First Steps

Not first steps on the line, but rather first steps to enter the sport of slacklining. I owe the high level of interest I have in this sport to Adam over at NWSlackline. Although I have not been to Seattle recently, nor have I met Adam, the magic of the interwebs brought me to his site. After poring over much of the information on that site, I became enamored with the idea of a primitive line. The physics of setting up a simple line that can hold a person intrigues me. Like sailing, its just me and the equipment, and nature/physics. I’ve always enjoyed working this way. Sure there are man-made pieces (like biners and rap rings, and even the line) but in the end its just a pile of stuff that eventually gets assembled into a functional piece of equipment that can be enjoyed by people. What’s more, it can be disassembled and taken with you, for use on another day!

So, today I ventured out to my local climbing shop to gather the pieces. Turns out they were having a sale, 20% off all their products. This worked out well. I decided to go with the heavier duty stuff, here’s my list of parts (with photo to follow):

• 4 Black Diamond RockLock screwgate carabiners – $32
• 2 Omega Pacific Rap Rings – $8
• 75′ of 1″ webbing (bright yellow) – $27
• 26′ of 1″ webbing (red, cut into two 13′ pieces) – $10
• 3′ of 1″ webbing (green, cut into two 18″ pieces) – $1

All of which can be seen below:

The local shop did not have any 1″ webbing, so I made a separate trek to REI for that. The whole shebang ran about $85, which is about $20 more than you’ll see on Adam’s site: his shopping list is from 2008, and includes lower end (but sufficient) carabiners.

Next Up: On to the line…so to speak.