Trip Report: In Recovery - Back to the North Gully Highline

So here I am hiking up the Stawamus Chief in Squamish, British Columbia.

We're hauling up massive amounts of gear -- All for highlining.

The idea is simple and has been practiced for generations: string up a length of cable/wire/webbing across a span, then walk across it to the other side. It takes a lot of balance and concentration to accomplish this task.

Thanks to Slackers Slacklining for sponsoring me, we had ordered a length of 3/4 inch amsteel blue, rated to around 80 thousand pounds. We had to have the amsteel rush ordered -- too many people were involved and some serious problems arose. We requested each end be spliced. It turns out each end was spliced, but that ended up reducing the overall length of the line by about 14 feet. Too short! Even though we clearly requested a finished length, too many cooks ruined the recipe. The only thing left to do was deal with it. We extended the haul system by about 10 feet.

Once we got the line rigged, walking it proved extremely difficult. It wasn't that the amsteel was impossible to walk, all we needed was some practice. Something none of us had. This was the first time any of us has even tried walking on amsteel. The HUGE shackle in the system created some wild oscillations that were near impossible to correct for. At the end of the day, we rigged two guy-wires to stabilize the shackle. By this time I was exhausted from all the hauling, rigging, and walking. It was time to call it quits for the day and come back tomorrow...sounds good right? what about that evil looking thunder storm rolling in from the north?

Thunder and lightening starts, hail starts, flash flooding starts. The plan was to bivy up top of the chief. The camera crew planned on staying and toughing out the storm. I decided to head down. I leave as Matt is talking to his wife on the phone. The conversation went something like this: "yeah, I'm standing at the top of the Chief in a lightening storm. I'm going to stay up here....yeah...all I have is a cotton t-shirt and a sleeping bag....yeah...I'll be fine, you stay safe though" Turns out he found a cave and actually stayed dry!

I intended to head down the third summit trail which is less technical. There are no steep slabs and chains to navigate your way through. After starting down the trail, my headlamp stops working from all the moisture inside. That leaves me alone and with no headlamp....crap! About the time my headlamp dies, I promptly loose the trail. I find myself walking across slippery moss covered death slabs. This is not the fun type of moshreading. I can't see where any of the slabs lead to, for all I know they could end in a massive cliff. I carefully start down a slab and loose my footing and slide about 30 meters into a small slot canyon. The jungles of Squamish closed in around me and I found myself stuck covered in shrubs and trees unable to move forward or backwards. All the while I'm being eaten alive by spiders and mosquitos. I couldn't move, the only left to do was go up. I slowly palmed my way back up the mossy slab, taking two steps up and sliding one down. After about half an hour I'm back on top of the slab and start down again. This same situation happened two more times. The second time I jump out of the way just as a dead tree comes at me with sharp menacing impale-your-sleen-looking-death-branches.... at this point I decided there were three things that could probably happen:

A) I'm struck my lightening and I die
B) I slip on the slab and slide over a cliff or get impaled by a branch (or both) and I die
C) I descend too far into the wrong valley and die of hypothermia

I realized I was too far down and I would never find the trail. I didn't want C to happen. The only solution was to go back up. So I sprawl all 4 limbs on the death-moss-slab like a star fish and slowly inch my way up, even using my chin for extra grip. I finally make it up. After about 15 minutes of searching I found the chains on trail two -- my savior. at least i knew where I was now. I booked it down the trail slipping every which way and found my two friends Eric and Page near the bottom. They let me crash at their house and they saved me from a night of shivering. as my down sleeping bag was completely soaked. Thank you Eric and Page! You saved my ass!

After some much needed food and water I crash out and that concludes day one.

Day two: In the early morning, I hike back up the chief, but this time with a lighter pack. I find the camera crew already up there. They told me they had decided to descend after finding their gear literally floating away down the trail in a flash flood. They came down after me, and came back up before me. Wow! They had an epic too...lucky them ( note the sarcasm?)

Day two went pretty smooth, I finally sent the line. The amsteel was a beast to walk and like nothing I've ever tried before. We got some amazing panning footage of my send on Matt's cable cam. Look for it on The National Geographic Adventure channel around January; now I just have to find a TV and someone who actually has cable.

All in all, it was an epic weekend and as I write this my whole body is immensely sore. It's funny that the highline wasn't the thing that tried to kill me, it was the exposure and the angry mountains. Woohoo! We didn't die!

Thanks for Bryan Smith (http://www.vimeo.com/user1213814) for directing the production, Matt Maddaloni for the cable cam, and Slackers Slacklining (www.slackersslacklining.ca) for sponsoring me.

South Gully highline update

I've got 300 feet of type 18 webbing in the mail. When that arrives, it's time to go back to the south gully and start rigging.

Video segment from the gong show that is my life and times in Squamish:

HevyFest 2009: Squamish, British Columbia

Via: http://www.myspace.com/hevyfest

>Saturday, August 1, 2009

Hi Slackers, Climbers, Lurkers, Artists, Huupers, and all you COOL FUnKY people everywhere!!! HEVYFEST North America's FIRST Slackline Festival returns again this year to Nexon Beach, also Know as Oceanfront Lands in Squamish BC...We are growing a bit and will be adding Yoga, Body Painting, Seperate KIDS Slacklining area as well as a KIDS FUN HOUR (for real this time) more additions TBA..Once again GOOD food, FUnKY vendors, and of course the return of "The Cirque du Dirt" for all us dirt bags out there... Also Returning PB and the Shadetops Blue Grass crew (awesome show last year)...After all we are a Slackline Festival so of course there will be plenty of Slacklines of all skill levels and lengths to have your try at...We are also looking for VOLUNTEERS to help support the festival, so if you feel you may have skills we could use Please contact us at www.myspace.com/hevyfest OR email: hevyduty@mail2fun.com INTERESTED Musicians, Djs, Artists, and Vendors can also contact us same as above PLEASE NOTE: Hevyfest is a non-corporate grassroots festival...We will be posting All Confirmed Fun on this myspace page, so keep a watch out... CHEERS! HEVY :)

Stawamus Chief South Gully Highline in Squamish, BC

Last November Matt Maddaloni and I rigged a highline between the second and third summits of the Stawamus Chief North Gully. I was able to bag the second send of the highline. Josh Cross was the first to walk the line in 2005. Since that highline I've been itching to get back out and rig some high exposure lines that no one has done before. Luckily, my home in Vancouver is about an hour down the highway from Squamish. The Stawamus Chief provides two amazing gullies. The South Gully (pictured above) became my next highline.
Compared to the North Gully, it is logistically more challenging. First of all, there are no conventional trails leading up. The only reasonably level area suitable for a slackline is located at the top of the Apron. It is necessary to climb some 5.7 crack to access the spot. Furthermore, the trees are pretty spindly, so if you want a bomber rig, it's important to anchor off at least four or five. These facts were true to my thinking prior to the cluster fuck that unfolded on Saturday.

Here's a quick summary from Saturday:

I told my friend Chris, "the South Gully" and somewhere along this deranged game of Telephone, he heard "North Gully" which you can in-fact walk up to...So he brought his dog. So we started up the chief. Seven people + one dog (And one doggy harness) going up a 5.7 hand crack. There was one harness between the six people who had dutifully volunteered to help haul gear. It was time for some problem solving. On the way up I free-soloed the crack and built an anchor. I fixed one of our static cords and rapped down. At this point, a doggy harness was constructed and up went two men and a dog.
The next person I could grab was placed in a harness and we started up the fixed line with ascenders, all the while hauling 30kg packs.
Our faff session lasted a solid hour.
We arrive at the South Gully. We scope out a potential span, and I scramble around to the other side, around the start of upper echelon. Martin finally dug his burly baseball-pitcher-man arm out from somewhere in his pack, and hucked a rock connected to fishing line across the gully..narrowly missing my head by about a foot.
We start passing a static line across the gully. At this point, Chris begins to squish my head with his finger from across the gully. "Ahhhh...noo! Don't squish me" I yelled, as I attempted to pry his fingers apart with my arms from across the gully. (No, this isn't kindergarden play time!) But crap! If i was so freakin' tiny, that meant the gap was a lot bigger than I had thought.

Even after spending $200 at MEC, It turned out we were still a bit short on static cord for anchor materials. Not only that, but our line was about 5 meters or so too short!

We left two strands of fishing line up across the gully to act as a "pilot" line in order to drag static rope and webbing across for next time. Once I get some stronger and longer webbing I'll be back ASAP to rig and walk this line....but as always, support in the form of materials and money is always needed to help these projects.

At the end of the day I had been deemed the leader, so it was up to me to build temporarily harnesses out of our anchor materials. Since there was only one harness for six other people, I presented a quick "emergency-alpine-harness-building-and-munter-hitch-using-symposium" and then setup the rappel. Imagine two men on makeshift harnesses simul-rappelled with a dog! (the boxer was a good sport) I don't write this day off as a failure -- more like the first round.

more photos and video to come, and updates just as soon as i get some longer webbing!

Jericho Beach slackline session

Length: approximately 150 feet (45 meters)
Location: Jericho Beach, Vancouver, British Columbia





Video by Martin Oberg