“First of all highlining is not for beginners. If you are a beginner, you shouldn’t be doing this.” says Nathan Zukoff. He tried his first highline two weeks ago in Yosemite. And he still remember the feeling of standing there on the line 20 meters above the ground.
He went to Yosemite with a lot of Slackliners. Almost all of them was there trying highlining for their first time. But two of them have done it before and knew how to set the line up.
“You should having access to someone else who knows what they are doing”, he says.
Highlining takes training and proper equipment to do safely. “Therefore we also used an extra rope just to be sure. Taking the sport up high is dangerous. You could be fully educated, trained and do everything right and still end up falling to your death.”
It was Nathan Zukoffs plan to stay there for the whole weekend and practice the highline, but after just an hour he was completely exhorted. “Physically because I was sore from all the falling. Even though you have a harness to catch you it hurts to fall, and I’m blue on the inside of my legs now because of that. And mentally because it is so dangerous and challenging to walk so high above the ground”, he says.
Therfore he decided to leave the high lining camp after only one day.
“I think I need some more practicing on the normal slackline before I will try the highlining again”, he finish.
