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.