Today’s Photo of the Week features a rooftop moment on an abandoned skyscraper, one of many to be experienced around Detroit.

Some urban exploration episodes are very similar to mountain climbing, something I also used to engage in years ago. As in mountaineering, you’re climbing higher and higher with each step, your fingers and toes grow stiff from the cold, but you trudge upward, ever slower, the ground pulls away from you, familiar landmarks down below become tiny.

And finally, just before running out of energy, as your legs burn, you open a final door and emerge at the rooftop summit, where a fresh, pristine snowfall extends in a plane outward from you, unpierced by human feet, flat and sparkling and beautiful in the dim light, as snowflakes fall in soft whispers amid the surrounding silence, a scene as peaceful and serene as on any mountaintop, all in the center of a busy city.

And instead of tree-topped mountains and hanging clouds encircling your peak, here you’re likely to find yourself surrounded by spires, pointed arches, dazzling cornices and terra cotta extravagance on the neighboring buildings. There’s really no place on Earth quite like Detroit.

Woodward Avenue nightlife shines upward over the edge of the snowy cornice like an eclipse’s corona, the street awake with blazing lights, crowds huddled in lines at nightclubs, strands of Christmas lights hugging tree branches, cars swooshing along the slushy pavement. And despite being only a dozen floors removed from the nightlife below, the tranquil world you’re in might as well be an Everest’s climb away from it all.