AFTER ONLY 4 DAYS OF TRAINING, THIS MAN TRIED TO WALK A TERRIFYING 60-FOOT HIGH LINE
You might picture highliners stepping straight off the ledge and out onto the line. That’s how I figured it went: Inch-wide nylon webbing is pulled taut between anchors on opposing cliffs, a protective leash is attached to your harness, and out you go, a bird on a wire. But it’s not that simple. A fall near the anchor could have you swinging back into rock, breaking bones. So instead you slide out a few feet on your butt and use a sit-start method such as the Chongo, named after the rock climber and consummate slacker Charles “Chongo” Tucker. With no ground to steady you, you lift your torso and pull a foot beneath your body so your heel presses into your butt. Then, with one arm held out for balance, you bring your free foot up to the line and try to rise slowly, as if you’re coming out of a single-leg squat. Next—if you’re me, anyway—you pitch ass over ears, taking a bruising “whipper,” nylon lacerating your inner thighs, adrenaline spiking as you plunge toward the abyss. As you dangle, you have time to listen to all those helpful voices in your head: You’re weak...You’re embarrassing...You’re a waste of everyone’s time.
Fort Collins, Colorado: My batshit crazy plan is to “send” a highline in five days. Sending is lingo for walking all the way across without falling, and the world record is longer than a mile. I’m aiming for 20 feet, a bee’s dick by comparison, but I’ll be 60 feet in the air and relying on skills that most people take years to master. “If you’re a fast learner, it might not be impossible,” says Dakota Collins, owner of Rocky Mountain Slackline, when I first sketch out my plan. The goal of the Adventurist, I tell him, is to discover if it’s possible to apply accelerated learning techniques to outdoor challenges. Flexibility, muscle control, focus—these are the skills he says I’ll need to succeed, and they’re exactly the kinds of skills I rarely find time for beyond, say, yoga class twice a week. Fitbit has packed me off with a Fitbit Ionic, a new smartwatch, to try out. Dakota is amenable, but he needs me to know how hard it will be: “I’m going to have to reprogram your body,” he says.
Our training starts strong. By the end of day one, I’m taking steps on a slackline strung near the ground between two trees. When day two is done, I’ve walked 50 feet without falling. The instruction is as much mental as physical. Dakota describes slacklining as active meditation. “You have this line you’re trying to conquer, and you do it by focusing on your breath and body.”
Slow, conscious breathing turns out to be the most critical skill I need to hone. If I take a shaky step, I inhale slowly, as if through a straw. The idea is that air flows through me, seemingly straight into the line, to reestablish the fragile connection between me and the webbing. With a careful exhale, I’d take my next step. I also focus my energy into my fingertips. “Remember your salt shaker,” Dakota says when he notices tension building in my shoulders. He wants to see my wrists twitch, as if I’m shaking out grains of instability.
On the third day, Dakota introduces the skills I’ll need on the highline. I spend the morning chasing the Chongo and learning to fall. In slacklining, falls are no big deal. You just land on grass and step back on the line. But on the highline you have to climb your leash, hang beneath the line with your hands and feet, and roundhouse-kick one leg out wide to create the momentum to spin onto the line. I spend all afternoon working out the logistics of that maneuver, and by the time we call it a day, I’ve strained my right hip flexor and my thighs are so riddled with bruises that they look like a Rorschach test.
The last day of training is more of the same: Chongo reps, small steps, hard falls. In my excitement to try a new sport, I haven’t prepared myself to care so deeply about succeeding. My mindset swings between the quitter I fear I am, and the fighter I want to be. After an ice bath, I share my anxiety over a beer with Dakota. “I really hope I’ll be able to cross,” I tell him. “But I also feel like if that’s my only measure of success, then I’m not really learning what I’m supposed to.” Dakota would bust my balls if he thought I was being too earnest, and I expect a ribbing. But no. “Remember this moment,” he says. “This is the moment you became a slacker.”
Walking the slackline, my heart hovered between 100 and 110 beats per minute. That’s on the high side, but I figure I’ll be fine on the highline if, through breathing and focus, I can keep my heart rate close to that. During the final challenge on day five, with the ground no longer within reach, my heart will not submit. I feel it high it in my throat, just below my dry mouth. I take a couple of early falls, clamber back up the leash. I check my Fitbit: 133 beats per minute. My body can sense the high stakes.
With each Chongo, I stand up wobblier and lose my footing before completing a step. And the falls aren’t pretty: On one, I plummet feet-first off the line. The 3-foot leash between my legs snaps my nuts so hard my kids will probably be born with PTSD. I scream; Dakota winces. The painful falls, fried muscles, gimpy hip, and blisters on my hands and feet don’t stop me from walking, but they have undermined my confidence. It’s nearly 5 p.m., our scheduled quitting time, when I try again to stand. My foot whiffs the line, and for probably the 15th time, I plunge to the bottom of my leash. Time is running out. I check my heart rate: 143. I’m losing.
I can sense that Dakota is ready for me to give up. He has stopped offering words of encouragement. I am alone. On trembling arms I climb the leash above me. It takes two tries, but I flip myself over onto the line. With a deep breath, I pull myself into Chongo, flick my salt shaker. I inhale slowly into the line. Then I stand up and take a step. I fall before I can plant the second step, but at this point it doesn’t matter. I fought, and the way I see it, I won. My feat won’t register in the annals of highline history, but I’ve regained my self-respect. I’ve also lived to face the next challenge. Back home, I buy my own line, take it to the park, and string it between two trees. My Chongo’s getting better.
Talk the Walk
Highline
A slackline set high above the ground, so a fall could kill you if you’re not using a leash attached to a harness.
Free Solo
Highlining without a harness, so if you fall, you die. Not advised.
Ball and Chain
Highlining naked with the leash tied to your penis, so if you fall, you’re castrated as you die. Also not advised.
Send
To walk all the way across the line without falling.
Whipper
A fall from a highline. Some whippers are mild, but with others, the leash on your harness cuts into your legs and spins you like a yo-yo.
Heartbreak Zone
The last few feet of line, when you’re close to a send but still have a few steps remaining. Mentally this can be the trickiest part of the walk.
Full Man
To send a line out and back with zero falls. For women, it’s known as a “full babe.”
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