WATCH: Czech climbers make dizzying ascent up large industrial chimney

Climbing an industrial chimney without safety equipment is not most people’s idea of fun – but for one group of Czechs, it is a hobby.

Members of the Czech Union of Chimney Climbers scale all the tall chimneys they can find for thrills and incomparable views.

Some three dozen members tackled the 200 feet chimney of a former textile factory one recent Saturday – looking like ants crawling up a tower into the sky.

Some of them made the climb without any security equipment, some wore a helmet, while others used just gloves.

A 76-year-old former athlete was among their number – as well an eight-year-old boy.

Climber Lenka Chroustova said the sense of freedom she feels at the top of the chimneys is like a drug: “it is great against stress.”

The climbers have created a database of 9,755 chimneys in the Czech Republic and abroad with details including their exact position, height, condition and photographs.

Ondrej Mraka travelled more than 186 miles from the city of Brno to Dolni Smrzovka to climb the chimney.

Mraka sat on the top of the chimney, while others claimed a completed climb by tagging the foot of someone already at the top.

The group started as the Soviet-era dream of a teenager – Vladimir Randysek – who gazed out from his home at a 460 feet Prague chimney for years, thinking how liberating it would be to climb it.

In 1981, he and three friends decided to make the dream reality.

What was supposed to be a single adventure turned into a regular pastime.

Gradually, it attracted more enthusiasts who say they consider their hobby a way of life.

The union says that there has only been one serious accident in more than 33 years, when a climber, who was not a member of the union, suffered from a heart attack and died.

Today, more than a thousand members of the union make sure that a chimney is climbed every single day.