Radisson Blue FreeBASE: Denmark, Copenhagen 🇩🇰

1/08/2025

In 2021, I attempted to climb this building. I reached 5m below the top, the vents weren’t properly screwed in.

I climbed back down and got arrested.

On the 1st August I got redemption.

I climbed on the other side of the building, reached the top, and then jumped off it.

Getting this one done was a patience game. I stayed in Copenhagen for just over a week after doing a series of different climbs and jumps off buildings the week before.  I stayed in my bivi, in a field, in the rain, waiting for the weather to turn. After no signs of the right wind, I went back to Berlin for about a month. Day in and day out I became obsessed with Copenhagen’s climate. Copenhagen is a coastal city and it’s very flat, which makes the winds and weather incredibly unpredictable. Eventually, after a month, I saw the perfect weather window and set off in a car from Berlin to Copenhagen.

I remember a very poignant moment on that drive, on one of those long Copenhagen roads, in the dark, sat the building. I couldn’t see the details, but I could 100% make out the outline because of its red aircraft obstruction lights. It was a long road. I turned the music down and fiercely set my eyes onto it... it felt like going to the gallows.

We parked the car in the hotel car park at around 12am. I remember stepping out and looking up at the building. It felt almost inconceivable that I was going to climb and jump off this in approximately four hours’ time. On the other hand, I felt privileged, that I get to pursue a life that contains experiences no one really gets to experience, and in four hours’ time I was going to have one of them.

I slept in the hotel the night before, on the top floor. I really like this idea of immersion, to sleep within the arena. To be at the core. To walk around the place and have this silent knowledge. Only you know. No one else knows what you plan to do. I would stick my head out of the window and breathe the air… knowing full well that before long I’d be going up this building and flying through this airspace.

I went to sleep at around 1am and my alarm went off at 4am. I remember rolling over, putting my feet on the floor and staring at the floor for a good ten minutes. I was trying to flick switches in my mind. I really couldn’t be bothered to go through the pressure of what I needed to do. It is intense. It is always intense. But I’m here for a reason, so after some time, something takes over.

I get the parachute on. I take an elevator to the bottom. Exit hotel. Start climbing it.

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Every step is fear and trepidation. From what I had known on my first attempt, the vents I was climbing weren’t necessarily that secure. They would crack and crunch beneath my feet… making horrifically unsettling sounds.

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The higher I get, the louder the police sirens grow. I see the sunlight hitting the top of the façade and, as the sun rises, the light slowly falls down the building. I climb into the sunlight and feel the heat come up my body. Subconsciously, the higher I get, the more I’m analysing the wind: speed and direction, as I feel it illuminate the nerve cells on my skin.

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I reach the top and I don’t have much time to celebrate. I’m fully aware the police are inside the building and will be working their way up onto the rooftop. I couldn’t let them catch me before I jump.

I quickly set up my parachute and, before I know it, the police are on my rooftop ready to stop me.

I shout, firmly: “WAIT. STOP.” Fortunately, they were incredibly respectful. They registered the tone of my voice and the seriousness of what I was doing. They completely stopped and just let me get on with it.

I stand up on the edge of the building and look down. Grey brutalist concrete unfolds beneath my feet, leading right down to the hard road below. It is relatively low for a freefall BASE jump. I breathe and feel everything.

I then push off… pitch my pilot chute… and wait until my parachute opens. Seconds turn to minutes when you are falling towards Earth, desperately waiting for the moment of security. The tops of the trees begin to appear in my lower vision and, for a split second, I worry there might be something wrong, that it isn’t opening. Until it hits me, with force: the powerful surge of the parachute ripping into life.

Next step: landing.

I pop the toggles… see my landing strip… and fly myself into safety. Funnily enough, there was one car park space free and I carefully parallel parked my parachute into that empty space… almost as if it was left there for me.

Everything stops. The world stops spinning. I stand there breathing slowly. Eyes twitching. Mind wide awake. The air from the world gets sucked out and I’m in the middle, the centre of the universe. The feeling was incredible. I was so grateful to be alive and to have achieved my dream. I had every right to feel this amazing because I really did suffer psychologically in order to get this one done. No matter how hard I try to use word to explain this feeling… it still will not ever give it justice. I just felt incredible.

I remember standing there and looking back up at the building. Admiring it. I love this building for all of the testing that it has given me.

It is a strange sensation because when humans are in states of intensity, the brain isn’t really processing it as a memory… it is just dealing with what is in front of it, instinctively. When I think back to the experience, it all just feels like a flash, a scattered memory. So as I stand there I almost feel like I just teleported from my hotel room to the side of the building, to the air, and then to the ground. The whole episode felt supernatural.

I then just sat down next to my parachute, lit up a cigarette and calmly spoke with the police as if it was just a normal morning.

They then arrested me and took me to the jail, where I played with a plastic cup for five hours before getting released on pretty minor charges.

By George King

The Shard Climber

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Photos by: @hendrikjan.waterman

FPV Drone Video by: @morf.fpv

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#shardclimber #denmark #copenhagen #basejumping

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