 mph, with 200 mph gusts: Antenna: 1.07 m (3 1/2 ft) from centre SkyPod: 0.46 m (1 1/2 ft) from centre Main Pod: 22.9 cm (9 inches) from centre ____________________________________________