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Hi! Adam from NW Slackline and welcome to the fifth and final
installment of our guide to longlining. This part, this final segment,
is also going to be about walking. But before we get into the walking,
we're going to tidy up any lose ends from the last segment.
So I'm out here at Greenlake with a friend of mine — Ben.
I mentioned him a little bit in the last video when we talked about
different brakes. And we're going to rig a 370ft Mantra line
on Ben's 5 to 1 system. And the reason I wanted to show his system
is that he uses a right-angle reeving, which is something sort of new.
He also uses the Eddy brake and the benefit of the right-angle reeving
with the Eddy is that it turns it so that the brake is pointing downward.
The handle of the brake is pointing downward when you want to release the tension.
That's something to think about because as the line gets higher and higher,
it can actually be difficult to get the sort of leverage you need on the
brake to release the tension. So without any further ado,
let's actually get to the rigging and you can see just how long
and laborious this process really is.
So one thing I don't really love about the eddy
is that you have to take it off of your rigging plate, or in this case,
off the becket of the SMC pulley so you can feed the rope through it.
So I'm not thrilled about that. That's one major advantage of the
Petzl ID - much more expensive and with the Grigri 1,
you're supposed to take it off to feed the rope, but really I think you can
actually poke the rope through if you practice it enough.
I don't want to use too much time from this video to show you the
pre-rigging. I didn't want to just gloss over it either, so we have to get
all the slings in place. We have to get tree protection in place.
Tree Pro is a must. The tree protectors you see here are ones that
Ben has made himself. I use obviously towel tubes from toweltubes dot com.
Just another shameless plug. And most of the gear here is Ben's
except the Kofis and I think some of the shackles are mine.
Here you can see the right-angle reeving clearly on the SMC pulleys.
And now Ben is just taping or tying some flags in place. He uses like
colored tree marking tape - like the forest service uses.
Sometimes I'll use florescent-colored duct tape that I just fold over
so that there's no sticky part remaining. I make a loop for it
to go over the line. As you get longer and longer, you're going to want
to make the line higher and higher. Both so that it doesn't touch when it sags
and so that when you're not on it, the line isn't an obstruction to people.
And it's another reason why longlining alone isn't as good as
bringing a few friends so that they can as spotters for you.
If you stick around until after the credits, you'll see a guy come up to
Ben's line like he was going to grab it and you'll notice Hannah in the
background right away get up and move towards the guy to yell at him.
So one thing that I'm not sure if I made super clear in the part 3
where we were talking about webbing itself and the stretch factor
is just how tiring it can be to actually stretch a longline to length.
So today we're using Mantra which is fairly not stretchy.
We're going to pull it about 7% stretch. But over such a distance, it's
just really tiring and the best analogy I can give is:
If I asked you to do 4 pull-ups, you'd probably be like, "Oh yeah,
"I can do that no problem... like 5 or 10 seconds."
If I asked you to do 40 pull-ups, it would take a lot longer than just
10 times whatever the 4 pullups took. So it's the same sort of thing.
A 37ft line? No problem. Ben and I would have that tight in literally...
15 seconds. A 370 line is not going to be 150 seconds.
It's going to be long, long process. And it's going to be really tiring
but tiring is the payoff. So get ready because here it comes!
In a second, a guy is going to come running over
and offer to help us pull. He wasn't with us, he just happened to see us
pulling and was a slackliner and decided to come help which was super nice of him.
That's something that seems to frequently happen to me, at least around
Seattle parks is people will just come over and offer to help pull -
usually because they've already slacklined a few times
so they know how annoying is to have to have to tension this stuff.
I'm just going to leave the video playing. It's going to speed up to
faster than real time so we don't use up too much time here.
but I just want to show the whole process of tensioning.
And then in a minute, another guy with a motocross helmet
in some sort of brace or cast on his leg also comes over and he
helped us pull a little bit. So that made the rigging process a lot
quicker that we had, you know, 3 people pulling on the line.
On thing that did happen is Ben noticed that as we were doing the
last kind of final bit of tensioning- It was just me and Ben pulling-
that the eddy brake that he uses was actually slipping.
We're not sure why this exactly is. In other tests done by Jerry
from Balance Community, it's held a lot more tension than this
without slipping. It might be the rope that he was using.
He was using a New England KM Max 7 1/6 inch static rope
at around 2,500 lbs of tension. The eddy was slipping not incredibly
but it was difficult to make further headway without
"2 steps forward, 1 step back" sort of thing. And ultimately what
we did was to put an ascender in place right below the eddy
so that the rope couldn't slip more than a fraction of an inch
through the eddy before the ascender was held taut.
I don't want to spend too much time in this video showing you all the
personalizations on how I set my stuff up.
Because you'll figure that out. But one thing I do want to
reinforce is that you'll need to back everything up. So when a rope dangles
knot it off, clip it to something. Just think about what can break.
Put another sling or rope or something in place in case
that does break or slip so that no one is harmed.
Okay. So let's get to the main actual point of this video which is how to walk.
It's fairly windy out today which is probably good for this video-
the wind's going to mess with it a little bit.
The main thing I would tell you about walking on a slackline
is that normally on shortlines, you're used to using your hips
to shift the line beneath you, as you walk, in order to stay balanced.
And when the line is short and doesn't have much tension and it
and it only weight a bit - 40g per meter and only 10m long,
that's not so bad. But when it's 100 or more meters long and
it's heavier than 40g per meter, real taut, it's really going to be hard
to shift it beneath you. So in order for your feet to shift it as you
normally do, what you want to do is think about walking on a rail.
So actually use your arms to make minute changes in your
center of gravity (CG) and try to keep your CG right over the lines
so you mess with the line as little as possible. 00:07:05,044 --> 00:07:08,044 If you start shifting the line underneath you, it's either going to be: 00:07:08,044 --> 00:07:11,338 A) Too hard to do. Or B) It's actually going to send a sine way down 00:07:11,338 --> 00:07:15,713 as this sort of harmonic wave down, hit the other anchor and then 00:07:15,713 --> 00:07:19,756 come back at you . And if I just yank it real quick, you can probably see the line 00:07:19,976 --> 00:07:23,552 start to whip around and it's bouncing all on its own now. And so as that wave 00:07:23,552 --> 00:07:26,553 comes back at you, that's going to interrupt your walking even more 00:07:26,553 --> 00:07:29,702 and get you even more off balance and just becomes this feedback loop 00:07:29,702 --> 00:07:32,947 that builds and builds and builds until ultimately you get thrown off. 00:07:32,947 --> 00:07:36,465 So, the main thing you want to do is just try to stay balanced. 00:07:36,465 --> 00:07:40,693 Also, if you're not used to walking near the anchors of any line. 00:07:40,693 --> 00:07:44,579 If you normally put up a 50ft line and the last 5ft you don't really walk in, 00:07:44,579 --> 00:07:47,173 it's going to be difficult because especially down here, 00:07:47,173 --> 00:07:50,375 there's almost no movement at all. So one thing you can do 00:07:50,375 --> 00:07:53,981 before you start longlining is to get used to walking at the actual 00:07:53,981 --> 00:07:59,967 anchors. So having one anchor low is useful. That way, 00:07:59,967 --> 00:08:03,919 you don't waste a bunch of energy getting up since the other anchor
is definitely going to have to be at the 6ft or 7ft high range
depending on how long the line is. And then, I'm just trying to
use my arms to keep all my weight right over the line. I'm
trying not to interrupt the balance of the line. Try to
keep the line nice and smooth. And now I'll sort of walk badly.
I'll try to, like, make it really wobbly. And you'll see the line
is going to fight me. This is sort of what people do when they
first start to walk where they're way off balance. They get all
fighting and they get all this sort of weird wobbulations going on,
oscillations going on in the hips and then as I get to the end,
of course, it doesn't wobble as much. And so now it chills out.
So, that's really the first technique I would work on
is just getting used to walking on the anchors of short lines
and then the anchors of longlines keeping one end low so it's
easy to mount. And then, just try to keep your weight as centered
as possible not to fight with it. Don't yank it back and forth
with your legs. So the only other thing I want to mention
is that the line has what we call "transition zones".
So the line is basically divided into quarters. And at each
"quarter point" - the middle, the first forth and the æ mark,
you get some sort of harmonic where you actually act as a node
and the line has a sine wave in front of you and the line has
a sine wave behind you and right at those nodal points,
they sort of "counter out" - er, they cancel each other out.
I'm not a physics guy, so that's the best I can explain it.
When you walk the line, you will know because it will get very difficult
as you approach the transitions. And then right as you walk past them
or right as you get to them, the line will go just dead silent on you.
And Ben is actually on the line now trying to walk badly
and introduce some, trying to introduce some nodal harmonics at the
transitions so you can kind of see what I'm talking about.
And right in front of him, you can see the lines sort of flopping around.
You can see the sine wave happening and beneath him to a lesser extent.
It doesn't maybe look as good as I would like in this video,
but trust me, you will feel it when you walk.
So it was serendipitous that this guy Michael ran up and offered
to help pull and then wanted to walk it later so I can actually show you
now what it looks like when someone who's never been on a longline,
who's only walked a 30ft line (that's what he owns), walks this.
And you can see, he's apparently quite adept at the 30ft line.
He's been doing that for years. And you can see it's just very challenging
to make the transition at first. But if you stick with it, in a few hours,
especially on like 100ft line to start. Or maybe 120ft or 130ft,
you stick with it, within a few hours, you'll really start to get it.
And then you can build the length maybe 150, 160, 180, 200.
Somewhere about 300 to 400, you really need to get "dialed in".
You need be very, very precise. Otherwise, you're just never going
to be able to super longline if you're trying to do 400 to 600ft stuff.
The only way to do that is to be completely dialed onto 200 and 300ft lines
to where your arms never get tired because you're not fighting with
the line and to where you never even feel like you're at risk of falling.
Another guy who just sort of wandered up as I was filming here
is Seattle's own James Wyland, super old school slackliner, who's
fairly prolific in the highlining world. I don't even know how many
highlines he's walked now, but it is a ton. And he's not a longliner,
so I thought it would be interesting to show you that as you get really
good at slacklining and you get very robust in your skillset,
even if you approach something that you're not experienced with,
like, he's not a longliner, you'll actually be able to do pretty well just
because you have such a repertoire of skills. And your body
is so used to adjusting to different circumstances. So James
put in a really solid effort for his first walk here, especially in
flip-flops, making it at least to the third of the way point, if not
almost the half way mark.
Also, in addition to learning to walk, you're also going to
need to learn to fall. I think the first few times you
fall, you're going to get bit by the line pretty good. It's going to
slap you. And then eventually you'll sort of learn,
after getting bitten a few times, what not to do.
Or another way to say it is: eventually, you'll learn how to fall
so that the line doesn't bite you. What I sort of do is if I'm falling,
say, I'm falling to my left, I keep my right foot on and I ride the line
up with my foot and I push out. So, that way the line can't come
anywhere near me if it's sort of "glued" to the bottom of my foot.
So I push my body away from the line as it's on its way back up.
If you just sort of take both feet right off the line and try to bail off the side,
it will come up so quickly that it will hit you before you can fall out of the way
I can almost promise you. So if you watch Ben fall, he has the same
sort of technique where he just pushes it away with his foot when he falls.
So, if you can't just step up onto the line to mount,
or you can't sit start, then you're going to have to do
some sort of a mantle either to sit start or Chongo
or some sort of gymnastic-style kickover. Here's Ben doing the
mantle. Notice how he really jumps hard as he pulls down with
his arms and then just tries to make the most of the entire movement,
make it very dynamic. Or, the other option is to kick over a leg if you can
hook a heel. So here, I'm going to hook my heel and then I'm going to
roll my body weight up over the top of the line as I'm kicking my other leg.
It's not super elegant when I do it, but it works.
So it's time now to take the line down. If you have any backups in place,
go ahead and untie those. If your multipliers or something is still hanging
on there, which I don't think it should be, but if it is,
go ahead and unclip that. Get everything off the line
so you can release the tension.
And most people use some sort of carabiner off another sling
or rigging plate, which is what Ben does here, so that they
can control the speed of the release. I don't do that, I just
directly release, but that is partly because I have an ID,
which has a nice burly handle. And partly because I'm just very
practiced at releasing. If you don't use an extra carabiner, you'll
probably explosively detension several times until you
get used to having very slight movements of detensioning.
Also, if you're really worried, instead of just running the rope through
carabiner like Ben here, you can use a Munter hitch to
really control the speed. So release all the tension. Get all the
tension and start to unclip everything. Go ahead and coil your rope back up,
butterfly coil your line up or throw it in a rope bag or whatever it is
you do with it. Get all your gear assembled back together.
And then remember: leave no trace.
So hopefully the trees look just as nice and
are just as healthy as when you first came.
So thanks for joining me for all five parts of this extremely
long guide to longlining. Just a reminder:
Our website, NWslackline dot org, has lots of other links and
references beyond what's in the videos. So if you've just
been watching these on YouTube, maybe go check out the site.
Back everything up, don't use gear that's damaged or you don't
know who made it or whether it's good gear or not.
Be cautious. Always think of ways someone could get hurt
if something went wrong. And other than that, just have fun.
Try to walk steadily over the line rather than moving the line beneath you.
And I know, in no time at all, you'll be longlining good distances.
See you soon!
And you can see there's a guy harrassing Ben here.
This is sort of one of the hazards of longlining in an urban location
as you get idiots coming up and grabbing the line and shaking it
behind you while you're on it thinking it's funny.
I've had people kick it, people run into it who are drunk or otherwise
inebriated. We had one guy cut a line with a knife while my friend
Eli was on it. That guy went to jail and is now being prosecuted.
[Adam to man] A fistfight on whose terms?
Oh, at the church? I don't know if God is into that.
I think that might be against the bible or something.