Madonna Showcases a Slackliner in her Super Bowl Show; Santa Cruz is a Hotbed for the Growing Sport

Russ "The Line Walker" Phettplace has what Hemingway referred to as “grace under pressure.” When he packs his highlining gear and heads out to places like Lost Arrow Spire at Yosemite, he also includes his bluegrass music which keeps him focused as he walks along a 1-inch fabric webbing stretched between mountains.

The Spire is the most well-known highlining place in the world, spanning 85 feet with an 800-foot fall, and was the site of the first highline ever walked.

“It’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. Walking toward the Spire, you have 180 degrees of open space in front of you. It takes a lot of mental fortitude to withstand that much open space flooding into your senses.

Highlining has taken off among death-defying athletes, who start off on lower elevations by slacklining. Madonna even kissed slackliner on stage with her during her Super Bowl performance.

In the last three years the sport’s technology has improved and popularity is rising. You can find slacklining rigging areas set up at various sites in Santa Cruz, particularly at UCSC. The 2012 ISPO Slacklining Competition will be held in Munich in February. In contrast, though, only 1,000 people in the world are highliners.

“You have to believe in your heart that absolutely nothing can go wrong," said Phettplace. "Because you are overriding millions of years of instinct that forbids you to walk over empty space. You have to trust every piece of high quality gear that you use over and over again. If one piece were to fail, some other piece would catch it.”

Some people say that highliners are adrenaline junkies, but Phettplace disagrees. “Adrenaline works against us. You have to maintain a state of calm to overcome that instinctual fear that wants you to grab onto the line and hold on and scream. You have to overcome so much to stand up on a line and start taking steps, one after another.”

Phettplace refers to the Zen-like calm as “moving meditation.”

“Sometimes the wind will pick up and you’ll feel it come through the line, and the calm that you have been holding onto will just fly out of your body. Everything can happen so fast.

“When you walk 200 steps and you’re getting tired and you’ve held this mental state for so long, it’s so easy to make that one bad step and lose it. That’s part of the challenge; you have to hold that mental state until you jump off at the end. It’s just such an amazing relief.”

Highliners must be in great physical condition, because he says if you fall, “It’s like a short bungee jump; you bounce, then hang suspended by a six foot leash under the slack line. You must be able to climb back up the leash and swing your body over the line, which is a hard thing to do.”

Like yoga, the highliner says that “the most obvious improvements will be in your body’s balance, core strength and ability to focus on a non-moving visual point down the line, like ballet.”

Initiates start off as slackliners, toeing their way across loosely strung webbing, hung a foot or two off the ground that stretches and bounces with every step. The “slack” in the line provides flexibility to do tricks like back flips and even yoga poses.

“I find both yoga and slacklining feed well into each other, as in both cases there is a great deal of emphasis on using the mind to control the body and vice versa,” said Phettplace, who teaches a free slacklining clinic every month at Santa Cruz’ Pacific Edge Climbing Gym. http://www.pacificedgeclimbinggym.com/index.php.

Slacklining was invented in climbing camps in the mid-seventies in Yosemite when climbers yearned to scale mountains that had been impossible to reach. They began to set up rigging lines to walk from mountain to mountain.

Phettplace suggests learning about slacklining on Facebook, forums, and www.slackline.com. Although, he cautions that the sport is mentor-based and, “You need someone to teach you. Slacklining is a feat of engineering. Hanging and rigging at the same time is impossible to do by yourself.”

Occasionally, he can be spotted at Fredericks Street Park with his rigging set up between trees, teaching a new devotee the art of the sport. You can contact Phettplace at rphettep@hotmail.com.