A Life On The Edge

French-born new American citizen Juju Julien has led a peripatetic life. Now settled in Telluride, he says the American Dream has nothing to do with money; it’s about opportunity.

For Juju Jullien, a life on the edge (Raised in the French Alps, rope technician now calls Telluride home): On a recent weekday morning, a crowd of a dozen or so tourists gathered on a rugged switchback leading up to the top of Bridal Veil Falls, tumbling out of their four wheel drive Jeeps to gawk and take pictures.

The scene was beautiful: a bluebird day, the box canyon walls resplendent in their deep, earthy red and Bridal Veil Falls tumbling down with renewed vigor after recent rain and snow. But the tourists were focused on something else: a man walking across a newly installed water pipe like an acrobat, a grin on his face. Below the pipe is nothing but hundreds of feet of empty void before the nearby falls crash onto loose rock.

That man is Juju Jullien. Oblivious to the tourists below snapping pictures of his nimble ascent, he is focused on his work getting water pipes installed to eventually bring water from Blue Lake to the Pandora water treatment system. “Since I was a kid I always loved to approach the void and just stand up and try to control my fear and my balance,” Jullien said in an interview during a break from work, relaxing against a windowsill inside the Bridal Veil Power Station. “I think it’s beautiful. I’m never as happy as I am when I’m on the edge,” he added.

A crowd of onlookers gather below Juju Jullien, who is working with his rope access company just below the Bridal Veil Power Station.

Jullien grew up in the French Alps, and has an air of fearlessness and aliveness that is typical of mountaineers and alpinists when they are in their element. For 15 years, Jullien worked in the Alps as ski patrol, bombing avalanches and patrolling the backcountry. Starting in 1994, he would spend the off-season between winter and summer seasonal mountain jobs working in the burgeoning world of rope access.

Rope access work started in the 1980s in France, when urban companies in Paris and Lyon would call upon mountaineers to help with work like window washing and construction. The first real rope access company was called Les Alpinistes du Bâtiment, or the building alpinists. Mountain guides and alpine climbers flocked to the work, a natural fit for their bravery and technical skill on vertical walls.

Julien has lived in the U.S. since 2002 legally, and has since become a U.S. citizen. In 2005, he started RopeTech, an employee-owned window-washing and roof-shoveling business.

Jullien found plenty of gigs doing rope access work: installing phone antennas, washing windows, even rigging safe via ferrata routes in Europe. He’s even worked on offshore wind farms in Denmark and rigged 22,000 strobe lights to the Eiffel Tower. Then he found Telluride, a mountain town paradise for a ski mountaineer like him with the added benefit of plenty of rope access work. He started by window washing at The Peaks and has found work ever since. “I live in Telluride and I have a job in my specialty. I feel lucky. I worked hard for it, but I feel lucky,” he said.

Back to that opening scene, where Jullien is walking across a 2000-pound steel pipe to the marvel of a crowd of people below. What the tourists can’t see from far away is the redundant safety system that Jullien and his workers maintain. He and his business partner Damon Johnston, with whom he runs a company called Access in Motion, are certified by the both the Industrial Rope Access Trade Association and the Society of Professional Rope Access Technicians.

They always have two locking carabiners affixed to a static rope when they’re working at height, in addition to the professional grade equivalent of what is essentially a Petzl GriGri, a belay device that automatically locks if the wearer takes an unexpected fall. “Unless someone shows up and cuts my rope, nothing can happen to me,” Jullien said. “And I have a double rope system.” “It seems dangerous, but it’s the safest industry in the construction industry,” he added.

Julien saw an opportunity to use his technical rope and rigging skills to extend his work visa. He would go to England to obtain a worldwide certification for rope access and rigging, something he says doesn’t’ really exist in the U.S.

While rope access gear is similar to that used by rock climbers, much of the professional gear was actually inspired by cavers. Cavers use static ropes (rock climbers use dynamic ropes that stretch) and cavers also depend on ascenders, or jumars, to climb back up out of the cave they descended into to explore.

It’s not easy work. Jullien’s current work site with the Town of Telluride project is at 10,500 feet, with the cold, wet Bridal Veil Falls constantly booming in the background. Plus the job itself is a physical challenge: lifting, pushing, rigging and climbing. “We help each other like we would do climbing or hanging out in the mountains,” he said. He and his team always work in pairs: two points of contact with safety ropes, two ropes and two workers who are trained to rescue each other if anything goes wrong.

“You try to be alive every day, by taking chances,” Jullien said. “There are pros and cons of that lifestyle, but I like it. There is only so much you can go against your own self. That’s me.” With that, the interview is over and Jullien swings out of the open window, clips back onto his rope, and walks above the void again. Back to work, living and working on the edge.

Telluride’s Transparent Cleanliness

Mark Plantz, owner of Mark’s Window Washing, has been keeping Telluride’s windows clean for 16 years. Click to enlarge.

Transparent cleanliness: It’s the day after a particularly heinous dust storm, and the evidence is everywhere. Cars, benches and windows all sport a fresh brown coat. A dusty truck rumbles down Colorado Avenue, pausing as its driver sees a group of rivals across the street. The window rolls down and a series of gang signs flash back and forth between the driver and his opposing posse.

The truck’s driver has thrust both arms out the window, shaping the fingers of one hand into an M and the other into a W, for Mark’s Window Washing. Once the laughter dies down, they all get down to business, and main street’s windows slowly morph from translucent, dusty messes into gleaming transparencies.

“I’m always stoked when I see dust on the horizon,” said Mark Plantz, who has owned Mark’s Window Washing for the past 16 years, always sporting the motto “Safe. Reliable. Courteous.” “I do emergency window washing, too. I’ll put a red light on the truck and rush to your house.”

Plantz said he gets most of his business by word of mouth, but his long running ad in the Daily Planet has helped, too. “It’s turning into an icon, like Betty Crocker,” he said. “If you look at the ad, I haven’t aged in 20 years.”

Paul Pierce of Mark's Window Washing rappels down to buff the skylights.

Plantz used to get most of his business at the Last Dollar Saloon and the now-defunct Swede-Finn Bar, coming home from nights’ revelry with names and numbers scrawled on his palm. Nowadays, most people in town know who he is. In fact, a handful have actually worked for him over the years.

“I usually have anywhere from four to seven guys working for me at any given time, but I tallied it up, and more than 100 have claimed the honor at one time or another,” he said. “I always see ‘em walking down the street and say we say hi. I pay ‘em a decent wage and treat ‘em right, so I don’t have anyone going around town saying I was a lame boss.”

According to Plantz’s experience, washing windows is one of those trades most people wouldn’t notice unless it went away. Main street shopkeepers — eager to show off their wares as clearly as possible — are the most obvious beneficiaries of the service he provides. But new homes, coated in construction grime but ready for sale, are also a big deal.

“Sometimes it can take months or even years to build a house,” he explained. “The windows can get pretty dirty, so we get out there and clean ‘em up so that they’re ready for sale.”

Asked what they want to be when they grow up, most children opt for iconic professions such as astronaut, firefighter or doctor. Plantz said that his choice to wash windows for a living boiled down to finding a way to become part of Telluride’s community fabric. He found a niche that needed to be filled, and went for it.

“I was just a slope dope and needed a job like everyone else,” he said, grinning. “After I learned the skill from Jerry Robertson, I got busier and busier. I’d like to put two kids through college, so if you need your windows washed, I’m safe, reliable, courteous.”

The Immigrant High-Rise Window Cleaner: His Story

Immigrant Experience: Juju Julien Loves the Possibilities by Jesse James McTigue. WE DO WINDOWS – French-born new American citizen Juju Julien has led a peripatetic life. Now settled in Telluride, he says the American Dream has nothing to do with money; it’s about opportunity.

There are many things about Juju Julien that are French through and through. He speaks English with a heavy French accent, he sips cold, white wine throughout our interview and he is in a whimsical love affair. His affair, however, is not with a woman. Instead he is in love with possibility and independence – two ideals that also make him very American. Julien was born in France, but seemingly raised all over the world. Instead of a place, the vast experiences and eclectic group of people he encountered influenced him most throughout his formative years.

“Sometimes you take a look at your life, and it’s like shaking sand [through a sifter],” Julien explains. “And, you see what stays on top – the key moments [in your life].” For him, what is left represents those experiences and people who have made him who he is today. After sifting his life, the substrate that remains is boarding school, traveling and ski patrol. Julien was first sent to boarding school when he was seven. “My mom couldn’t handle me,” he explains, then with a wry grin adds, “I had too much energy.” Although he was away from his mom for most of his childhood, he claims he still felt her influence. “She raised me from a distance,” he explains.

After floating through different boarding schools, Julien finally found one where he fit in, an international school in Le Chambon sur Lignon called College Cevenol. "I loved it,” he explains, “because there were kids from all over the world and teachers from all over the world, you do your own schedule, and it’s in the woods.” Julien’s education was supplemented by intermittent, international trips with his dad. His dad left the family when Juju was seven and worked internationally as a civil engineer, completing stints in Algeria, Kuwait and Haiti, to name a few. When Juju was 15, he recalls biking with his dad from France to Algeria. “He has many flaws,” Julien explains, “but he taught me a way of traveling, which is, you leave everything you know at home and you go with a naked brain.”

Three years later, in 1986, Julien accompanied his dad to Haiti, where he volunteered to improve the island’s water distribution system. “I saw people who had huge resumes, hydraulic engineers,” he recalls, “but they couldn’t deal in Haiti.” But for Julien, confronting remote areas and unconventional situations with a “naked brain” is how he thrived. Ski patrol became an obvious career fit for Julien, so after finishing school, he moved to Tignes and began working as a patrolman. In retrospect, patrol taught Julien the skills he would rely on in all of his future pursuits. “Patrol was huge.” Julien says. “You work hard, you work on a team and learn the mountains…you need to know about mountaineering, you need to know about explosives, you fly in helicopters. I don’t think people realize how much skill it takes to be a ski patroller.”

For the next decade, Julien took advantage of the flexibility of ski patrol life, working in the Alps and Australia; spending a year with a tribal group, the Kanaks, on New Caledonia; and completing a U.S. ski safari that included two weeks in Squaw Valley, Jackson Hole, Aspen and Telluride ski resorts. “I brought like 20 pounds of cheese and sausage,” Julien recalls. “You can find good wine here, but good cheese and sausage is hard to find. You travel like this with ski patrollers, you get the best.” This was Julien’s first introduction to the U.S.

Through a string of French-ski-patrol-exchange participants and like-minded-mountain-people, Julien returned to Telluride in 2000 for a friend’s wedding. Julien made fast friends, experienced his first Bluegrass Festival, fell in with the lifestyle and continued to come back for three-month stints – the maximum time his visas would allow. “You never think you can overstay your visa,” Julien recalls, “but you love it so much, it’s worth it to stay and be illegal than go home.” After a few visits, Julien fell into the temptation and overstayed his visa.

During this time, Julien saw an opportunity to use his technical rope and rigging skills to extend his work visa. He would go to England to obtain a worldwide certification for rope access and rigging, something he says doesn’t’ really exist in the U.S. It would allow him to do high-angle work on dams, towers, windmills, oil rigs, buildings and, most importantly, give him a special talent qualifying for him for a longer visa. The catch: He was currently illegal in the U.S. and couldn’t get out. “I didn’t want to cross the border [into Canada] with an expired visa,” he explains. “They would ban for me for ten years.” Instead, Julien crossed into Canada hidden in the back of a truck, then flew home to get his paperwork in order.

Julien has lived in the U.S. since 2002 legally, and has since become a U.S. citizen. In 2005, he started RopeTech, an employee-owned window-washing and roof-shoveling business. Julien, along with one of his partners, also work wherever opportunity calls. “Now we work in Alaska, we work everywhere,” Julien explains. “I was in South Korea working on an oil ship.” He grins and points toward the company’s mantra, embroidered on his one-piece, denim jumpsuit. It reads, “Don’t smoke, but love to get high.”

For Julien, the allure of living in the US has been the fulfillment of his version of the American dream. “My French friends talk about the American Dream, but they don’t know what it means," he explains. “They think it means making a million dollars, but it has nothing to do with money, it’s about opportunity. It’s more about being excited by doing something of your own – I love the possibilities.”

Also featured before here.