They're not actually that high to an adult, but I have childhood memories of these seeming somewhat tall and scary. On an average one, a young child can fall 4-6 times their own height (but not straight, you'll get buffered by the structure as you go down).
I'm only semi-joking, but perhaps join an obstacle course race, or a gymnastics class for adults. I've done both, and it's been so much fun. The obstacle course is all kinds of weird things you have to climb over and under (I'd avoid the mud variants, unless you like that aspect, though). And even though I never did gymnastics as a kid and am stiff as a stick, it was great fun to play around in a big hall with other equally bad adults trying to do gymnastics, climb ropes, forward rolls, jump into foam pits etc.
Nighttime, walking from a bar or whatever in a group of buzzed, happy young-ish adults (bonus points if you're students), climbing these becomes perfecly socially acceptable :D
There are a few in SF. After a night of clubbing, high and drunk we'd fall around on them after dark till one of us spotted a guard and then we'd walk away (the guard not wanting any trouble as much as us).
In any case, the more socially acceptable way is the Spartan Race or a CrossFit gym.
The town I grew up in the 90s had much bigger versions of these. I'm not sure exactly how tall they were, but based on this photo [1] and my memories they were probably around 10-15m tall.
The difference I've seen between these in Paris (and elsewhere in France) and the few I saw in Berlin was that nearly all the French playgrounds have that spongy artificial ground, while the German playgrounds more often have a natural surface---sand, wood chips (as in the photo), or dirt.
We have a lot of these in Australia too. Some actually are quite high, two or three times bigger than the one in your picture, but they kind of have a rope net base area 1.5m up to fall onto so you don’t hit the ground.
I know at least two in Berlin that are pretty high even for adults. One is at John-Foster-Dulless-Allee in the Tiergarten the other next to Fritz-Schloß-Park in Moabit.
I left Chicago a few years ago, but that’s one of the things I miss. About 10 or 15 years ago they they started rebuilding playgrounds with this stuff. All the metal parts had stampings indicating that they were buying it from those same German manufacturers.
They're not actually that high to an adult, but I have childhood memories of these seeming somewhat tall and scary. On an average one, a young child can fall 4-6 times their own height (but not straight, you'll get buffered by the structure as you go down).