It was right around the time he laid his belly on a thin beam of steel, 409 feet above the ambulances and dump trucks traveling the George Washington Bridge, that Adrian Farrell began to wonder just what the heck he’d gotten himself into.

“It looks easy,” Farrell said, a few minutes after returning from the top of the bridge. “It’s really hard. It’s mentally racking. My legs were shaking. I was thinking I could fall over at any time.”

Given the test he’d just taken, Farrell’s fear was totally reasonable. Along with eight other people, Farrell had signed up for a tryout Thursday to join the George Washington Bridge paint crew. The three-part application process is administered by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the bridge. It includes a written exam, plus a tryout using the compressors, power tools and safety harnesses required for the job.

Smack in the middle of the application process comes the height test. The George Washington rises 604 feet from the salty water of the Hudson River to the tippity-top of its twin steel towers.

The question posed by the height test is simple: Can you handle it?

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Can you “walk the barrels?” That's bridge-speak for navigating the smooth steel casings containing 107,000 miles of parallel wire that keep this suspension bridge suspended. Can you “climb the knuckle,” a challenge in which job applicants must find a way to scale the X-shaped cross hatches where the bridge’s structural beams meet? (This part of the test must be accomplished with no ropes, no net, no safety equipment whatsoever.)

Can you walk 25 feet across a steel beam suspended 60 stories in the sky, bend down, lay your belly on the beam, and then stand up, all without quivering like a flag in a hurricane?

Remember, this beam is 6 inches wide.

“This is a pass-fail test,” said James Russo, co-leader of the bridge paint crew. “If you can’t do the climb, you’re done.”

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Think he’s kidding? He is not. Members of the George Washington Bridge paint crew operate heavy equipment hundreds of feet in the air through summer rain and winter wind. Each relies on fellow workers to perform this heavy work with a cool head and a constant eye for safety risks, from mixed-up lines to frayed safety harnesses. There is no time for fear.

“You need to know you can trust the person next to you,” Russo said. “It’s hard to do your job if you’re scared of where you work.”

Applicants get one chance. If they hesitate, if they wobble, if they show fear of any kind, this is not the job for them.

“Most times we do this, about half the people fail,” said Obev Gonzalez, Russo’s co-leader. “It’s all about their confidence on the steel.”

The few, the fearless

On Thursday, nine people originally were scheduled to try out. Two failed before the test even started. One called early in the morning to say, on second thought, he’d rather not dangle his body hundreds of feet above the Hudson's shallow New Jersey shoreline.

Another freaked out in the elevator on the ride up. In his defense, the bridge’s four elevators are kind of crazy. Before every ride, an operator must open two sets of thick steel doors, which close like clamshells. The car is bolted to a steel ladder. It bucks like an old roller coaster at Coney Island, and as it rises above the treetops the view stretches out from the Tappan Zee to the Atlantic.

“He started getting claustrophobic in the elevator,” Russo said. “So he’s already nervous. Then when we got to the top and he saw how high we were, he said, ‘OK, I’m done.’”

Other job applicants positively enjoyed themselves. At 9:25 a.m., Lino Col-Ling became the first applicant to ease his body down the backspan. This is the steepest incline of walkable steel on the bridge, where the thick barrels of wire drop from the towers down to moorings in the Palisades bedrock. He wore a safety harness, with two straps hooked by thick steel carabiners into guidewires on either side of the barrel. His first few steps were tentative. Then he picked up speed. Col-Ling descended part of the way, turned around, and started climbing back up.

As he turned, his bright teeth shone in a big wide smile.

“You just go down, and then you go back up,” said Col-Ling, 52, who spent 12 years jumping from planes and rappelling from helicopters as a member of a Marines special forces unit. “It’s no problem.”

Kevin Maser, another tryout, always loved climbing trees as a kid. He stands 5 feet, 4 inches tall. His height came in handy climbing the knuckle, which requires would-be bridge painters to thread themselves through narrow gaps in the hatches.

“I’m smaller, which helps because those spaces are tight,” said Maser, who already performs maintenance on the Bayonne, Outerbridge and Goethals bridges, all owned by the Port Authority. “The higher I got, the more comfortable I felt.”

Among the eight applicants who actually showed up, Maser was the only one to mention the bridge’s spectacular beauty.

“You get the best view of the city, all day long,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”

Everyone, Maser included, mentioned the more obvious, if mundane, reason for testing their nerves against gravity. Success at the height test will place them on a list. When any of the bridge’s 24 full-time, year-round painters retires or quits, managers at the Port Authority will choose replacements from the list. Membership on the list lasts three years. If applicants aren’t chosen within that time, they must take the test again.

If they are chosen, new hires will spend their days painting one of the most famous bridges in the world, in exchange for a six-figure salary.

“What other job can you make $100,000 without a college degree?” Farrell said.

Thus a morning was spent, watching eight hopeful men inch themselves carefully across high steel.

And then a master appeared.

Greg Gasnick is a 62-year-old bridge painter with grandchildren, a home in Park Ridge and a replacement knee. He used to paint another steel tower owned by the Port Authority: the 35-story antenna on the roof of the original 1 World Trade Center.

He has worked on the George Washington Bridge for the last 33 years.

Standing atop the bridge’s New Jersey tower, Gasnick swung open a squat steel door. He found himself looking down the steep convexity of the backspan. Gasnick did not pause. He clipped two heavy carabiners into the guidewires. Unlike the job applicants, who plodded with slow heavy steps, Gasnick just took off, sliding like a skier down a mountain.

“I call it barrel surfing!” he said.

Email: maag@northjersey.com