Highlining 101: Section 3 of 7 - Highline Safety

So what are safety things you need to know about before you go highlining? This is the third video in our seven-part Highlining 101 series that corresponds to the textbook on slackline.com. We go over basically everything that you're going to come across in the highlining world and talk about the safety aspect of all of those. In the other videos, we talk about the preparation or the gear, how to use that gear, or just flat-out logistics, which is probably what you were expecting when you clicked a title called Highlining 101. Now this is a bunch of tiny videos squished into one longer video, and below we have the chapters on the timeline and in the description below, so you can skip to the part you want or watch it in its entirety. If you already know how to highline, please share this with somebody who doesn't know how to highline yet, and this will help them be more prepared when they get on your highlines the first time. Now if you already know how to highline, please check over this material, see if you like it, and then please share it with people who are new before they go out and get on your lines the first time, so they're more prepared and know what they're getting into. If you're new, we hope this helps you out, and yes, this is my new studio and lab, and you will see my old studio and my old house in the other videos. This was filmed over a long period of time by a bunch of people, and it was kind of tucked away in an obscure part of YouTube for a while, and now we're putting it on the main channel, so anybody who types in how to highline can find it. Simple thought, I know. Let us know in the comments below if there's anything that we can change or add, and we will make an eighth video as a supplement to these seven. Enjoy. Ryan, dude, it's so good to see you. I haven't seen you since last time we were at GDBY cleansing our chakras together. I know, man. Dude, can I interview you about that one project you did that one time? Definitely, I would love to. Okay, tell me all about it, okay? So we were in the minarets, and we had these mules. These mules hiked in all our webbing. Stop. You think we're joking. This situation happens. Maybe not everyone filming everybody, but you don't want to distract people or be distracted when you're tying in. I'm near a cliff edge, not tied in with anything. He has just now missed one of his loops of the two loops you're supposed to tie into, and people all the time who aren't paying attention screw up their figure eights, and even worse, I've done it myself, haven't finished them, and they can look finished when they're not. So let's try that one more time. Oh my gosh, how are you? It's so good to see you. Hey man, I'm tying in. Do you mind if I tie in real quick? Yeah, I guess I should probably clip in while you do that. Thank you. Man, it's great to see you, dude. It's good to see you too, Ryan. When you're done, I'll buddy check you, and then we can do maybe a short interview. Dude, I would love that. Thank you so much. That'd be great because that's safer. I want to insert an additional video here that wasn't in the original one-on-one video series. There's been several accidents since even making these, and we're finding a common problem is people are forgetting to tie in. It might sound counterintuitive if you're scared to get on a highline, but it's actually happened to me. I got on a 200 meter line at CRG. I slid out 50 meters. I was all by myself, made sure my shoes were good, my music was good, I did my thing, my hat was good, I checked this, I'm pretty stoked. I slide out there, and I clip on there, I slide out because it's got a no-fall zone. Basically, I like to know where my leash is before I stand up, so I was reaching for it, reaching around, reaching. Sometimes it's really far back there, and I'm just like, I forgot to tie in. Now, there have been a total of three people now who have done that, did not know, it stood up, fell, and it passed away. And so, that's apparently something no one's really expecting to be a problem. Maybe not tying in correctly and you buddy check, but the fact that you're not tied in at all and not knowing it is a problem. And I just want to make sure that we emphasize it if we're teaching people how to highline, that make sure you tie in. Have some sort of a ritual. For me, it's like, I like to know where that damn ring is when I'm highlining. If it's in front, I don't care if it's in the back, but I want to know where it is so my foot doesn't get stuck on it. And some people are so comfortable on a highline, they don't care where the leash is. And it seems pretty dumb to say this out loud, but double check yourself before you stand up. Seems like a really odd place to be checking yourself, but that's why I'm still alive. So, it also happened to Kim Wenglen. She was scared out of her mind and then got herself so stoked to get on the upper Yosemite Falls and scooted out. And we were standing there. It's like, it's everyone's fault when that happens. And she wasn't tied in. And she wasn't good enough to walk it. So, it happens. It happens to scared people. It happens to experienced people. So, really, really make sure that you tie in and that the people around you are tying in. So, oh boy, I'm excited to highline. Taking this really awesome course. Took time to learn it. Now it's time. And this is the cliff edge, so we're going to be careful and clip in like I learned. But I mean, I don't know a lot about rigging, but I should just probably check things out just to make sure things are safe. Wow, I know how figure eights are supposed to be in this. This is not even a finished figure eight. Somebody left this half untied. I hope somebody didn't highline on that. And okay, so I'll tie in. What? So, first of all, this seems weird. This is not a locking carabiner and a personal anchor is supposed to be locking. Oh, this is the, somebody added this after the fact. That is so, that's so bad. Let's see, I'll take this off. Oh my gosh, this is just girthage to the master point, which is an aluminum carabiner. Aluminum is so bad for cyclic loading on an anchor and it's not even locking. I at least know that much, looking at this, that it's not a locking carabiner on the master point and it's bad at so many levels. You know, I've seen a lot of like fancy knots after web locks. I don't, this tail's not even tied off and like I'm sitting all over. I'm just damaging this webbing and what the heck? This green padding is just signifying the edge right here. So, this means this is completely not padded rubbing the rock every time somebody gets on. This is a horrible rig and if it looks like this on this side, it probably looks like that on the other side. Now, you may not know a lot about rigging at this point, but not everybody else does either. So, make sure that you use common sense before you risk your life on a line that you didn't rig and really own it before you get on. And it is ideal to check both sides and know how to rig and what's to look at. But even at this stage, even at a festival, you need to use common sense and judge whether or not it is safe for you to get on a line before you get on. Personal anchor systems or PASs are super important if you are near a cliff edge. Too often, I have seen people work, and I am guilty of this too, working near a cliff edge, having my back to a cliff edge, pulling webbing over, which is the worst when you're not clipped in. Always, always, always be clipped into something when you're near a cliff edge. You have to respect the edge of a cliff in order for it not to get you. I think it's a little ironic and funny that some people brag about how safe their high lines are and talk about their rigging while they're standing near a cliff edge not tied in. Now, occasionally, you may have to slide across without the leash. And you can do this as long as you have a personal anchor system. One single hangover is not enough. I don't care if it is locking. But you put this on and you can put your personal anchor, ideally a bigger carabiner than this for that situation, and you clip both the main and the backup, and it slides with you. It's kind of nice if you're going to do that to have two of them. Sometimes this happens when two people are trying to slide across the line or when you're done rigging and you don't have the leash and you need to slide over. Now, remember, you cannot, please do not, highline with a personal anchor system. It's just for sliding over. You got to make sure that your carabiner is orientated correctly and not on the gate. It's just to keep you redundantly safe while sliding across. But you definitely want to respect the cliff edge and be clipped in at all times. It is important to be buddy checked for your safety. You can double check yourself, which you ought to. However, a foolproof way in order to make sure everything is great is to have somebody thoroughly, not half-assed, thoroughly check you. We have had multiple incidences of near misses because we weren't buddy checked. I slid out on a 200 meter line, about 50 meters out, and I got my hat ready. I got my music on. I got my line slide on. I made sure my shoes were on. And so I slid out there, flipped on top, and I like to do leash management before I stand up to make sure I know where things are. Couldn't find the leash. You know, one little detail I missed. Tying in. Happened to Kim Weglin as well. We were at Upper Yosemite Falls. As a new highliner, she was scared of heights. It's not just people who are comfortable being up there. And she was so focused on the walking that she forgot to tie in. Now, she didn't slide out too far, but she did slide out. Sometimes it's really common for you to clip a line slide to a line and forget that you're missing one of those critical steps. Another thing that happened at a Highline Festival that we rigged a line and somebody got on it, and they did not finish their figure eight. And they only went through part the way, which happens a lot when you're distracted and talking while tying your figure eight. She whipped. It held. We're all pretty amazed that it didn't fail. However, if somebody was buddy checking her, she would have been properly tied in. Another incidence is people have only tied in to the leg loops here. And that can flip you upside down really weird. And you can fall out of that if it's just the leg loops, because your legs aren't nearly as tight as your waist belt. It's not as bad if you just do your waist belt, even though that's not ideal. Andy in Mexico, bless his heart. Luckily, he free solos. What's more dangerous than free soloing? Not knowing that you're free soloing. And he only tied into this. Just this. Not this. Not this. Not this. And proceeded to walk across. Luckily, he did not fall. But if you think you're tied in and you're not, that's actually more dangerous than knowing you're not tied in. Somebody has died before from not knowing they weren't tied in and stood up on the line as if they were and they fell and they died because they weren't tied in and they were on the far side. What happens if there's no one to buddy check you? If you have access to a walkie talkie, you can walk somebody through everything that you've done verbally. You can, through distance, kind of have telepathically people check you. It's just like have confirmation if it's even possible that you have done your stuff right. Sometimes you can do non-verbal cues where you like high five each other. You can high five each other from like 50 meters away if you have to, that you actually stopped and double checked yourself and not just fiddled with what song you're playing on your iPad on your music right here. So always make sure you're doing your buddy checks. Don't highline when the weather is bad. In 2018 in Brazil, a storm came in quite quickly actually and it shook a highliner that was on the line aggressively enough to cause injury to him and then eventually the harness, since it's just auto-locking especially, kind of slipped like a weblock does and it opened enough for him to eject out of the harness and he fell and he did die. And whether or not you get ejected from a harness, weather can make a line move very very violently and you don't want to be on it when the weather is bad. There's also been several lines that have been hit by lightning and sometimes lightning has been kind of far away as well. So if there is any chance that you could get blown or struck by lightning, don't get on a highline and play it safe. Let's talk about harness safety. There are a lot of things that can go wrong with the harness and you want to make sure it doesn't happen to you. The number one concern people do have is that they will fall out of their harness especially if they are falling upside down. It's a pretty legitimate concern especially when you only see a waist belt and it's not a full body harness. The key is you want to make sure that your harness is on right side up correctly. My belay loops are facing down. I know my harness. All harnesses are a bit different. Make sure you read your instructional manual to know what kind of buckle you have and whether or not these are rated or if this thing in the back is rated. This one clearly is not rated. So now that I understand my harness, you don't want obviously this much room. It'll literally fall off but you don't want just that as well because I can pull it down without undoing it. So that really is the test to find out whether or not your harness is going to hold you is whether or not you can pull it down without undoing your buckle. So I'm going to pull it. You don't want it to be like I'm scared. That's actually quite uncomfortable. I can barely get one fist in there. That seems to be like enough wiggle room and it doesn't go over my hips. Like I cannot basically you can try to just pull off your harness. If you can't pull your harness off, it's not coming off. So I clearly can't pull it off. Now the thing about leg loops is you don't want them so loose that your leg feels like it's going to come off but I don't also cinch it down. The only time I'll ever do that is if I forgot my phone was in my pocket and I don't want to risk losing it is I'll cinch it down over my phone. But other than that, I like to have it a little bit looser for the flexibility of being able to walk on the highline. With auto locking buckles, there really is no backup. I don't generally try to tie things off. I guess you could try to go underneath kind of like tying off the tail of a web lock. I suppose that doesn't hurt anything but I don't ever do it. I don't feel like there's a need for it in a normal highline situation. Maybe if I was to do something extreme like a full rope swing or something possibly but I wouldn't be using this harness. I'd be using a more burly harness with possibly a chest harness. Not only is it important for you to know your harness and whether or not it's gonna come off, you want to make sure when you buddy check people that you don't just check their knot and you don't just check the knot at the ring but you check to make sure that their harness is on properly so it's nice to have a basic understanding of harnesses in general to make sure that they are not gonna fall out of it. Don't drop anything ever. This is especially important when you're highlining over people which is almost never. Lublin Highline Festival was the one occasion I can remember myself doing that and you have to be very careful. They have people to check you to make sure that you have a keeper sling on your hangover because you can't drop this on people. That's why I like my little system I have here. You don't want to forget your phone is in your pocket every year at GGBY. Somebody loses their phone in the canyon. You don't want to lose your in the ocean in Mexico when you whip upside down after having a few drinks at night. Not that that's ever happened to me. You want to have a hat leash. You want to have a way to connect your music to you. If you're not using your phone you're using either ipod thing or a little I use a little clip on my belt little mp3 player. You don't want to drop anything so it's not about just leave no trace. It's about safety if there's anybody or anything under you. Here are some leash safety tips is the number one injury that you can get on a highline is with your leash. When you're falling if the thing gets wrapped around your finger at all or wrapped around your hand when you try to grab it and it this rope is going to get straight when you whip it has broken many hands fingers and actually has broken off a finger. So you want to make sure that you aren't grabbing the leash at least uncontrollably. Don't grab the leash when you whip. You want to make sure that you're whipping head first so you somersault out of it. The other thing is you don't want your figure eight on your harness to be too far out and too big. That is my tail is too short that is too short but my point is I you don't want this part to be giant because that get your hand stuck in it something gets stuck in hell your foot could get stuck in that. You want this to be cinched up a lot closer to your harness in your person than than that was. So you want it somewhere like that where it's tied up against your harness. There's very little room right here and then you don't want too much tail loose because it could create a problem with again your fingers. You're going to do the safety knot. Everything's pretty tight and snug right here. You don't want these loose gaps in the knot because if you go to grab the leash because even though I tell you not to I do it too sometimes you don't want to have this grab the leash and your finger gets stuck in there and then it tightens. You want everything to be pretty dang snug. You don't want to have any finger traps in here. A real risk with a leash is tying in distracted. I bring this up several times in this course because it can happen. You want to make sure you're finishing your figure eight properly and that you're in both parts of your harness and that can happen. I think I screwed up this last weekend because I wasn't paying attention. It's very very important to stop everything you're doing and tie in your figure eight undistracted. If you've taken mini whips on your line and spun around it's not uncommon for your leash to have a loop in it and these loops is what can catch your feet or your arms or your hands and this can actually create more of a problem with breaking things than if it was straight. You don't want to have anything that can potentially be grabbing your body as you're falling with your leash. If you do have this problem you can untwist below the line or you can untie if you're near a cliff edge after you tie in your PAS and straighten it out. When you're doing flipper whippers or spinning you have to kind of be conscious about it when you're on the line and you can just monkey underneath the high line to undo a few twists. So there's there's a few options with that but you definitely want to have the right length, no twists, no excessive knot holes, or anything that can grab you and avoid grabbiness at all costs. What is a no fall zone? That is a zone you're not supposed to fall. There are some high lines that I have been on one that was in the middle but typically on the sides where the height is not sufficient enough to take a whipper and so you would hit the ground or the edge of the cliff that's not like perfectly straight cliffs tapered out and you can't walk over that safely because you won't be able to fall. So they are called no fall whippers. You should be able to identify when something is too low to whip and you should avoid walking across those at all possible. And what you do is you end up sit starting after you pass that spot by either line sliding or just scooting out. A lot of lines actually have this. I did high line one where a tree was in the middle of a hundred meter line and we were only about one meter above the pointy tippy top of the tree when we were standing and walking across it. It's not something you would want to fall in and it was ironic there was a no fall zone just in the middle of this 100 meter line. Just always be aware to stay safe of where and where you cannot fall. You are the number one risk to yourself. What do I mean by that is you can prevent most of the problems that happen. Most of the rescues that actually happen are during festivals with new people who don't know what they're doing but if you're taking this course I doubt you're going to have that problem. But I recently got back from the two kilometer long high line in asbestos Canada and the number one rule that we were joking was don't get rescued. Rescues can be risky for the rescuer and it can be complicated and messy and you don't want to get rescued. So if you feel like you can't finish a line don't do the whole thing. You can get on you can start things but you don't necessarily have to cross everything you get on. I chose to walk out on the two kilometer long high line for only 30 minutes which means if I'm lucky 30 minutes back. So I knew that I could high line for one hour in the sun without needing somebody to come rescue me. However if I tried to cross the whole thing it would take me four or five hours and that's not feasible for the condition that I am in and just I know I know that I couldn't do it. So I chose not to put other people at risk and wear myself out by trying to cross the two kilometer long high line. There's also lots of other incidences that if you have common epilepsy don't get on high lines. If you have an injury on your leg or your arm or something don't go out and make it to where it could easily be re-injured and then you would have to be rescued. So try to prevent as many problems as possible because you are technically the biggest risk to yourself because the gear has been tested it's very unlikely to fail so please be careful. Let's go over some line slide safety. Probably the number one thing that we all learn pretty quick is not to do this and get the roller to pinch that skin right inside my arm right here because if you go like this oh this is the worst right here and that roller just pinches right over that hurts for an hour. Make sure you don't get your hair pinched in this your hat leashes make sure you don't have anything getting stuck in here including your fingers or anything if you want to rest if you have gloves you can grab right there but you want to be careful that it doesn't pinch your skin because if I let go I just start rolling and you don't want to roll uncontrollably. You also want to keep your hangover pretty straight on the line you don't want it to be twisted really hard because it'll grind the edges of your slack line and over time that will wear it down and potentially weaken it. You want to control your descent you never want to let go and go fast on a high line so if you're going to go down towards the center you want to go like this and really control it in order to not speed up. If you go too fast you could heat up the line or heat up your roller and then when you stop it could heat up your webbing melt it and you could potentially die. And on this line we have a segment where a lot of high lines are now segmented and they have all these connections which you are not going to pass over easily. You hit one of those going 30 miles per hour you're going to have a problem. Make sure you never just just use this let's say the leash was on the other side and I want to go to the other side you have to have a personal anchor which you're already going to have anyways if you're watching this series you're going to have a personal anchor with you and you want to make sure that you clip it to the line so you have redundancy. Now you don't need to do this if you're tied into the leash you just have to have redundancy and part of that means you have to be clipped in with a daisy and your hangover. Even if your hangover is locking that's not good enough. Some people have done two hangovers I still prefer this. Make sure you don't drop your hangover because if uh well you don't want to drop your hangover in general but if there are people below you and you drop something like this and hits them in the head they could die so make sure you stay safe by always keeping things attached to you at all times. Let's talk about harness hanging syndrome or suspension trauma. If I'm hanging here and too tired to hold myself up I'm going to be like this and that's really really really uncomfortable right now but what happens is this cuts off the circulation in your legs your heart's now below all your veins you're having a hard time getting things to circulate it's just like if you kink a hose on a pump it's gonna blow out your pump bad for your heart you lose blood to your head. I'm not a scientist I just know that this really sucks and if somebody's like that let's say they break their back they sprain ab muscles and they can't sit up it's really important to get out to them quickly in order to build like this chest harness and clip them to this point so they're sitting more like this in order to prevent the harness hanging syndrome. Now just sitting in a harness like this can suck after a long period of time but this isn't going to kill you. I've done this for 12 straight hours on El Cap before it is hard if you don't have circulation but as a healthy person I can just keep moving my leg loops adjusting stretching this is fine this isn't going to hurt anything but this if I can't hold myself up this could be a serious problem and you should be prepared to take care of that if that situation ever happens. How do you prevent nerve damage? You don't want a tensioned line on your nerves. I never do this so it really really hurts. A lot of people who don't have uh hand strength to grab the line they do this. Wow that really sucks um you don't want to you see people doing this oh god it really sucks if you don't know what you're doing that really sucks if you go inside your leg like this and hang or what a lot of people do for a photo which is not okay not it's not bad for a short photo but they do this and hang from the inside of their knees and go and you take your photo all that pressure is right on their nerves you don't want anything on the nerves you want everything to be on muscle so when I'm catching it's in my hand it's on the back of my heel all the time I'm usually wearing shoes or my cap so first of all I'm all wrapped up in this shit there we go I go like this whenever I'm doing stuff in between my thighs it's always on my muscle in here it's never inside of my knee inside of my elbows inside of my armpits that's why armpit catches can be so bad it's not just the fact that you got major rope burns now it's because you probably did some possible nerve damage so just be conscious where you're putting this tension line on your body all right so you want to be conscious when you're walking of course I'm conscious of me trying to stay balanced but I want to be aware of what's going on with the backup line I want to be aware that it's not over my foot that split is right at my foot right there I can step over it just by moving my foot back and forth and my leash I want to pull that over my backup line is still fine the wind isn't doing anything weird you just want to be aware of your surroundings it's okay to step on your backup occasionally it's just your foot might slip a little but that's not not really a problem but you just want to be conscious of everything sometimes you'll have tourists doing stuff weird over there people might be flying drones near you that shouldn't be your anchor might not be as padded as well as it should be and so you might want to make sure you evaluate that before you surf too hard the other thing I want to be aware of in this spot is that this rock I have to my left here is protruding out quite a bit and the wind is picking up and I have to evaluate whether or not I want to walk past it and if I don't feel absolutely comfortable I absolutely should not walk past it so then I could dismount and sit right here and just dismount the line and play it safe and not be near this my anchor up there still looks fine sometimes when you get on really steep stuff it can actually touch parts of the rock that people weren't anticipating and so you just don't want to be like oh I'm highlining and just only worried about balance but you have to be worried about a bunch of other stuff at the same time so just be mindful hey thanks for watching but please do not be an idiot and go highlining your first time without going with someone who knows what they're doing this video series is just to prepare you and help you have the gear and make it so you can practice before you get that special opportunity to finally go highlighting if you already highline please share this with somebody you might take out so they can go through the whole video series so they're fully prepared to get on that line so you don't have to rescue them it's better for the youtube algorithm ecosystem for me to release these once a week so we're going to do that every saturday until they are all out so you don't have to wait until we do that we're going to put the unlisted video links in the description below so you can just blow through all this look at the textbook and move on with your life this is a gift economy styled education I believe it's more important to have this information free and available to everyone than for me to get 20 bucks but it's not free to make so if you enjoyed the entire course and you read the textbook and you look at the bible and watch all of our episodes spot us 20 bucks it really helps 100 goes back on the channel as you can see on our donation page on slackline.com we're a very open book and make sure you keep your eye out for the highlighting 102 course we are going to completely finish this and the bolting bible 2021 version before we finish the highlighting anchor course but that's going to be oh it's a lot more exciting to make that than this series so uh we're pretty excited about what's coming so make sure you hit that like button and we'll see you at the next video cheers