How to set up a basic slackline - Unboxing the PureKit 20m

How do you set up a basic slackline? Check out this episode of How Not to Slackline. Hi, I'm Ryan Jinks and welcome to Where We Slackline. Normally I teach How Not to Highline and those are ringing techniques and forces and tests, but today we're going to show you how to set up a basic slackline. What I have here is a pure kit from Pure Slacklines and this is a 20 meter kit. They also have a 30 meter kit that doesn't require anything more than what you see in this box. And that's really nice because when you get into long lines or high lines, that requires a substantial more amount of gear. So let's unbox the Pure Slackline 20 meter kit. Okay, let's open it up. We have, well, instructions, that's what you have this video for, right? This is the tree anchor with built-in TreePro. So instead of having to have a separate piece of TreePro, it's all built-in, easy, with sewing loops, that's very nice, three carabiners, two go on one side, the other goes on the other. This is a fancy chain link, in order to do a line lock. And then you have the nicely, beautifully coiled slackline, and this is a really great kit for a beginner because you can easily set up a 20 or a 30 meter slackline without having to invest a whole bunch of money into a bunch of fancy gear. Okay, when you're wrapping this around trees, it has built-in TreePro, but you gotta know a couple things about trees. They have to be big enough. Don't attach a slackline to the skinniest twig you can find. This is basically the smallest you would want for a tree to slackline on. And then when you put it on the tree, you're going to want to make sure that it's high enough that you don't have to tension the crap out of it in order for it not to touch in the middle. But you also want it low enough that it's easy and safe for you to be able to just stand up and practice on without you having to do anything sketchy. Okay, this is a nice size tree, but it's slant, it's at an angle, which is fine. You just put that around there, it's going to pull, the loops go in the carabiner, this is going to pull, and it'll be fine. This is big enough that it's not going to be pulled over, even though it's already angled this way. Our slackline is going to go this direction, but ideally, if you're going to wrap a tree like this, you'd be pulling it that way. Okay, this tree, which I can't really touch my fingertips around, is big enough for these two loops to be connected, however, you go around and you can connect these two. This angle is pretty wide, and so it's not good for your carabiner. But the biggest problem here, if I even out the tree probe, is when you are bouncing up and down, it's going to be rubbing on this tree, which damages your webbing and the bark. And you're really trying to avoid that. This is actually where most of the damage happens on the tree. It's not just the strangling of the bark behind it, but the ups and downs that are happening when you're walking. Okay, so this tree is clearly too big for even these loops to touch. But you could take an additional rope, ideally a rope that you don't buy from Home Depot, but either a climbing sling or a kind of rope you climb with, which is not what this is, and just put it through there, and if it's a continuous sling, you just clip both sides. But anyways, you can do this, and that's okay. However, because the padding stops way back here, you're going to want to grab a towel or some cloth or your shirt on a hot day, and just protect the tree all the way around. But if this is your only option, is to use a big tree, this is the way you can do that for this kit. Okay, I'm going to use this tree, and we're going to slackline this direction. Because this has dirt here and the grass is over there and I have a sprinkler in the way, this is just going to be my, what we call the static side. The other side is where we're going to actually tension the slackline. So I'm just going to wrap it around for now, I'm going to take one of the blue carabiners, and I have these two loops here, I'm going to clip and clip, turn the carabiner around, and now this is going to want to fall until I get this slackline on it, so I'm not too worried about that, I'm going to come and deal with that later. This is my other side, this is the side I'm going to tension on. This is also the minimum size of a tree that you would want to do this with. You're only going to put about 500 pounds to 1,000 pounds, or 2 or 4 kilonewtons of pressure on these trees. Now you're pulling on them from the bottom and not the top, and they're not likely to fall down. But we want to protect the trees and the parks, because that will create access problems if we're damaging things. Anyways, we clipped the two loops, and we're ready to go on this, I am now going to unravel the slackline. I've found a use for the swag, make sure it's really easily visible, at least to everyone else, and I'm going to uncoil this beautifully coiled slackline, and if you're ambitious you can coil it back up like this again, it comes with a nice little Velcro piece. Now this sewing loop is nice, this is my static side. Now without damaging the bark on trees, lift your anchor back up, clip your slackline there, and now let's go to the other side. Oh, just long enough, that's awesome. So basically how we tension this is we go through this carabiner, we're going to add a carabiner here, and we're going to go loop and loop and loop. However you don't want it too close because when you start to pull it together, you're going to touch and you can't tension it anymore. So I'm going to, in this case, go a full arm length away and set this up over here. Okay, this is called a line lock. You fold it in half, this is the part you're going to walk on, this is flat to the other anchor, and you take this cute little aluminum chain link, and you set it in once, and this is the magic of it, is you're going to put it in a second time. You have this loop here, and you go around, and you're going to re-enter it in there a second time. That is the part you're going to clip your carabiner to, and that locks it in place. And now you have all this extra tail in order to do the loop, loop, loop primitive tension system. Now that we have our line lock about four or five feet away from where our anchor will be here, I'm going to take this tail and use this tail as the tension system. What you do is you pull up your tree pro, and the reason I do this about chest level is because by the time I'm done tensioning it, I will be about a foot off the ground. Now you don't want to be much higher than that when you're slacklining, or you could fall and get hurt. But you also don't want your anchor as a foot off the ground, otherwise it's going to be so tight that it's going to be hard to walk. Anyways, now that we have our anchor up where we want it, make sure that this carabiner, when it's up, is flat. And this is flat, so that means this is flat. And what you're going to do is you're going to clip this so it goes up. It's called a primitive tension system. This is the way they used to do it back in the day when slacklining started. And you don't want to go up this, you want to continue down, up, down, up, down. Four clicks is what we're going to do. That's our first click. That's our second click. Then you're going to do a third click. And before you go over there, what you do is you switch, because this wants to be on top. I just clipped it in there. Switch those. That's what pinches it. Now the fourth click is, if you clip it, you have to put it on the correct side. You have to make sure this stuff is all organized. But what you want is this first loop to be on top of what you just clipped. And you can see here, if I keep that nice and tight, how it's just like it came out of the box. It's all nicely coiled. This is just nicely coiled. So I went around four times, it gave me two loops, and the second loop is under the first loop. And that's what holds it in place. You have two points here that are holding it. And what we're going to do is we're going to pull and tension this, and everything we pull is going to stay. Now before I tension it, I'm going to want to lock my carabiners, and I'm going to want to go check my far side to make sure it's at the height I want, and that it's not sitting on the tree weird. Because once you tension it, it's pretty hard to change. Okay, so now you just yank on it. Everything looks pretty good. And if you need it tighter, grab a friend. Okay, something you'll notice is that it gets looser and looser the more you walk. This is just the webbing stretching out. So periodically, you just tighten it some more, and you may notice that the webbing is going to be pulling a little off to the side. So the other, the webbing that's tensioning it, it starts to slip over and over. However, if you just take this tail, you can switch sides by pulling it through the middle, and then tension it from the other direction, in order to just bring it back into center. In order to detension this line, it's pretty simple. You just have to get this tail out from underneath the part of the webbing that's holding it down. So what you do is you just basically pull it backwards, and then pull this backwards. And it's that simple. Slacklining can be fun, but you can get hurt even low to the ground at the park. So therefore, you shouldn't slackline. Thanks for watching. Slacklining can be fun, but even in the park low to the ground, you can get hurt. So make sure you're careful. Until you get your pure slackline in the mail, check out our other episodes, and don't forget to subscribe.