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Moab Rocks, but it’s time to say goodbye

Hanging out in Moab, Utah ROCKS. It is definitely my new favorite place in the US!!! Mike and I have been doing a lot of highlining and climbing here, and are staying with friends Brent and Canyon (who have so graciously let us crash on their couch). We accompanied Andy Lewis as he rigged the World Record Highline of 330 feet and have been attempting the line until a few days ago. The line turned out to be WAY too heavy to walk!! The record was 28 steps, which is surprising considering Mike and Andy are two of the best highliners in the world. Here is a video that I made summarizing the trip

World Record Attempt Video

The line was really intimidating, super loose and super heavy. The boys tried so hard that they completely exhausted themselves both mentally and physically (you shoulda seen the bruises!!) I didn’t really focus my energies on the world record line. Seeing the two of them fail really didn’t give me much hope. So, I focused more on the 120 footer that would be my personal record if I walked it. This line had only been rigged once before by Dean Potter, who did a B.A.S.E jump off of it. Andy rigged the line and I avoided it for about a day. I didn’t want to think about it until I was actually ready and standing up to walk. When I did….I was completely in the zone. I didn’t want to fall. I didn’t want to have to crawl back to the beginning and try 10 more times, so I pressed on as hard as I could. I lost my balance due to fear a couple of times but fought it, hard. In the middle I had the most trouble…I started to think about where I was, the exposure, the risk of falling and having to begin again; but, then I heard Andy’s voice…” calm, relax em….breathe!!!”. So, i did. I relaxed and I felt my entire body let go of all its tension.  I tried to hold that until the end….and when I got there I realized that I had on-sighted Dean Potter’s B.A.S.E line. EEK!!! My biggest accomplishment yet. Not only was it my longest highline, but my longest on-sight. I was satisfied. I tried to walk back, but was completely distracted by the accomplishment so I let it go and basked in the glory of beating my personal record :)

Here is a photo of me on the line!

Some other accomplishments:

Ryan Matson walked his first highline ever, along with three others! (22 feet, 47 feet, 66 feet an 92 feet)

Justin Adkins also walked his first highline and all three of the others!

Libby Sauter and myself both walked our first highline in a swami belt (meaning no leg loops….so if you fall, it could potentially hurt quite a bit).

Hayley Ashburn sent her longest highline of 66 feet!

Andrew Tysinger sent the 66 footer after quite a bit of hesitation, or what we call “The Fear”

Taylor Fool did a tyrollean on a highline: her first highline experience!

Brent and Canyon Cain both did a Tyrollean and Canyon also did some intentional whippers (he threw his body out into the abyss)!

and MUCH more was accomplished during the trip.

We also did some climbing as well, which was fun for me because I haven’t in such a long while! Brent and Canyon put up some routes for us and I was honestly amazed at Canyon’s ability….he’s 13 years old and leads 5.13 TRAD!!!

That’s all for now!! Mike and I are off to the East Coast to do demos for Gibbon and to climb/highline as well! I’ll be sure to update soon.
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Day at pocatello and tetris video

So today we had a way better session then the past few days. Things are finally starting to kick off now :). We started the day with making a little tetris like video that you can check below. After this I started to edit the video material we made yesterday. We had some nice shots in there and also the buttbouncing was good.

This afternoon we had a really nice slack session at Ross park in Pocatello, it started out a bit quite but after a few minutes we got more and more people on the lines. We met some local slackers that were very friendly. At around 4 pm we had an intervieuw with Channel 6, this got broadcasted this evening, luckily we filmed it so we can try and upload it later on :).

Later on Bernd and me started to get into the Buttbounce competition again and eventually I broke the record again with 7 bounces in a row :P. We will try and do 10 before the end of the week :).

Now we are at a motel again preparing for the fun days that lie ahead.

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Almost famous

We had just set a foot into Starbucks when we were asked what would be in the cool car outside. We chatted a bit and the man came up with a contact for the local television. Hayley called and we were set for an interview at Gray’s lake!

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Gibbons go Chautauqua

Around noon we headed over to Chautauqua park and met the local slackliners that by that time had already set up a couple of longer lines. They seemed to be a bit surprised when the Gibbons arrived in their freshly tagged shiny mobiles. The ice broke rather soon though, even before Gibbon’s Sara offered free subs and drinks ;-)

Gibbons in Chautauqua

Nick jumping around in ChautauquaNick jumping around in Chautauqua

At the end of the day, everybody agreed it was a way cool and fun session under perfect conditions. There probably couldn’t have been any better spot for our tour premiere than Boulder!

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Sticky Gibbons

After a well earned deep sleep the whole crew met at the Gibbon Headquartes in Boulder. Thanks to really black coffee from Venezuela and a bunch of fresh bagels we had enough energy to do the final preparations for our very first event. It was also the first meeting between the European slackliners and the American teammates. Welcome aboard, Jeremy, Mike and Haley :-)

So we got our cars tagged with large (really!) stickers and every team got it’s equipment ready:

Gibbon Crew

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Gallery

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Deep Water

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Photocontest September/October 2008

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Slovenia Competition

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