Ep. 1184: Walking on Air - Highlining with Alonso Rodriguez

You're listening to the Adventure Sports Podcast. Thanks for adventuring with us as we

discover what incredible athletes and outdoor enthusiasts are doing all over the world.

Now here's your host, Kurt Linville.

Hello and happy Wednesday everyone. Today's show is about rock climbing and about

high-lining and high-lining is such an amazing sport. The guest is Alonso Rodriguez who just

did a fantastic job sharing high-lining with us. However, there was a technical glitch

that caused the second half of the interview to be lost regretfully and so I fill in with

more information about rock climbing primarily and it's going to be a fun show. Alonso is

coming back on the program and I talk about that more later so I don't want to be

labor the point. Thank you for listening in today. Please do share this episode and every

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Hi friends, welcome to the show again today. I am going to enjoy this one a lot. We're

going to talk about highlighting and rock climbing and tree nets and a bunch of other things.

We have Alonzo Rodriguez with us today and he was huge in the highlighting scene. We're

going to talk about that quite a bit because I don't know that the Adventure Sports podcast

has covered highlighting very much in the past. So I love it when I get to talk about

a sport that's somewhat new. Alonzo, welcome to the Adventure Sports podcast. Thanks for

having me Kurt. I'm excited to be here. Alonzo, where are you today?

I am actually in my little hometown of Woodlake, California. I'm just sitting outside a coffee

shop now because my home is a total disaster. We're doing a lot of renovating and currently

can't be sitting there. So here we are. Central Valley, California.

So Alonzo sitting outside, I can see him on the video, which obviously the listeners

can't see, but he's dressed like it's cold. But how cold is it there?

It's actually not too bad. We're in the low forties here, but it's foggy. We haven't

seen the sun in like 25 days. Oh, no, we've had a historic fog year this year, where

the sun didn't come out for almost a whole month. And it's kind of still hasn't come

out. And then it's going to start raining in a couple days. So we're in for it. But luckily

we're getting out of here. We're going to the high desert for some climbing and it won't

be my problem anymore. All right. Well, there's a little bit of road noise. Everyone will

hear that, but that's kind of cool. I like it when someone's in a unique scene and

sitting outside during an interview is fantastic. I go to Alonzo just before we hit record

that I wanted to be outside today for this, but it was 10 degrees this morning. And I just

thought that might be a little extreme. I don't know where this place in California is,

but because of what you just described, I assume it's in the northern half. Am I right?

It's actually right in the center. So reason under here is because it's two hours from

Yosemite. And as a high liner climber, Yosemite is one of the, if not the best place in

the world that you can exist. And so this is kind of a means for climbing. There's not

really much going on here as far as like, you know, a city scene or anything like that.

The Yosemite being right there one step over makes being here really, really, really good

for us outdoorsy folk. All right. Well, that's super cool. I've been to Yosemite once and

my wife and one of my sons returned there just a couple of years ago. She was bringing

him back from college and decided to stop in. And it's just one of the most remarkable

places on earth. It really is fantastic. That's crazy. Yeah, no photos could ever do it,

justice. It's beautiful. Just the expanses, the giant walls, the domes of rock, the beauty

of the waterfalls, the smell in the air. I mean, there's no way to really to describe it.

I don't think people have seen it in pictures. But unless you've gone, you don't really know.

Do you agree with that? 100%. So Alonzo, give us your backstory if you would. I want to talk

about your highlighting first. We're going to talk about climbing and other things too. But what's

your backstory? How did you get involved in highlighting and rock climbing? Sure. So I actually

come from a background from a very athletic background as most climbers do, I feel. But once

you kind of phase out of like the high school and college sports, you kind of hit this like

crisis in your life or you're like, don't really know what to do with yourself. It's like,

do I go, do I keep doing the sport I was doing in an adult league? Or do I find something new?

I don't really know. So I did what most people do when they're young adults. And I started hitting

the gym and actually really heavily got into bodybuilding of all things. I'm a lot smaller now,

but at one point I was like, you know, 200 pounds of lean. I'm closer to 160 now, but I got into

the whole bodybuilding thing. And then after I think I committed to that for about two years,

and I pretty quickly realized just how boring of an activity it is. No offense to anyone that

goes to the gym, no offense to anyone that enjoys it. But it's just, it's so repetitive and you're

literally doing the exact same exercises week after week after week. And like it's just very

not fun in my opinion. So I had another crisis two years into that. I'm like, man, I need to find

something. I need to do something else. As at that moment that one of my best friends,

Polly, he actually invited me to go hiking out in Yosemite. I think we're like 22 years old at

this point. And I wasn't outdoorsy at all at the time, believe it or not. But so he invites me on

a hike, Yosemite, and I'm like, oh man, well, I'm going to need like some kind of water bottle and

like some hiking shoes or something. So we head over to our local REI. We're both engineers as well.

We're studying engineering at the time. So the climbing section, all the like cams and stuff

really caught our eye because we're like, whoa, like these these pieces are like really well engineered.

This is really cool. And they were showing us how they work and stuff. And you know, that was

enough to kind of be like, okay, this is like, this is interesting. There's a lot more to rock climbing

than we thought. It's not just a bunch of hippies is going out climbing with hemp ropes around

their waist. There's actually a lot of cool engineering here. And right when we got back from

Yosemite, we went to our local climbing gym. And from day one, we were hooked. It was it was no

question. This is like a lot more fun. And the way I got into slacklining from that, what I

tell everyone is slacklining is kind of a gateway drug from rock climbing. There's very few people

who get into slacklining that weren't into rock climbing first. If that makes sense. And for me,

it was really easy because our climbing gym had a little slackline involved in it. And whenever

your fingers hurt, you kind of slacklined as a pastime. I met a guy, his name, his name's Matt Stolling.

He was really good. I'm talking like freakishly good. Like he could do 360s. He could like stand on

his shoulder. He could like balance and like really weird positions. And I was like, how did you

learn to do all this stuff? And then he just said, Oh, I got this off from highlining. And then

the cogs in my brain started to spin. I'm like, hi, lining. And I put two and two together. I'm like,

wait, you're telling me you guys take a slackline and put it like high up and walk it like a tight

rope. And he's like, yeah, that's the idea. You should come check it out sometime. And I was

immediately very intrigued at this idea. And I was like, yes, tell me the next time you're going

and I'll be there. And he invited us out for the weekend. And I showed up. And I got on my very

first high line. I think it was April of 2017. So describe that high line. When you say

high line, how high are you? How long is it that sort of thing? Sure. So this was still in the

beginning in the relative beginnings of the sport, where something, something even, you know,

up to 500 feet long would have been considered really, really big. Where now something 500 meters

is considered very, very mild. But at this first high line I was on, it was only about, I want to say

50 to 100 feet high. And about 150 feet long, give or take. It was over a crazy, beautiful river

and a really nice waterfall and stuff. So that just added to the scenery a good bit. Nice. I don't

want to assume that people know what a slackline is. Growing up in Colorado, you know, I taught my kids

the basics of rock climbing. We didn't do huge walls or anything. We did a lot of top-roping

repelling and just I made sure they knew how to tie the knots and get on the road, the rock safely.

And then we, of course, got into slacklining. So when my oldest son went off to college, he put up

the slackline between some trees on the campus thinking, oh, I'm going to meet new people this way.

A lot of people are going to want to do this. And he was in the Midwest. And people looked at him

like he was from Mars and they had no clue what he was doing and nobody wanted to try it. I thought,

what? So what is a slackline? Explain it so people know exactly what we're talking about.

Totally. And first of all, that's 100% relatable and kind of a little tangent, but kind of an

ironic side story. There was a guy in my high school who used to set up a slackline during lunchtime

and it was the exact same thing. We all, myself included, we all looked at him and thought,

that's so weird. And what is this guy doing? So even me at one point in my life thought slacklining

was dumb when I thought I was, you know, too cool to balance on a rope or whatever, but yes.

So slacklining is essentially the form of balancing on a piece of rope or webbing. It's usually a

one to two inch piece of webbing that's strung relatively tight between trees, but the reason

it's called slacklining is because unlike tight rope walking where it's a steel metal cable that's

heavily tensioned between two points, a slackline is a relatively loosely tensioned webbing between

two similar points. So tight rope walking and slacklining, although they're kind of the same thing

in essence, are two completely different things. I've tried both and they feel very, very different.

Well, a slackline, it bounces up and down, it sways left and right. I mean, it has quite a bit of

movement, very dynamic, very dynamic. Very dynamic, yes. You know, one thing I love about it, and I

am no good at it, Alonzo, but I like to try. One thing I love about it is what it does for your

balance and your core strength, because your legs and your hips are going back and forth, back and

forth, back and forth, back and forth, and you really have to keep your upper body kind of balanced

over all of that. And so your core is just like, it's not just your core though, but your core is

getting a crazy dexterity workout. That's what I would say. But the other thing is what it does to

your brain. Yes. I mean, it's you get off that line. It's like, whoa, my brain feels different.

How long did it take for you to get to the point where it felt normal to be on a slackline?

Okay, so if we're if we're talking slackline, it took about a week of, you know, doing it every day

for about, you know, 30 to 45 minutes before it finally like clicked, and I could even just like

stand on it without falling off immediately. And I would say it was closer to a month before I was

linking many steps and like actually comfortable walking it and understanding how the balancing

worked. But when I took that up high to highlighting, those are a whole other thing that I had

on lock in myself because try try to imagine this with me. Imagine you're sitting on a one-inch

piece of webbing a thousand feet up in the air. So the only thing between you and the ground

is literally an inch of webbing. Now, the way you stand you actually stand up because you don't

just like walk out off the cliff onto a slackline onto a highline, excuse me. And then to start walking,

that's really, really dangerous because if you fell in those first couple of feet, you would strike

the cliff even though you're tied into the highline, you could hit the cliff really hard and knock

yourself out and it could be a really dangerous situation. So what we actually do is we sit on the

highline, we scoot out, you know, until we're past what we call the no-fall zone, which is where you

would strikes the cliff if you fell. And then you have to muster the will out of like, you know,

you pick both feet up on the line, your butt still on the line. And then you have to grab the line

with one hand to kind of pull yourself off your butt and then you stand. And getting just,

just getting my brain to accept, okay, we're a thousand feet up in the air and the only thing holding

us is this one inch piece of webbing. We're going to do this to get past the fear of that and be a

adrenaline that would just take over me every time. That took so many months. It was crazy. I think

it took me like four months of consistently going every single weekend before I was able to just

get past the fear and adrenaline rush of standing. Yeah, I've never done a highline. I've done a

lot of mountaineering and been in a lot of high places, but I can say, especially early on,

I would find high exposed places to sit until I could get myself to calm down. It was just like,

I'm going to sit on the edge of this thing until it feels good. And that took quite a lot of work.

But to be on that webbing like you're describing, it's like nothing is there, man. That would

freak me out. I don't know how long it would take. I don't know if I would ever get used to it.

It freaked me out for a while. And I got to tell you, after the first month of just consistently

trying and just failing over and over, I really thought that, hey, maybe this sport is not for me.

My brain does not like this and I'm not wired to be out here like this. But I think the

truth is that 99% of us are not wired that way. There's a few that they don't have that fear

in there. I don't know what the part of the brain is called, but not me.

I think the reality is that doing this kind of a sport rewires your brain. And I'm being

serious about that. I'm not going to dive into this, but I had a concussion a couple of years ago,

and I went to an occupational therapist to try to get back again. And we did all sorts of exercises

that would remap the brain so that it would start working again. And slacklining definitely felt

completely different to me after the concussion. And I was like, oh, I have to remap a whole lot

of synapses to make this. So I think it changes you. Could you tell that it changed you any other

ways besides just being on the high line? I mean, like one of the obvious things was like just

overcoming something you think is impossible is always going to be like a very big morale and

confidence boost. And for everything else you do in life, basically, I think I lived life then

thinking, you know, very conservatively about things like, oh, I don't know if I can do this

or like, oh, maybe I shouldn't do that. But now I just kind of, I don't even think about that

anymore. I'm like, yeah, whatever I decide I want to do, I can definitely do with enough time

and patience and work at it. So let's do the engineering side just for a second, Alonzo.

First of all, the webbing you're talking about, most of it has like a 4,000 pound load strength.

At least that's what I've looked at. Is that the kind of webbing you're using?

So that's actually like the standard webbing you can buy at like REI and stuff. That's like basic

tubular webbing. The stuff we use is actually quite a bit stronger than that. I would say

close to 6,000 pound breaking strength. And they're sold by a very niche slackline companies around

the world. The one in the US, if anyone wants to just look into it and nerd out on some of the

gear specs, it's called balance community. So you just literally wwwbalancecommunity.com.

And they have everything you need at A to Z to start slacklining or highlining. Now I don't

recommend obviously that anyone go with no experience and buy highlining gear and try to set it

up themselves. But man, I can dive pretty deep into this for the engineering nerds. I'll keep

it basic though. There's three different types of webbings we have. There's nylon, super dynamic,

super stretchy. That's like what the people that are bouncing up in the air doing flips and stuff

around their webbings. That's what they're using. They're using nylon, usually with some bungee

material on the anchors to make it even more dynamic and give them more amplitude.

Then we have on the other end of the spectrum, we have dynima. That's the opposite. Very low

stretch and very lightweight. That makes for really, really easy walking at really, really long

lengths. So anyone you see walking a really, really long highline, most likely using dynima.

And then right in the middle ground, we have polyester, which is a little bit heavier typically.

But also a little bit less stretchy. So polyester is typically a training line for people to

bring to the park because when you're rigging a line in the park, if you're rigging something

really long, you don't have very much space to go down. So nylon is typically almost impossible

to actually set up. But dynima doesn't really give you very good training because it's too easy

to walk of them. There you go. Yeah. Well, that's super cool. You know the tubular webbing that I've

worked with once it was time to retire it. I've used it to pull cars with and you can snap it

yanking hard between two cars, you know, but that's how strong this stuff is. What you're talking

about is even stronger than that. So this is what's interesting about it. You have on a harness,

I assume, you have on a leash, it's tied to the slackline, you're going out there. The line

you're on is extraordinarily strong. So actually falling to the ground is extraordinarily unlikely.

But it doesn't feel that way. It does not feel that way. I agree with you. It does not feel that way.

And that's the part about doing adventure sports safely. You know, I think a lot of people

Alonzo would see you on a high line and they would just be like, no, no, no, no. You gave a perfect

impression of what 90% of people say and react like actually. That's exactly how it goes.

But what a cool sport. Okay, take us there. Describe to us what it feels like. And then we'll start

talking about some of the links and heights and things like that. But just what your average

high line experience. Can you just take us there like where we're on the high line with you?

Sure thing. So before, like I said before, when I was first getting into this,

just adrenaline. So much adrenaline that that my body would just stop working really overall.

And I had to get I have to get off the line and rest for a couple hours. Let my body reset before

I could try again. But today, like present day, if I'm on a high line now, it's actually a very

peaceful experience. There's no adrenaline anymore. Maybe a little bit of nerves that for like

the very first stand, you know, this new spot kind of just set up the rig and you know, you're kind

of like, okay, like this is a new spot. It's maybe feeling a little too quiet out here. I won't

want a little bit of noise. But so you go out there. And typically when you're when you're rolling

out, it's it's not like a it's not a scene where your friends are all cheering or anything. If

anything, they're they're being really quiet on the cliff edge to kind of let you get into your

own headspace and like do that inner meditation, if you will. I don't meditate. I probably should. But

but I this is I think what meditating would feel like to those that do it. So you go out there.

And at this point, it's so second nature that I don't even have to think about it. But you know,

get to my spot. I grab the line. I stand up. And once I'm standing and once I've taken those first few

steps, everything else is just like riding a bike. It's such a pleasant experience because you're

out there. And you know, you kind of get these little thoughts in your head sometimes like, wow,

like I'm I'm like really cruising right now and like I'm moving really quickly and efficiently.

And then every now and then you might like trip or stumble and you're like, oh no, no, no, don't fall,

and then you like have this like slight moment of panic. And then you once you like gain it back,

you're kind of like, okay, take a quick breath before we move forward here. And it just kind of

repeats, rinses and repeats like that. But overall, if I had to summarize it in one word, I would

say meditative, extremely meditative. That's neat. What is the scenery like? I mean, we have such a small

line that you're on. It's almost like you're walking on air, man. There's nothing to block your

view. Exactly. What is it like? It really just depends on where we're doing it. Sometimes, you know,

the best spans are obviously the highest, most, you know, beautiful views. That's like the most,

that's the most awesome high line you can read, right? And yeah, it's getting to enjoy the view

360 degrees. So, you know, when you're standing on a cliff edge, you can't enjoy anything below you

for right behind you. But when you're out in the middle of a really big high line with nothing

around you, you enjoy everything. Like, I'll be standing out there left and right. And then it

looks straight down sometimes and see the line like wiggling. And it's, it's insane in the best way

possible. I love your description, man. You're, you're knocking it out of the park, taking us

there seriously. I, I really can't imagine it. You know, we'll bring you so you can, so you can

see it firsthand for yourself. I might, I might want to get my balance on the slackline first.

I mean, I'm at that point that you described after a week or two where you can stand on it and

take a step or two. And then I, and then I'm off. Yeah. And the thing is, most people, even if

you're a really good slackliner, right? Let's say you've been practicing in the park for years now,

and you're like really proficient in the park. Most people will still not be able to take a

single step up on a high line just because it's such a different headspace than being low to the

ground. So what I tell anyone that's trying to go out on a high line, just go out there and experience it.

Hey, friends, as I mentioned at the beginning, regretfully this interview was cut short and this

is where it happened. Alonso's phone for some reason failed to upload the rest of the interview.

It just quit right there. When I went in and started working with the file, I saw that I was still

recorded, but his end was gone. And Alonso and I worked together to try to recover the missing

audio along with the online meeting platform that we use for the interviews. And it's just gone.

But I want to tell you a couple of things that we did talk about. And he is coming back on the

Adventure Sports podcast in the next few weeks because there were so many things that even in

this interview, we didn't get to cover. So we'd already planned for him to come back.

And I'm really glad about that. Just a fantastic guest to have on the show.

But he also wanted to talk about rope jumps, tree nets, and then more about rock climbing,

which is just a huge part of what he does. But in this interview,

high lining was really all we got to. But a couple of the things that we talked about really

interesting to me were really big, really long, really high high lining feats that he has done.

Here's one example. And to get a feel for this, you really need to go to YouTube and find the video.

In 2021, he set up a high line. They call it the dynamite line at 1,350 meters long. That's

eight tenths of a mile long. It said a new US record for the longest high line at the time.

And I believe there have been some other record breaking high line since then when we have a

Lanzo back on. We'll talk about that. But you really got to see this. Go to YouTube. Just look

up his name, Alonzo Rodriguez, and Alonzo is spelled with an S, not a Z. It's not Alonzo. It's

Alonso Rodriguez spelled as you would expect. Look up the the high line feet that he did there. It's a

beautiful video. It's just like he's walking on here. So amazing.

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We also got into a little bit of the kind of techy stuff about it. For instance,

these high lines were in the this long. They can sway back and forth with the wind. And there's

quite a lot of wind loading even though it might just be one inch wedding. The wind loading

can be extreme. Matter of fact, that's usually the biggest danger because the wind loading will

snap the high line even though the high line might have 6,000 pounds of breaking strength.

The wind load over these vast distances can just be excessive. And so they would string these

high lines and try to, you know, use them before there is any sort of wind so that the line

wouldn't get snapped. That's one of the big challenges. But in the wind, these lines will sway

back and forth by like, I think he said hundreds of meters, which sounds insane. But it's a slow

like standing wave on the line. It's not whipping you around. But it is moving and you can feel the

movement as you're crossing these high lines, which just blew my mind. It was part of the interview

that will revisit when he comes back on in my apologies that we don't have the full interview

for you today because Alonzo just knocked it out of the park is so interesting what they're doing.

I find it hard to fathom what it feels like to be maybe a thousand feet off the ground

on something that is nearly a mile long that is an inch wide and you're standing out there

literally in free space over the abyss. Just mind blowing to me. Alonzo also shared how everything

is done with redundancy so that if you take a fall, there's something to catch you. They actually

string two lines. One of them is loosely hanging under the others and then you are tied to both

with devices that roll along on the line behind you. So you have a harness on you have a leash that's

going to those not that you want to take a fall because can you imagine hanging under this line

and then having to muscle your way back up on top of it. I mean that would not be easy nor fun.

I wouldn't think but it does happen but because they have redundancy redundancy redundancy

it actually is a much safer sport than it might feel for sure. But Alonzo thank you so much

for coming on and sharing your passion for highlighting and we look forward to visiting with you

again soon. Since we have a little bit of time left I thought I might talk about how to get

into rock climbing and these sorts of sports and I'm probably not qualified to go into a lot

of the details. I can only tell you the stories that I have about how I learned these sports and

it's been some time ago. One thing that's completely different now is that you can go to a

climbing gym and literally learn the ropes and get amazing workouts, learn the techniques of balance

and contorting your body just right so that you can get up some really really challenging things.

You can do all of that in the gym before you ever go out onto the crags which was not the case

when I was learning. When I was learning I moved to Colorado in my early 20s and I couldn't stay

off the rocks. I just absolutely loved scrambling around bouldering but if you do much of that you

will get yourself in trouble eventually. There were a few times that I got stuck with no rope

and nowhere to go and I took a few falls that could have been really bad but I ended up getting

away with it but I think it was around this time that I realized I really needed to get some climbing

ropes and some of the safety gear so that I could do this kind of stuff more safely because if I kept

doing it pushing the boundaries eventually someone was going to get hurt so I remember going to

Estes Park and I was house sitting for some friends that were traveling. They had a couple of

dogs and a tiny little cabin that was up in the beautiful granite domes that are all around Estes

Park Colorado and I had gotten a length of it was probably 8mm static line just because it didn't

cost much it was something to practice with and maybe six feet long that's really all you need

and I had a rock climbing pamphlet of some sort that I had found that just showed how to tie

knots and I remember sitting in the cabin it was cold like still wintertime spring-ish but wintertime

sitting there with the dogs and I would just practice tying knots over and over and over and over

again learning the ropes literally I also learned how to tie my own harnesses using webbing

similar to the webbing that we talked about with Alonso at the beginning of this episode and

it sounds boring but there was something so rewarding about sitting in a quiet space in the mountains

and practicing skills that I knew would lead to bigger and bigger adventures now I still

didn't have a length of rope for climbing and a buddy of mine came up to visit while I was

house sitting and we decided that we would go climb because of course we're getting crazy about

scrambling over all of these granite domes and so we find this dome that we decided to climb up

and it was kind of a steep approach right just about as steep as you can walk on and then we got

to the vertical portion and we climbed maybe 20 25 feet up this vertical and we ended up standing on

a bit of a kind of a shelf that was up there and the next move seemed kind of tricky and of course

we're high enough to get hurt right we're 20 25 feet up in the air and once you hit you're

going to have a long tumble because the the approach was so steep and we had no business doing this

I'll just say that right now don't do this right the crazy thing was since we didn't have any ropes

we thought well what if we just need a little something to help us when we get out there so before

we left the cabin we'd grabbed a dog leash yes the dogs were there and they had dog leashes and we

thought well he looked at as a handle we might loop it over something it might help us to pull up

around something we can't reach so my buddy and I get up on this narrow shelf 20 25 feet off the

deck and sure enough we can't reach the next handhold and we're just kind of goofing off you know

but he puts the dog leash over some nub of rock and decides to try to climb it and I told him you

better test it first but don't put your body weight into it and so he yanks on the dog leash

and he did put his body weight into it and of course the dog leash snapped into and he did one

of those things where your toes are on the edge and you're swinging your arms and circles trying

not to fall over backwards and I thought that I was going to witness something horrible I figured

he was going to tumble off the back and you know land on his head break his neck I mean who knows

it was terrifying for an instant there but he had a sense of presence like some people do but not

everyone does but I saw him get into horrific situations like this many times in all of our crazy

adventures and he just had a sense of presence to get himself out of the trouble he got himself

into so he leapt off that ledge so that his feet would swing out behind him and so his arms would

swing forward and then he caught that little lip of rock with his hands and hung there instead of

falling down to the ground I mean it was almost like watching if you've ever seen Roadrunner

and Wiley Coyote it was almost like watching Wiley Coyote run on air before he plummets into the

chasm these are the things you should not do right and so we got off of that ledge and decided

we had been stupid and and kind of moved on the point was this was yet again another example of

why we had to learn the ropes and he and I decided that we were going to buy ropes and buy some of

the gear that would allow us to do this more safely and so a third guy joined us and we all went

in together on a single rope because at that time money was scarce and ropes cost a lot of money

we also bought carabiners locking carabiners we bought a couple of eight rings we didn't buy any

protection you know like cams or hexes or friends or whatever you want to call them you know we

just thought we're gonna start by toproping so we bought webbing that we could use to tie harnesses

and we also bought webbing that we can make runners with to make safety anchors and then

we would top rope to learn how to climb and toproping if you don't know means you'd take a sneak

route above the cliff you create your anchors up there with all the webbing use multiple carabiners

everything's redundant right and you loop the rope through the top and back down to the ground

then on the ground you have someone that can do the belay and essentially what they're doing is

they're feeding you line as you climb or or taking line away as you climb feeding your lines you

can come back down but as you're climbing on the rocks that way if you were to fall you don't fall

far you just lean back onto the line and if you do it right so that there's never any slack in the

line then you can do it with a static rope and what's nice about that is static ropes are really

good for repelling and they don't cost as much so in addition to doing a lot of type top lining and

we used to go out every chance we got year round if if the sun was out and it was warm enough

that our hands wouldn't get frostbite we were on the crags somewhere standing in the snow trying to

avoid the ice I mean we just loved it so much we were on the rocks all the time but in addition to

doing the top lining we started really enjoying sport repelling and our rope was 150 feet long it

was a blue water tube static line and so that gave us quite a distance that we could repel and we

started tying off the line in high places and just repelling down and these days there are better

devices for this it's not recommended but we love to repel using eight rings and yes you can

belay someone repelling on an eight ring if you're at the bottom and they're repelling down if you

put just a little bit of tension on the end of the rope that it increases the friction on the eight

ring or whatever repelling device safer repelling device you might be using the thing with the

eight rings you can go very fast and you can actually have a enough speed build up that you can get

an injury so there are other ways to repel where you have devices that are a lot safer and there are

ways to repel that are not as safe that are more risky but where you can have more speed and

just take bigger jumps and this kind of thing but we used to do a lot of this sport repelling

and really enjoyed it and we started sharing it with our friends and then we started teaching people

how to sport repel and I have just a few stories about sport repelling that I think are kind of

illustrative and fun one is when I first learned how to repel a friend of mine used to take young people

out to teach them to repel is kind of a I don't know a way to connect and a way to challenge people

and to stretch people a little bit and make friends and he actually took a group of kids from

some sort of a juvenile delinquent center and we took them out to a high bluff over the Illinois

river I mean it didn't land in the water but the river had caused the bluff it was about 120 feet tall

and we used to teach these kids how to repel and these are tough kids they'd been through a lot

they were in the delinquency center because they had been through a lot and they were so tough

until you got them on the rope and when they had to step off of that 120 foot high cliff

there's a moment when you're teetering on the edge of a cliff and you're looking below you

and everything is saying this is wrong you shouldn't do it and you have to decide whether or not

you're going to trust the rope whether or not you feel safe enough to lean back over the abyss

and to begin to descend on the rope in that moment before the rope has you when you're trying to

decide whether or not to take one more step is just freaky the first few times you do it and

matter of fact I guess you could get used to it but it's always the most precarious part of the

repel and sometimes these tough tough kids you know they can do anything they might take 20 or 30

minutes to finally lean on to the rope and to begin to descend and so I would often be at the

bottom blank so that no one could fall and my buddy would be up at top and he would make sure

that everyone had on a good harness and that they you know were rigged up right so that they

wouldn't get hurt and between the two of us we taught I don't know how many dozens of people how

to support repel but I remember this one kid was just such a tough cookie you know and he had

such a hard time getting started and when he got to the bottom of that 120 foot rope he reached

out and hugged me and started jumping up and down just like a just like a little kid would he

was overjoyed for having overcome such a huge personal challenge and for having to

done the thing that he was so afraid to do and that's what is so beautiful about adventure sports

it's critical to find a way to do these things safely but then to do things that are really a

personal challenge because it creates so much growth and builds a sense of identity and a sense

of self-sufficiency and it's just a beautiful beautiful thing you hear me talking about that all

the time so I won't go on about it but back to getting our rope and Colorado the three of us

bought the rope in the gear and we started taking teenagers out and teaching them how to sport repel

and one day we took a group of probably nine or ten of us total and we found a beautiful place

where people could go down the cliff and once again I was belaying and my buddy with the dog

leash buddy that guy was at the top setting up everyone's harnesses and and rigging them so that

no one could get hurt but before I went down I saw there was one girl had really long beautiful

blonde hair and I just told them before she goes put her hair up and then I went I went on down well

I don't think he really understood what I meant by that and maybe he didn't hear me but he put

her on the repel line and if you've heard this story before my apologies but if you haven't you

need to hear it he put her on the line she starts down and it was about a hundred footer something

like that she made it down probably 25 or 30 feet from the top so she was maybe 60 or 70 feet

high and sure enough her hair got caught in the eight ring and what happens is it snakes through

the eight ring just like the rope does it follows the rope and then it binds up and she was literally

hanging by her hair now not all of her body weight as soon as her hair started to be pulled she stopped

right but I'm laying and so I'm doing everything I can to make sure that she doesn't slip any

further and I yell up the cliff because she can't get her hair out there's nothing she can do

I yell up the cliff to my buddy I said you get down here so that you can belay because I mean he

was the other experienced one and so I'm I'm sitting on the rope literally so that it won't pull

her hair anymore and he has to run around the sneak route took him quite a while he got down there

I hand the rope to him and now he's sitting on the rope and the reason was because I was the more

experienced one on the ropes I wanted to be the one that did the rescue well around the corner

of this cliff there was a couple that was was doing some top lining and I ran up to them and I

said hey may I borrow your rope we have a gal hanging by her hair over here and they're like oh okay

they had to get someone off the rope and it took you know five minutes and I was just really worried

that she was in pain and it was a very precarious situation so their rope was tied off so I just ran

over the lip of this cliff and threw their rope down the other side where you know I needed to go

down and help this gal and then I tied in with my eight ring and I repelled down to her and there we

were you know 60 70 feet off the ground whatever it was and I managed to lift her up enough to

free her hair and then we needed to tie up her hair so she could finish the repel and I realized

that in my haste I didn't have anything to tie her hair with so I ended up pulling off a boot

and remember I'm on I'm on a repel or trying not to slip anyway I pulled off a boot I pulled a

shoelace out on my boot I kicked it off the cliff I tied her hair up with my shoelace and then she

proceeded to go on down the rope and it was okay everything's all right now however I looked at my

rope and I realized it was too short it didn't make it to the bottom that was my first mistake

whenever you're trying to help someone else in a precarious situation make sure that you're safe

first because if you can't do it safely you're going to make the situation worse someone's going

to have to rescue you is what could happen and you don't want people to get hurt because you didn't

take the time to be safe yourself but that was a lesson I was learning at the time so realizing

that my rope wasn't going to get me to the ground I had to transfer onto what was her rope

and didn't have a good way to do that right here I am 60 70 feet in the air and I have to somehow

take the rope off of my belated vice and then get on to the other you can imagine I managed to do it

somehow I went down onto the bottom and then I ran around to let the couple know that we were

done with the rope and to thank them very much because you know they really saved our skin

so many mistakes that we made that day and I'm going to cover some of those here in a little bit

but when I got to where they were I took the time to look at how they had their rope rigged

for the first time another stupid stupid mistake on my part but they had it tied off I kid you not

to a tree root that was a little over an inch inch and a half maximum two inches but it was less

than two inches thick and I had put my life on the line anchored to a single inch and a half tree

root which I have broken tree roots this size just by breaking them over my knee so dumb so what

sorts of things should I have never done first of all we should not have been teaching anyone how

to repel when we only had a single rope we should not have been teaching them without redundancy

they should have had a rope that would keep them out of trouble coming down from the top as well

as the rope that they were coming down with their blade of ice we should have had probably more

people there that had more experience there were two of us that were teaching the group and the

fellow that you know was helping wasn't all that experienced the repelling device that we were

using was it was really fun for a sport repelling really really fast but it was too fast for teaching

beginners we should have been using an ATC or something so they could work their way down the rope

instead of it being such a critical matter that everything goes right I had the honor of

interviewing John Fielder and at the time I used to ask a question a lot which was tell us a story

about a time that things didn't go right and I and I kind of introduced the question by saying to

John you know by answering this you might help somebody to learn something that will keep them from

getting into a similar situation that you yourself got into so why don't you tell us about a time

that things didn't go right and before he answered he just said you know that's not the way it works

Kurt and I was kind of surprised I said what do you mean and his answer was beautiful he said

we go out and we do these things and we learn the hard way and really that's how we learn to be safe

and do not make the same mistake again he said I'll tell the story that people probably won't

listen to me they have to go out and get themselves into some sort of trouble and get themselves out

of it because that's what builds experience and I think that to some degree he is right but I

encourage you learn all you can in advance go to the climbing gym learn the ropes literally

properly from people that are certified to teach and then find people with experience to go out with

and you'll have a much safer and still a very very fun time third story and I'm sharing this one

just because it stood out as such a beautiful amazing experience to me above estes park again

there is the lumpy ridge and there is the twin owls and the twin owls are it's one or two

depending on how you count it huge granite outcrops that go very very high and it looks like

that there are two owls standing side by side because they're kind of large cap granite stones

on top of these cliff stones and so it looks like you have an owls head two owls heads sitting on

two owls bodies but we went up there and again it was wintertime but this faces south and it was

sunny and and we decided that we wanted to go climbing and repelling there and at the back side

of the twin owls there used to be a sneak route although the last time I was there I didn't quite

see it in the same light it may have changed but there used to be a sneak route where you could do a

chimney climb between the twin owls like the bodies of the owls where they come together it made a

chimney in the back and when you got up to the top you'd have to go through this little cave like

structure but when you got up to the top then off to one side it was maybe 250 feet to the ground

and off the front it was more than that three four hundred feet to the ground and you have a view

into Rocky Mountain National Park you have a view of Longspeak you have a view across all of the

Estus Park valley and it is just one of the most beautiful perspectives in the world and there

many in the world but this is one of them and we used to love to go up there just to enjoy the

scenery and to enjoy the climb but this time we brought the ropes and I say ropes because we had

abused a rope the first one that we bought that I was talking about and we created a a chafing

in the sheath and when you do that you have to cut the rope at that point because you don't want

to ever climb on a compromised rope so we had that rope was cut shorter now as a 100 feet long

and we had bought another rope that we could use that would be longer but that meant that we had

a total of like 300 feet of rope this time and we tied the two ropes together using double

fishermen's knots which you need to learn these knots if you ever want to join two ropes for climbing

but anyway we tied these two ropes together and they were just barely long enough to make it to

the ground going down the shoulder side of one of the twin owls I just remember what a beautiful day

you know it's winter time but the sun is blasting us the views of the snow covered high peaks

the beautiful smells of the conifer trees I think in that area they were ponder roses although

I'm sure there were some lodge poles and others mixed in as well but just the whole setting I don't

know I don't know how to describe it except that it was an uplifting spiritual experience I can

go to a place like that and recharge my batteries and it's so healing and it prepares me for what's

coming up ahead but this was the highest repel that we had done at this time matter of fact with

that much rope hanging down the weight of the rope makes it difficult to slide because it acts like

that belay right it puts more friction on your repelled device so at the top we could just barely

get going and we repelled down that beautiful beautiful twin owl shoulder and what was crazy is we

have this big double knot in the middle where the two ropes are joined so when we get to the double

this time we are prepared we had a second care be internet ring that was on our harness so that we

could go around the knot without unhooking our rig and rehooking it we could hook the the second

rig under the knot while the first rig was hooked above the knot and then unhook the top one

and so we did it that way and that that allowed us to get this full repellent without ever being

offline I just remember how great it felt how amazing it was how rejuvenating just such an amazing

day and it wasn't anything big you know we hiked maybe four miles we were outside in the fresh

air and in the snow but we did this cool chimney climb and then we were able to do what was the

most epic repel we'd ever done and I know that small potatoes for a lot of the people that we

interview on this show but it doesn't have to be huge to have an amazing memory and just have

an amazing life experience and to learn so much about yourself I guess what I'm trying to share

is that when you learn how to climb or you learn how to repel that even smaller adventures seem

huge and you need to do it safely don't be stupid like I was but if you start getting out there

and having these experiences you'll know firsthand what Alonzo was talking about when he discovered

rock climbing and I know that when he revisits the show we're gonna talk a lot more about that

and he'll be able to explain it so much better than I did but it is so much fun and you know you might

think you're afraid of heights so you don't know if this is for you everyone's afraid of heights

that's just some degree it's just the way that we're wired but you learn to manage it you learn

to overcome it you learn how to work with it and that gives you a sense of competence and self

control and discipline that is very very valuable in life so if you think you're too afraid of heights

try it anyway go to a climbing gym go do something where you can challenge yourself on that level

and you might just fall in love with that new sport that's all I have for you today and I'm

looking forward to bringing Alonzo back on so we can finish this interview thanks for listening

and until the next show get out there and have some fun