Slacklining

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Slacklining at the University of Cambridge
Slacklining at the University of Cambridge

Slacklining is a balance sport which utilizes nylon webbing stretched tight between two anchor points. Slacklining is distinct from tightrope walking in that the line is not held rigidly taut; it is instead dynamic, stretching and bouncing like a large narrow trampoline. The line's tension can be adjusted to suit the user and different types of dynamic webbing can be used to achieve a variety of feats. The line itself is flat, due to the nature of webbing, thus keeping the slacker's footing from rolling as would be the case with an ordinary rope. The dynamic nature of the line allows for impressive tricks and stunts.

Contents

[edit] Tricklining/Lowlining

Slacklining in Wakefield, Quebec, July 2007.
Slacklining in Wakefield, Quebec, July 2007.

Tricklining is the most common type of slacklining because it can be set up from almost any two secure points. Tricklining is done low to the ground, and it is also often called "lowlining." A great number of tricks can be done on the line, and because the sport is fairly new, there is plenty of room for new tricks. Some of the basic tricks done today are: standing, stand start, walking, walking backwards, turns, knee drop, opposite turn around, bounce walk. Some of the intermediate tricks are: moonwalk, sit mount, buddha sit, mantle start, sitting down, lying down, jump start, cross legged knee drop, surfing forward, surfing sideways, jump turns,"carrolls mount." Some of the advanced/expert tricks are: backflip on the line and back onto the line, jumps referred to as ollies, tree plants, front flip dismount, back flip dismount, doing push-ups, throwing a disc around with someone from line-to-line, tandem walking, the tandem pass, piggy-back rides across the line, and jumping from line-to-line. Also see the tight rope sub-category of "freestyle-slacklining", aka "rodeo-slacklining."

[edit] The History of Slacklining

While rope walking has been around in one manner or another for thousands of years, the origins of modern day slacklining are generally attributed to a pair of rock climbers living in Yosemite Valley, California, in the early 1980s. Adam Grosowsky and Jeff Ellington started their walking on loose chains and cables alongside parking lots, and over time progressed to stringing up their climbing webbing and walking it. The sport blossomed from there among climbers in the valley, and then branched out elsewhere all over the world. There are many online forums to look for more info on the history of slacklining.

[Historical Note by Joseph Healy :] Adam Grosowsky grew up in Carbondale, IL where his parents taught at SIU. Somewhere around his 16th birthday (75-76 or so) he comes up to our apartment and attempts to rouse us out of the previous night's partying. He finally gets us up and shows us a picture that simply says "circus performers - circa 1890's". It shows a picture of a guy doing a one-hand handstand on a flag pole using his body to counterbalance a wire with a wristloop that goes down to a brick wall at a 45 degree angle. There is another guy doing an angled handstand in the middle of the wire. Go figure, but it was this picture that inspired Adam to learn to walk. So we did all sorts of ridiculous things to get ready to replicate this stunt as Adam gets us all practicing walking. But by the time he can do handstands on the line we decide we're all too old to do a one-hand handstand on flagpole even if we could figure out how you get up there dragging a wire and mount into one. By the time we scattered from Southern Illinois in the '78 or so, Adam, Jim Tangen-Foster, Alan Carrier, and myself - basically the entire So. Ill. crew - were all completely versed in walking rope and webbing and doing various tricks.

Fortunately we all left town and Adam ended up in Evergreen College in WA where he met Jeff and they took to walking the railings high up on the dorms and parking structures. They eventually rigged a good high wire setup in the woods and got good on it. Once on a visit there we worked pretty hard on running and jumping on to an 11mm climbing rope line cranked down with double pulleys; painful, but we figured it out. Shortly after that they went down to do the Lost Arrow in Yosemite. Later Adam moved to Eugene, Oregon and Jeff to Bend, Oregon and Adam started doing the Monkey at Smith Rocks. He had both a wire and several webbing lines for the Monkey. I believe he talked about doing the Monkey initially so he'd have the ground clearance to try pushing a full tube swinging side-to-side as he'd taken some pretty wicked falls from above the horizontal on a lawn rig.

Click Here to read a more complete article about the history of slacklining.

[edit] Highlining

Highlining is slacklining at a high elevation. The line is set extra strong with precautions taken to make sure nothing goes wrong while the slacker walks across a gap anywhere from twenty feet to several thousand feet off the ground. To ensure safety, most highliners wear a climbing harness with a leash attached to the slackline itself; however, unleashed walks of highlines is not unheard of.

[edit] Common Setup

A slackline is commonly constructed with three sections of webbing: a long section (30-100 feet) strung tightly between two trees, using "tree slings"(8-12 feet) as anchors on either end. Padding should be used between the slings and the trunk of the tree to avoid damaging the tree and fraying the webbing. The padding usually consists of cardboard or carpet scraps. The most difficult and widely discussed element of a slackline setup is the tensioning system. Common setups include simple friction methods, using wraps of webbing between two carabiners, a ratchet, a carabiner pulley system[citation needed], a roped pulley system, or a commercial slackline kit.

[edit] World records

[edit] Highest slackline

The highest slackline on record was walked by Christian Schou on August 3, 2006 in Kjerag, Norway. The slackline was 1000 meters high. The project was repeated by Aleksander Mork in September 2007. Pictures can be seen here [1]

[edit] Longest slackline

The longest slackline on record was walked by Damian Cooksey on July 10, 2007 in Munich, Germany. The length of this slackline was 506 feet (154 meters). A forum discussion about this event may be found here.

[edit] Longest slackline history

Long slackline walking was pioneered most notably by Dean Potter, Shawn Snyder, and Braden Mayfield. Rumors of 200–300 foot slacklines were talked about, however there is no known official line length record from this period.

Heinz Zak, extreme climber and photographer, was one of the first to go on record for long slacklining with his walk of a 328 foot (100 meter) line in August 2005. This record stood until March 4, 2007, when Damian Cooksey walked a 405 foot (123.5 meter) line in Warsaw, Poland.

On May 31, 2007, Andreas Thoelke set a new record by walking a 443 foot (135 meter) line. This record was then broken on July 10, 2007 by Damian Cooksey when he walked a 506 foot (154 meter) slackline, a record which stands today.

[edit] External links

[edit] How to

[edit] Video Demos

[edit] Communities

[edit] Commercial sites