Fitness
Urban Climbing
Thomas van Tonder’s 600-bar battle to cross the Bloukrans Bridge
Six hundred monkey bars. A 45° incline. Forty-seven minutes and 37 seconds above the river. Discover how Thomas van Tonder took on one of his biggest challenges yet.
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Thomas van Tonder came to the Bloukrans Bridge a bit too confident - he’ll tell you so himself. The bridge sorted that out early.
“I almost want to say that the bridge humbled me to a certain extent,” he says. “I came in a bit cocky. I came in a bit confident, and that incline humbled me for sure.”
That's quite something coming from van Tonder. He's an obstacle course racing world champion. He's climbed 90m of free-hanging rope for a Guinness World Record. Hanging on is basically his job. The bridge made him work for every bar anyway.
On October 26, it took him 47m 37s to cross 600 monkey bars slung beneath the arch, about 280m of them, 216 m above the river. Up a 45° climb, across the crown and down the far side, all by hand, on the longest monkey bars ever built.
"I just completed one of my biggest dreams and missions for the last two years," he said at the finish. "I'm just grateful for it all. We actually made it to the other side."
01
Red Bull Bridge Bars at a glance
The scale of van Tonder's achievement is apparent when you take a step back
© Wayne Reiche/Red Bull Content Pool
- Athlete: Thomas van Tonder
- Location: Bloukrans Bridge, South Africa
- Challenge: Cross the bridge’s arch using monkey bars, by hand
- Number of bars: 600
- Distance: Approx 280m
- Max height: 216m
- Steepest incline: 45°
- Completion time: 47m 37s.
02
The bridge had already got inside his head
The iconic bridge posed one of the sternest tests van Tonder has ever faced
© Craig Kolesky/Red Bull Content Pool
The bridge had been haunting his thoughts for a long time.
The first time van Tonder stood underneath it, the arch looked much bigger than it did on camera. "Like standing at the base of a tall building," he said. "I thought, 'What have we done?'"
He could have taken the easy line, a straight run of bars across the top. He chose the arch because he wasn't sure he could do it. "This is by no means something I know I can do," he said before the attempt, "which means it's the right challenge."
The first time he tried incline bars at home, he managed about six meters. Six months, a rig built on the side of a mountain, tendonitis and a lot of ripped skin later, he was standing at the bottom of the real thing.
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The brutal business of climbing backwards
"This is by no means something I know I can do," said van Tonder
© Joerg Mitter/Red Bull Content Pool
It began at 10.21am local time, under a light breeze, with the whole crew taking a collective breath. "All that’s left to do are the bars," he said.
The bridge opened with its steepest hand. At 45°, the first stretch is so steep that he can't face forwards. He needs to turn his back to the bars, pull himself up and reach for the next one, over and over, while the bridge does nothing but get higher.
The weather looked ominous. His heart rate was already at 150, and five minutes in, his hands were feeling it. By 10.34, he was saying so out loud. "Hands are not feeling great."
He'd always known the climb would be the hardest part. It still went further than he'd pictured. "It was easily double that," he said. "We simulated and trained as much as we could, but nothing can really compare to just the continuous beating that that incline puts on the same muscle group."
"That was the main mission," he commented afterward. "Just stay on the bars, small pieces at a time."
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The hardest part was the mental challenge
Thomas van Tonder had to mentally break the bridge into sections
© Wayne Reiche/Red Bull Content Pool
At the crown, the arch flattens and the bridge changes tactics.
"I'd say that was, to me, the mentally toughest part," van Tonder said. "I was more tired than I expected to be going into that middle segment, and I found it really difficult to get any rhythm. The hands just didn't do what I thought they would be able to. Just keeping them closed was so hard."
There was one zone where he could swing and skip bars in a more traditional monkey bar rhythm. Even there, the smaller bars wouldn't give him a good swing.
Looking ahead made it worse. "If you look at the finish, it's so far out of reach and there's so many bars in between," he said. "It seems undoable."
So, he stopped looking at the finish. He chopped the course into small pieces and told Richard Lievaart, the event’s Head of Rigging and Safety, over comms which point he was aiming for next. "Not that it made it easier," he said, "but more mentally consumable."
Deep into the middle, his body started sending warnings. "There were definite moments … when my head started kind of throbbing, and I knew I had to turn myself back around," he said. "Because if I stay like that, I’d faint."
The problem was his hands. "I have to get back up, but I'm not sure if my hands would actually carry me." He had to have self-confidence. "Just trusting myself that they would," he said, "and they did."
05
Every bar became a battle
"From the middle segment to the end, I was unsure if I'd actually make it"
© Moegammad Abrahams/Red Bull Content Pool
On the descent, gravity does the pulling, and van Tonder has to do the opposite. Slow down. Catch every bar. Refuse to let the speed rip his hands off. The way down mirrors the climb, starting level and steepening to 45° at the finish.
"As soon as we started getting into the descent, I think I got a bit more rhythm," he said. "But again, the fatigue was way past what I expected it to be."
The doubt didn't let go. "From the middle segment to the end, I was unsure if I'd actually make it," he said. "There were many points where I was on the edge of being able to actually get my legs up or not. It was definitely not a given."
So, when did he start believing?
"Probably in the last 40 meters," he says. Roughly the last quarter, when the next piece of bridge he was aiming for was the finish itself. That was the first time he let himself think he could actually get it done.
"The rest of it," he said, "was a fight."
In the last 20m, one thought ran on repeat. "The voice in my head was just, like, make sure, make sure, make sure, make sure every single bar," he said. "I was so afraid that I would have a slip of hand, or a glitch, and I'd miss a bar. So super focused on that last piece, because my body was wrecked."
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The cost of the crossing
Van Tonder's hands bore the brunt of the feat
© Craig Kolesky/Red Bull Content Pool
His hands told the story. The tape on his fingers was ripped right through.
They held up better than he'd feared. "I feel like I over prepared for them being wrecked, and that kind of saved me in a way," he said. The palms he'd expected to tear were "surprisingly OK".
"At least I can close them again now," he said. "Yeah, they hurt."
07
The team behind the achievement
Van Tonder didn't take on the bridge alone, and he's quick to say so.
The bridge set its own terms. Nothing could be bolted or drilled. Richard Lievaart, Head of Rigging and Safety Director at Vertical Safety Systems (VSS), started out as van Tonder’s mate from the climbing gym. He and his team rigged the course with two independent points of safety and not a single permanent fixing.
Richard Lievaart was the mastermind of the monkey bars
© Joerg Mitter/Red Bull Content Pool
Climbing legend Stefan Glowacz helps van Tonder prepare
© Wayne Reiche/Red Bull Content Pool
"The hardest problem to solve was that we couldn't bolt the bridge at all," Lievaart said before the attempt.
For van Tonder, the team is the real story. "Some people rigged through the night to make sure this bridge is ready for me this morning. And then they stayed up there to keep me safe," he said. "It pushed us all outside of what we were comfortable and capable of. And I'd like to put to the world that that, to me, is where the real value in all this lies."
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The lesson in humility
Thomas van Tonder reaches "the pinnacle of a year of work"
© Joerg Mitter/Red Bull Content Pool
Becoming a dad is a big part of why van Tonder took this on. "The people who look up to you learn far more from what you do than from what you say," he said before the attempt.
He keeps being the first person to cross the Bloukrans arch this way in perspective. "There aren’t a lot of things in the world that haven't been done, and I'm sure it's a pretty cool thought, thinking that I'm the first person to do something specifically like this," he said. "But to me, it's more, I have finished what I started. I set the big, crazy goal and we actually get it done."
"To me, today means the pinnacle of a year of work, six months of commitment and multiple people coming together," he said. "That's a bit surreal."
And the bridge? It got the last lesson in.
"If you're gonna take on something like this," van Tonder said, "you’ve gotta come in humble."
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