For more stories like this, check out The Chronicle’s weekly Travel newsletter! Sign up here.
The outdoor athletes to whom Yosemite Valley serves as a second home are always trying to sight the next audacious feat in the mountains: rock climbing, skiing, BASE jumping.
Now two brothers from San Francisco believe they’ve set a world record for the longest highline ever walked in both Yosemite and California. Earlier in June, they and a group of friends spent the better part of a week stringing a single, 2,800-foot-long line from Taft Point west across a series of gulleys that plunge 1,600 feet to dark, rocky depths.
Moises and Daniel Monterrubio, brothers who moved to San Francisco five years ago and are both training to be rope access technicians, had been eyeing that particular void for a year.
“Every time we’d go out there we’d think about that line,” said Moises Monterrubio, 26.
Highlining is high-altitude slacklining, in which a narrow strip of strong, nylon webbing — usually an inch wide and a few millimeters thick — is strung between two anchor points and serves as a kind of dynamic balance beam. Completing a line means carefully heel-toeing from one end to the other while wearing a waist-harness that links to a 3-inch steel ring around the webbing. In a fall, walkers remain attached, but they have to haul themselves back up to balance or shimmy back to an anchor point while dangling upside down.
It’s a relatively new sport, begun as a whimsical pastime among Yosemite rock climbers on break from scaling granite. But in the past decade it has flourished into a niche culture of athletes, gear brands and sponsorships, primarily in Western mountain states.
The length and height of a given line depends on the setting, but highlines are the preferred playing field for gutsy walkers who can stomach the 1,000-plus-foot exposure found among the cliffs on either side of Yosemite Valley.
Highliner Moises Monterrubio walks the 2,800-foot-high line off Taft Point above Yosemite Valley.
Courtesy Ryan SheridanThe Monterrubios started, like many highliners do, by rock climbing and then made the transition to walking lines in dangerous places about two years ago.
“We’re pretty new but we’re very passionate and invested in the sport,” Moises said.
They’ve walked lines across the Sierra and in Utah and Mexico.
The record line they’re claiming spanned a half-mile gap along the south side of Yosemite Valley that has enticed highliners for years.
“This was the next big line,” said Ryan Jenks, 37, a well known highliner from Lodi who has pioneered several lines in Yosemite and helped set up the new line. “The problem was that you have like seven gulleys between these two points. It just seemed impossible to get across.”
Rigging a highline is often the toughest part of a project. In certain places, drones are used to fly one end of a line to its anchor point. But in Yosemite, where drones are illegal, connecting a line means having to work from the ground up.
Over the course of six days this month, the Monterrubios employed the help of 18 friends and fellow highliners to navigate their webbing through and across the treacherous landscape — hiking lines up from the valley floor, rappelling down from the cliffs above and maneuvering through countless tree branches.
Eventually they had their anchors: a set of granite boulders at Taft Point and an old, thick tree trunk at the other outcropping, which doesn’t have a formal name but came to be known by the highliners as “Your Mom.”
“The terrain below is like Lord of the Rings, just the worst terrain you can imagine,” Jenks said.
“It was pretty intense and dangerous but we made it happen,” Monterrubio said.
The group received permission from national park staffers in advance, he said. And the line didn’t pass over waterways or roads or through helicopter space.
The longest line walked in Yosemite had been a 954-footer extending from Taft Point to an anchor east. The new line was almost three times that length.
“I was jazzed, to say the least,” Jenks said.
Everything came together at sunset on June 10: The line was set, the brothers were ready and the honor was theirs.
Daniel, 23, walked the line first and fell three or four times in the wind but made it across. Then Moises, also falling twice but catching himself on the line above the craggy landscape.
Friends took turns on the line for four days afterward, most of them falling as well. The pride of a highliner is to conquer a line without slipping off. Eventually, Moises walked the line in 37 minutes without a fall.
“The most rewarding part was seeing all my friends at the anchor excited about just having it done,” Moises said. “I value that more than crossing.”
Highliner Jimmy Breize balances on the 2,800-foot-long line at Taft Point above Yosemite Valley.
Courtesy Ryan Jenks/Walking a line that long comes with an element of major risk, even with a harness. The further towards center a walker gets, the deeper the line sinks. In this case, Moises estimates the line dipped about 180 feet at its midpoint.
That put the second half of the walk at a steep upward angle — creating a ramp the walker had to climb up to reach the other side. More concerning is what would happen if a walker were to fall midway through.
“That high-tech webbing is really thin. When it snaps up it feels like a razor blade,” Jenks said. “It’ll cut your feet. Even if it hits your arm, you can start bleeding out there.”
Jenks wasn’t taking any chances. He went out partway then turned around.
“It’s just hard to get all the way across,” he said. He sometimes gets motion sick on long lines that can sway in the wind. “There are things that can go wrong.”
No one was badly hurt during the walks, Moises said.
The Monterrubios are planning to break the U.S. record — 3,200 feet, set in Moab — and maybe one day the 1.2-mile world record, set in Canada. But Moises said his pursuit isn’t about getting into the history books as much as sharing the stoke of the sport.
“I just want to be part of the community and inspire people,” he said. “We just want to make an impact on people and show them this is possible. I’m sure someone else will come up with the next crazy idea.”
Gregory Thomas is the Chronicle’s editor of lifestyle & outdoors. Email: gthomas@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @GregRThomas
"claim" - Google News
June 19, 2021 at 07:36AM
https://ift.tt/3qlsg25
Yosemite highliners claim record 2,800-foot air walk from Taft Point - San Francisco Chronicle
"claim" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2FrzzOU
https://ift.tt/2VZxqTS
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Yosemite highliners claim record 2,800-foot air walk from Taft Point - San Francisco Chronicle"
Post a Comment