Slackliners walk a record 1290m high line in the Blue Mountains
A new article published by We Are Explorers on slackline record breaking
Walk the line! A group of slackliners recently walked a 1290m high line in the Blue Mountains, smashing the Australian record and the 1km milestone. We reached out for a chat.
These adventures take place on and above Dharug and Gundungurra Country, the traditional Country of the Dharug and Gundungurra peoples. We pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging and acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded.
Highlining is a type of slacklining that involves walking along a taut piece of webbing at a great height. It’s an extreme sport that combines adrenaline with peacefulness and balance, and rigging the line is half the battle! Highliners use a leash to catch themselves in the event that they do fall, but it’s by no means risk free.
Recently a crew of highliners from the Sydney slackline community have set their sights on pushing the limit, and their most recent mammoth effort smashes the Australasian record, which they also held. We talked to Arthur Pera (@arthurjpera) from the Australian Slackline Association about their feat!
You’ve just smashed the record for the longest successful high line in Australia – Congrats! Can you tell me about the length, height, and location of the highline?
The record holders are Gabriel Camolesi (@gabrielcamolesi) and Nathaniel Glavurdic (@humanmoovments) who both were able to walk the whole line without falling on the way. The line was rigged in Blue Mountains of NSW and was 1290 metres in length and around 200m high.
Feats like this don’t just happen on a whim. How long have you been planning this trip and who’s been involved to make it happen?
Since we finished rigging the previous record we’d been thinking about cracking the 1km mark, however it was only 3 months ago that we actually put all the team together and started organising things to make it happen.
I saw that it took you 10 hours just to set up the line – can you briefly explain what’s involved in setting up a line this long and what techniques you used to do it?
Correct, it took us about 10 hours from the moment we left the cars to the moment the first walker got on the line. There’s a lot involved in setting up a big line like this.
All of the steps are important and require a certain level of skill, however the most important one I’d say is the connection between one side to the other.
To link the gap, we flew a fishing line via two drones: a leader and a follower. The leader was pulling the line while the follower drone was clipped with a carabiner to the line and lifted it, keeping it up off the trees.
Once the lead drone reached the other side, the team grabbed the fishing line and connection was made. The follower drone hovered. The tension side started to pull back the fishing line, and the follower drone slowly came back in. It continued to keep the fishing line out of the trees, and did not get snagged while coming back. The follower then landed back where it started.
Once the connection was completed, the hauling team started to pull the fishing line in, which was connected to 1200m of 4mm tagline. To the end of the thick tagline, we connected the highline webbing and when it got too heavy to haul by hand, a riggers winch was used to do the work.
29/11/2022
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