What do you get when you combine 4 friends, 2 trees, and enough weird ideas to fill an entire book? A RIOT!
CHECK OUT THE VIDEO AT THE BOTTOM
This trip was SO DAMN FUN! I have been trying to set adventure up for almost a year now. The first time we cancelled this trip was because of the new pandemic that swept across our nation, the second time we cancelled because I was heavily exposed to the virus and didn’t want to kill my friends, BUT the third time we made it happen!!!!
None of use really knew what to expect. All I was wishing for was a wind and rain free night, anything else that happened would just be a bonus. And BOY did we have many fun surprises. Let’s see: we found two awesome tree for climbing, got destroyed by mosquitoes, ran into a deer, taught my brother how to tree climb, spent the night laughing about peeing on each other, enjoyed a cool night in our hammocks under the stars, woke up and enjoyed many good conversations while listening to the angry squirrels, angry squirrels again, built our first highline, tested the highline for fall protection, tested the highline some more, continued to test the highline cause we were all too terrified to commit, THEN finally we started practicing falls and NOONE DIED!
This was the first time that I ever tried to build a highline in the tree canopy. My friend Devon informed me that the correct term for such a low highline hung between two trees is actually “midline”. So with my new-found terminology we began rigging up our first midline.
Last year Devon invited me to GGBY before I had ever even considered the idea of walking on a “tight rope”. It seemed pointless at first but then I began exploring how much skill, mental strength, and rigging abilities required for such a feat and decided that I needed it in my life. I bought a cheap hank of webbing and rigged up a primal line to begin practicing slacklining. It took me a few days before I was able to walk a 15 foot stretch then I slowly started making it longer and longer.
Patrick and Devon had similar backgrounds and all three of us were heavily into the climbing world so we decided, between the three of us, that we could setup a midline and not kill ourselves. We didn’t even have a leash but we brought our DIY gear specialist (Devon) and he quickly had sharpened a stick, taped it to some cord, and feed the cord through a piece of short webbing to make a leash.
At first we were all skeptical about our short highline having enough stretch to safely fall but we were all jumping off the line by the end of the day!
Here is my gear list for our big adventure:
Hammock: DIY Dutchware gathered end with climb spec webbing
Underquilt: DIY RBTR full length synthetic
Topquilt: DIY Dutchware 3/4 length synthetic
Ridgeline: PMI EZ bend and Amsteel
Pillow: DIY
Clothes: shorts, t-shirt, sandals, and a fleece hoody
Climbing gear: EVERYthing that I owned including a 9mm Sterling HTP 200′, 11mm PMI EZ bend 100′, 1″ climbing webbing 30′, rads setup with grigri, tons of carabiners locking and non, petzl harness, throwcube, and a bag full of cords
Food: protien bars, chips, hummus, and poptarts for breakfast
Peebottle: duh!
Backpack: BD 50 caliber
Medical: mosquito repellant and TP
Headlamp: BD torch
Helmet: FORGOT!?!
Anything else: not really, I didn’t bring many creature comforts cuz the weather was supposed to be awesome and I had good friends to keep me company.
