Ultimate Buying Guide 3 of 3 - Rigging a highline safely with minimal gear

How do you rig a highline with a minimalist setup? A gear that you can use both for a slackline and a highline. Check it out on this episode of How Not to Highline. Hi I'm Ryan Jinks and welcome to my gear room. No one needs this much gear and that is what these videos are going to show you. We already talked about what the minimalist setup was and in another episode showed you how to set up the slackline with that minimalist setup. We ran out of time to show you the highline example with the minimalist setup. That's what we're going to show you in this episode. I'm going to show you in my backyard the basics start to finish including derigging how to use very little gear. What's nice about having a 10 meter piece of rope is if you have a tree you can use a tree like we did in the park. But if you have bolts you can use for bolts. If you have normal climbing hangers like you see here you can buy these 6 millimeter quicklinks. They're Malian quicklinks. Just make sure you're buying the right kind and you're not buying some crap from some local hardware store. They need to be stainless steel, they need to be rated. These things are rated for 32 kilonewtons each. So they're plenty strong. The radius of these is not the same as the diameter of the rope because ideally you'd want an 8 millimeter quicklink or an 8 millimeter rope. This is super good enough. These are the M12s from Landcruising and BoltProducts.com which is technically who makes them. So I take my rope, I'm going to make a BFK, I don't want to dive into a lot of detail on how to tie a knot. I'm trying to show a concept here, but anyways, and you can adjust the length by having a rope. Make sure you dress your knots, pull all 4 strands. Okay once you have what would be a sliding X, instead of adding whoopies if this is all you have and you're trying to go minimal, you can tie a BFK. You slide your hand up, adjust it to make sure all these strands are going to be pulling evenly. You do have to know the direction your highline will be, and you can tie a BFK, a big ******* knot. Now, if you can't go around more, you can just do an overhand, but it's a BF overhand, and this is redundant. So if this were to break, you're still on the 3 bolts fairly evenly. Now one thing you have to be aware of with the BFK, is if your highline doesn't go in the direction you tied this, and it goes over a little bit, just a little bit, over to the side, then these become loose and they don't hold any of the force and all your highline is on only one bolt. Another option you have, if you need your anchor to be longer, is just like we did at the tree, is just tie a figure 8 on one end, and a figure 8 on the other. And if you have quick links, you can connect it afterwards, otherwise you have to thread it through first. But you can see here, how much longer I can make my anchor with doing it this method. And this is still a 4 bolt anchor, I'm going to twist that there, I'm going to make sure everything is pulling evenly, and I don't necessarily like this as much because I only have one strand here, whereas I have two strands here, here, and ideally on the ends, but that's not the end of the world. If I go back up to here, make sure everything is even, then I can tie a super duper figure 8. And you really, ideally, want to dress that knot. This is a mess. You would want to take the time, get all those strands, rotate this around, and make that look really nice and clean. I was really impressed by the BFKs at JGBY, they were all super clean, they will hold more strength by doing that, and it looks more professional. But this is another way of rigging this. So I have my webbing all flaked out, ready to go, I'll show you that in a minute. This is the end of my webbing, I'm going to clip this to the bolts in case it goes falls, so I don't lose my webbing. This is my Prusik, it's adjustable, I want a lot of wiggle room here because the cliff edge isn't right next to me. I'll clip that to a bolt, so I'm safe, and my highlining partner, Puff, is going to pull my slackline over, which already has the leash attached to it because Puff is going to slide over when she is done chasing bugs, and then tape your highline before you rig it. I'm not going to tape this, just do it. I'm going to attach the tagline to this one carabiner, we're trying to see how few carabiners you need. I have one attaching the meat, one attaching the webbing, and one for the tagline. So I just pulled over the two sew-in loops and the leash, I made my master point around this tree, I took my static rope, tied a fisherman's knot, folded it in half, folded it in half again, and then wrapped it around this. Now, always be clipped in when you're near cliff edge, and don't be dumb and use bushes for highlining. This is only an example, okay? Sorry I don't have a bigger tree in my backyard. So I take this, it could be heavy, whatever, but I pulled it all over, I'm just going to clip it to the master point for now. Now something that really helps is to put the soft release on this side, so I take my bow shackle, my soft release, and I'm going to install this. Now, something we're going to do a little bit different, I'm going to explain to you, it's nice to have it on the static side, the side you don't tension, because later, when you take it all apart, you have your tagline here, which I've coiled back into the bag since I pulled it over, I'm going to use it to send it back over there. There's no reason to have your friend send it this way, so you can unclip it to send it back. I would just release it, once the weight's on the tagline, you can send it. Watch the soft release 2.0 video for that. But for now, one thing I didn't realize, I can't put my web lock, if I only have one pure lock, I will have to have a second one of these. Now these aren't that much, it's a second bow shackle, because I'm going to attach the sewing loop. This is only for the mainline, okay? So now that that's ready to go, I'm going to flip my carabiner over, take the mainline here, and attach that. Now people have asked, can you use a soft shackle on a soft release? Well technically no, definitely not on this side, because this is going to be under high tension, releasing all that force, and that's when you get rope on rope abrasion, it's like the worst kind you can have. This fixed eye over here, it pinches the sides, the soft release will squeeze that. So it will eventually cut it, you might get away with it once, but you still will have abrasion on your soft shackle. Really really can't use soft shackles with this. Technically you can do anything once, but you could die. Anyways, your backup line, we're going to attach directly to the master point. I'm going to put a soft shackle, see this soft shackle on this master point isn't rubbing, unless I'm doing this for a video. So that's not a problem, but if you plan on rubbing it intentionally later with the soft release, that is a problem. So I put the soft shackle on here, and then this is technically already taped, my leash is already on here, and is clipped to the master point. I'm going to take this and just clip it to here, because this is going to be harder and harder to unclip a carabiner. Make sure that your pitches are done, ideally you would take this carabiner after you tie the leash to you, because I'm going to slide back over when my friends are done tightening that side. I take this carabiner and clip that to something. Now I have a backup line, I also have this tied off, I don't think it's going to come undone, but you've got a carabiner, it's nice to just clip it off to something. Okay, if you're going to work near this cliff edge, be clipped in, the Russell Prusik gives you some flexibility. Find your main line, flip the tail over the top so the tail is on the top, not the bottom. Make sure that your pure shackle is more or less upside down. Take this, stick it in the web lock like normal, but your tail is coming out of the top. Hear the click, you know it's in right, and then I can pre-tension. Now when I'm all done, this backup line, which you can see is coming this way, I will connect to my master point by tying a frost knot. Wait, Ryan, how do you tie a frost knot? Well, that did get cut out of the video, so let me show you. If you tie a knot in your webbing, it has to be pretty much a frost knot. You cannot just take a bite, a bite is any piece of webbing you fold in half, that right there is a bite. You cannot just take a bite and put an overhand knot in it because this will not retain as much strength as a frost knot. A frost knot will hold 60-70% of the strength of the webbing, whereas a web lock will hold 80-90%. If you don't have another web lock, this is an alternative. Sew-in loops are better, but here's a frost knot in case you don't have an option to a sew-in loop or a second web lock. For a backup line, this is fine, there's no reason to buy four web locks. So, if you have a big bite of webbing, if you fold it in half this way, the main strand here is sitting on top, and it needs to be sandwiched in between. So what you do is you take this and flip it over the other way, and you see how this strand, the main strand here, is coming out of the middle of that back of webbing there. So now that I've taken my bite and folded it in half, now I can put a simple overhand knot into it. Frost knots are not that hard. So, go around, tie that simple overhand knot with the strand coming out of the middle here. It preserves more of its strength. It's very important to dress your knot, otherwise only some of the strands are holding anything. This goes for all knots. So you pull on every single part of it and make sure it still looks good when you're done. That right there can be used for a slack line on one end, a tie line on one end, or a backup line. This can replace a web lock if you cannot afford another web lock. Grab a soft shackle, put the soft shackle in there, and that does not compete for space until there was a problem and the backup needed to be tight. There we go. The backup is technically done. You want to do that until last, but this is pretty much all you need to do except for a little bit of tensioning. Okay, so we have a line grip and hangover. It's way better than a prusik, but a prusik could work considering that you're not going to tension this as much. So the eye of the line grip is on top because the tail is on top. So when I go like that, it goes main line, tail, the tail you pull, and then I can pull back. I can really pull that because I have a soft release in the system. Now I probably wouldn't put much force than that on there. And you can use your backpack, a towel, you can use so many things for padding. Ideally, you don't have to bring something extra. You can just take, let's say I have all this extra padding, put this in a bag, would be way better than the way I've got it here, and now this is padded. Our backup tail is already tied off. All we have left to do is to tie off our main line tail. So before you're done, you have to tie this tail off so it doesn't slip. And I'm going to go to the bolt directly behind it so it stays right in line with the weblock and tie a Munter Mule Hitch. Okay, so this is the tail that comes directly out of the weblock, and I put it in there in the carabiner, and then I go over the top. I give it a twist because I know I'm coming back down. I'm going to block that now. And that kind of Munter hitch does allow me to release it if there's any tension on it. It's not a knot that is so committed that you have to have slack in order to undo it. So I pull it tight, I go over the top, and I go around it like that. Now, the trick to hold that in place, obviously it's a knot that can come undone, is to take this bite of loop and to go around itself. Now the trick to this thing is to make a loop, and that's what you're going to stick your bite in. So it's not overly complicated, but you do have to stick it in that loop. So, if you want to see more of this, Animated Knots has a great video for that. Take this, go around again, and if you have enough tail and desire, you can clip it off to something if you want. Right now I'm not going to. But this is nice and tight, but can easily be undone with all these slip knots here when it's time to derib. This is the tail of the back up, and this is the tail of our munter mule hitch. I personally like to take these two tails, and I like to just tie a simple something in them. Okay? Tie whatever the hell you want. Now this does require some clear hairs, but I really like to have these tails tied off in two bolts back here, and you can even up those bunny ears. But the point is, I have had issues with this thing right here. Whether people didn't push the pin in all the way, or this wasn't done right. You want to back this up. You want to connect it directly to the things that are bomber in the rock. Now, I have extra webbing here. You can use the tag line on the other side is great to roll up and stick under here. If you have a bag, it would be nice if you had a bag to put this on. But you can take this wad of webbing and use it as padding to keep your tie line off of the rock. Because abrasion is what I consider the number one risk to break this setup. Because this is redundant and safe, but if it's rubbing on a rock right here for long enough, it'll cut through. This would be way, way better and better for the webbing if this was in a bag. And you would want to, if the cliff edge was right here, you would want to slide this right to there so it doesn't touch the rock at all. This high line is done. Okay, so we used a total of six carabiners. We have one on each bolt over there used for something. We have the one over here for the tag line and the one for my personal anchor system. That is a very minimal rig. Okay, time to de-rig. I untied what I could on the soft release without having to hang on to it yet. Undid the backup. I'm going to clip the backup to that carabiner. I'm going to clip my leash to that carabiner. And my tag line is going to go in that direction. I want it to hold it about right there. So that's going to hold the weight of the line as soon as I soft release it. Now, you don't have to commit all the weight to the tag line until you know the tag line handles it. Obviously this isn't a very tight slack line. Now if you are concerned about the weight of this, like in the soft release 2.0 video we do, you can clip it to a carabiner back here and then hang on to this tail, Z-drag, munter hitch, whatever you want. But I'm just going to hang on to it. At this point, instead of me trying to undo my metal shackle here, I'm going to leave this on the system. I'm just pulling the soft release completely off. And now I can just send the whole thing over. And it takes less than one or two minutes. Everything you need to slack line and to high line up to 100 meters is sitting on this white carpet. Everything. You know, you're going to struggle if you're trying to long line a full 100 meters in a park. But, I mean, if your friends also have webbing, you could rig some pretty big high lines. So make sure you buy 100 meters of whatever you're going to buy. So let's say that's around $300. You need two static ropes, which, let's say, at $1 a foot at 10 meters each, you're looking around maybe $60 for those. You do need a leash with two steel rings. That's around $20-$30. A personal anchor. That would probably cost $15. A harness only costs $35 in most places. Three or four millimeter accessory cord in a grocery bag does not cost very much. Soft shackles you can make for just a few dollars a piece, maybe around $6 or $7 a piece. You already need these six millimeter quick links, and this is what you could use to tighten these. You will need eight of these if the area you're going to high line has bolts with normal hangers. But if you have chain links, glue-ins, or those fancy hangers, you won't even need these. We use six carabiners in our setup. You can make a homemade version of this. You can buy the cheaper version of this. And here you have a fairly cheap soft release that you could technically make at home. And all of this only requires one web block. So everything on this carpet only costs $1,000 for everything. And you could even go cheaper if you bought the cheaper line grip or homemade your line slide. And if you had a friend who also bought a setup, then you could do virtually anything. Now of course the cheapest way to do any high line is to just go with people who already have the stuff. So do not rule that option out if you're new and you want to try the sport. It's better that you invest the money into going to a festival, even if it's not near you, to get a feel for what's out there before you buy anything. Even with how bomber this gear is, high lining can still be dangerous. Therefore, you shouldn't high line. Thanks for watching. But don't be an idiot and think you can watch some YouTube video and go try high lining on your own for the first time. Please go with somebody who knows what they're doing. If you don't know where to find slackers, you're in luck. We have a slack line group list of all the Facebook groups in the world. There's over 1,300. There might be a slack liner near you. Make the effort to go to either a festival or meet up with someone who knows what they're doing instead of trying this stuff on your own. These videos are just to give you a foundation so you don't have to learn from scratch when you do get the chance to go with someone who knows what they're doing. And if you like this channel and it helped you learn slack lining and high lining, please consider giving us $1 per episode. It's not that I'm trying to make money with this channel, but it really helps if the audience helps pay for some of the costs associated with the channel. Not so I can buy more gear on my wall now that I know I don't need very much gear. So go to patreon.com and support us with $1 per episode. And if you haven't checked it out yet, go to the Church of Slack Life YouTube channel. We have a weekly sermon every week that we do to help share the stove. Go to churchofslacklife.com to read the Book of Slack, my Bolting Bible, and see a bunch of Slack Life testimony. Don't worry, we're not a cult, we don't have any special Kool-Aid, and we don't own a private jet. We're just trying to share some stuff. So get involved. Leave a comment. Don't forget to subscribe and hit that bell button so you're notified every time we come out with a new episode each week. And leave your testimony on the churchofslacklife.com. And if you're interested in helping us create an episode or translate an episode to help our Slack family that does not speak English as their native language, let us know. That would be amazing. And of course, you can always buy a Kool t-shirt on slackline.com under Shop.