It’s easy to see why the type of behavior in the video above will, if you don’t plunge to your death, at least land you at a police station.
Three teenagers in Russia were taken into custody earlier this month after being caught “skywalking,” according to The Moscow Times.
The Times reports that Vitaly Raskalov, a 19-year-old photographer, and two of his friends were taken to a police station for questioning on May 3 after police officers met them at the bottom of the Russky Island Bridge, a structure with pylons nearly 1,000 feet high. According to RT, a government-backed Russian news network, the police were tipped off when Raskalov uploaded photos from a skywalking session in which the 19-year-old scaled the the 240-meter-high (787-foot) pylons of the Zoltoy Rog Bridge, and shared his plans to scale the Russky Island Bridge the following day.
Now, a video that appears to show Raskalov and a companion climbing has been uploaded to YouTube, and it’s not for the faint of heart. Watch, if you can, as they scale the bridge without any safety equipment, taking pictures and mugging for the camera along the way.
The video was uploaded to a YouTube account with the user ID “raskalovit.” It was also posted on Thursday to a page on VK.com, a Russian social networking site, that appears to belong to Raskalov.
As Gizmodo’s Michael Hession points out, the link on the YouTube page points to the Chupa-Chups website, which leads to speculation that the stunt could be sponsored by the lollipop company. The Huffington Post has reached out to Chupa-Chups, but had not heard from the company at the time of publication.
As for their run-in with the authorities: A follow-up article in The Moscow Times reports that each of the dare-devils was fined 300 rubles ($9.61) for trespassing.
According to Know Your Meme, “Skywalking,” which consists of scaling structures without safety equipment and then uploading the pictures to social media sites, appears to have originated in Russia and has gained popularity over the last year.
For more stomach-churning pictures of skywalking, check out these pictures from Vadim Mahorov. And to find out what Raskalov tweeted after he was released, click over to The Moscow Times.
