01/11/2026
Kevin Schmidt does not have a normal job.
Every six months, he wakes up, drives to a remote field near Salem, South Dakota, and stares up at one of the tallest structures in the region: a 1,500-foot television broadcast tower.
That's 457 meters. Taller than the Empire State Building's roof.
And at the very top—so high it's barely visible from the ground—there's a lightbulb.
When that lightbulb burns out, Kevin has to climb up and replace it.
No elevator. No helicopter. No crane.
Just Kevin, a harness, a safety line, and a toolbox.
"Just another day at the office," Kevin says.
But for everyone else watching—especially the millions who've seen the drone footage of his climb—it looks like something out of a nightmare.
Kevin has been a tower climber for over 8 years. He works for Sioux Falls Tower & Communications, and he does everything: builds towers, takes them down, performs maintenance, replaces equipment.
Some days, he climbs as many as eight towers.
This particular tower—the inactive KDLT TV analog broadcast antenna—is one of his regular assignments. Every six months, the FAA-mandated beacon light at the top burns out and needs replacement.
The light isn't decorative. It's critical. It warns aircraft—planes flying through the area at night or in bad weather—that there's a massive steel structure directly in their flight path.
Without that light, a pilot could fly straight into the tower.
So when the bulb burns out, someone has to climb 1,500 feet to replace it.
That someone is Kevin.
The climb takes hours.
Kevin starts at the base, hooks his safety line to the tower's metal framework, and begins ascending. Step by step. Rung by rung. Clip. Unclip. Reclip. Over and over again.
Every few feet, he has to unhook his safety line from one section and rehook it to the next. It's a constant rhythm: climb, stop, unhook, reach up, hook in, climb again.
If he makes a mistake—if he forgets to clip in, if his harness fails, if he loses his grip—he falls 1,500 feet.
There's no safety net. No backup. Just him and the harness.
As he climbs higher, the wind picks up.
At ground level, it might be calm. But at 500 feet, 1,000 feet, 1,500 feet? The wind can hit 60 miles per hour.
The tower sways. Kevin sways with it.
He's climbed in every season. Summer heat. Winter cold. Spring storms. Fall winds. Sometimes the weather changes mid-climb, and he has to make split-second decisions about whether to keep going or descend and try again another day.
But on this particular November day in 2014, the weather is perfect.
Clear skies. Light wind. Stunning views of the South Dakota plains stretching out in every direction.
A drone—flown by a company called Prairie Aerial—is filming Kevin's climb. The footage is surreal.
The camera follows Kevin as he ascends, higher and higher, until the ground below becomes a patchwork quilt of farmland and the horizon curves.
At 1,000 feet, Kevin is above most small planes.
At 1,500 feet, he's at the summit.
And there, at the very top of this massive steel structure, Kevin does what he came to do:
He changes a lightbulb.
It's not even a special bulb. It's roughly the size of an orange. Takes maybe 10 minutes to unscrew the old one, screw in the new one, and make sure it's working.
But getting to that bulb? That took hours.
And once he's done, Kevin does something that makes everyone watching the video gasp:
He takes out his phone and snaps a selfie.
Casually. Like he's standing on solid ground instead of perched 1,500 feet in the air on a narrow metal platform with nothing but sky around him.
The photo shows Kevin grinning, the endless South Dakota plains spread out behind him, clouds drifting below.
Then he begins the long climb back down.
For this climb, Kevin earns $20,000.
That sounds like a lot of money. And it is—for a single day's work.
But consider what he's risking.
One mistake. One equipment failure. One moment of lost focus.
That's it.
Tower climbing is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. The fatality rate is 10 times higher than construction work. Workers die every year from falls, equipment failures, and electrocution.
Kevin knows the risks. He's seen colleagues get injured. He's heard the stories of climbers who didn't make it.
But he keeps climbing.
"I didn't expect it would get this big," Kevin said in 2015, after his video went viral.
The footage—posted on YouTube in November 2014—initially got around 250,000 views. Then it exploded. Within days, it hit 600,000. Then millions.
People couldn't look away.
The perspective was dizzying. The height was incomprehensible. The casual way Kevin moved through space 1,500 feet above the ground made viewers' palms sweat just watching from their phones.
Comments poured in:
"My hands are sweating just watching this."
"Absolutely not. No amount of money."
"This man is insane."
"I got vertigo watching from my couch."
But for Kevin, it wasn't insane. It was his job.
He's from Rapid City, South Dakota. He's climbed hundreds of towers across dozens of states. He's worked in rain, snow, heat, and wind. He's rebuilt towers after storms, installed equipment, performed emergency repairs.
This is what he does.
And he's good at it.
The $20,000 per climb reflects the specialized skills required. The risk. The physical endurance. The mental focus needed to climb for hours without making a single mistake.
Most people couldn't do this job for $100,000. For $1 million.
Because the money doesn't matter if you're dead.
But Kevin isn't reckless. He's trained. Experienced. Methodical.
Every clip of the safety line is deliberate. Every handhold is tested. Every movement is calculated.
He trusts his equipment. His training. His own hands.
And twice a year—every six months—he makes that climb.
Because somewhere up there, 1,500 feet above the South Dakota plains, a lightbulb needs changing.
And if it doesn't get changed, a plane could fly into the tower.
So Kevin climbs.
Not for glory. Not for viral fame. Not even really for the money.
He climbs because someone has to.
And he's the one willing to do it.
Every six months, Kevin Schmidt climbs 1,500 feet into the sky.
He changes a lightbulb the size of an orange.
He takes a selfie.
And then he climbs back down.
$20,000 per climb.
But no amount of money can compensate for the moment—1,000 feet up, wind howling, tower swaying—when you unclip your safety line to move to the next section.
And for just a second, your life depends entirely on your grip.
That's Kevin Schmidt's office.
And he shows up twice a year.
