Logline

Going Vertical places you side-by-side with the family that owns the leading radio and cell tower construction company…men and women that have one foot on a thousand foot radio tower and the other foot in the grave.

As a tower worker, death isn’t a possibility, its damn certain. Working a job eighteen hundred feet above the earth on a thin stretch of steel makes you one of a handful of people that risks your life so that pimply-faced teens can text for hours and wanna be professional athletes can drain a keg and watch ESPN.

When they aren’t suspended on a needle piercing the heavens atop the world’s tallest building – just to change a light bulb – they’re erecting towers in the wilderness or on sheer cliffs in the Rockies during brutal ice storms; fighting off cougars and grizzlies. The possibility you might die at any moment is sobering.

“One moment I was talking to Jamie and then he slipped on ice on one of the tower braces. OSHA regs say we can free climb. Many guys do it. I had to look away as he hit the ground. I quit that day.”   Devin, Tower Worker

Story

These men have a lot going against them: weather, human error, nature, and pressure from major telcos to erect as many towers as they can as fast as possible to meet the growing demand of wireless devices. Our desire for the biggest, fastest and best phones and other high-tech devices is the fuel for this high stakes business.

C— Tower was started in the Midwest by the S— brothers and has expanded nationally as communications companies rush to keep expanding the country’s communication infrastructure. (Holding agreements reveal the actual company.)

A converted UH-60 military helicopter hovers at the mountain top. The next and most dangerous portion of the operation starts. Company president Jim S. leads the group in prayer; common among these thrill seekers when, at any moment a two thousand pound piece of coax cable can snap, fall and shred the humans working below. Two Tucker Snow-Cat’s crest the top of a mountain in the Colorado Rockies. These men will have 4 days to clear the land, install a cement pad, erect a 450 foot high tower and get out. Last time they were in this mountain range, one of the crew was installing the forms for the cement pad, turned his back and a mountain lion charged from a nearby stand of trees and pulled the man to the ground. Crew foreman, Greg B. pulled a rifle from one of the Snow-Cats and shot the attacker. That not only cost them an extra day and almost seventy thousand dollars, but one of the crew had to be airlifted to Denver, loosing an arm in the process. Now, they bring in several former Army sharp-shooters to guard the camp.