West Bay Paint crew, main cable About the Bridge Series Inquiry Sometimes getting to a part of the bridge that needs to be painted is the most challenging part of the job, constantly inspiring new technical approaches and rigging similar to new routes that rock climbers establish to conquer sheer vertical cliffs. In order to paint the suspension cables that support the roadway from the main cables, West Bay Paint uses little two-person baskets that close around each set of four cables and travel vertically along their length from bottom to top and back down again, allowing the pair of painters to paint every inch of vertical cable by hand.These baskets require a wire cable that runs up to a pulley just under the main cable at each suspension-cable saddle, and back down to the roadway, where the height of the basket and its painters can be controlled by an operator running a power winch.The rigger lying across the main cable in this photo is not in trouble,
as it may appear. He’s just grappling to position the pulley in
just the right position under the main cable for that particular set
of suspension cables. When that set is all painted, he and his partners
will disassemble the pulley rigging at both ends, and move the whole
operation down to the next set. |