Saturday, November 28, 1998

Yosemite Slack Lining

In Utah, Dean Potter walked his longest span: 90 feet. In Yosemite last summer, after he recovered from his tumble, he walked his highest: 1,200 feet.
      Yet one walk had beckoned Potter--a slack-lining feat accomplished only by a few elite. This fall, he hoped to walk between the valley rim and Lost Arrow Spire, 2,900 feet above the valley floor.
      Among the big leaf maples and black oaks on the valley floor, slackers point up to a thick needle of gray rock, protruding toward the sky. The yawning gap between the steely spire and the rim is widely considered one of Yosemite's most intimidating--one that some face only after quaffing a few tequila shots. It is a precipice that has dispatched many slackers back down the trail, humbled by jelly-like muscles and a sudden lack of nerve.
      When Scott Balcom returned to Yosemite on July 13, 1995--the 10-year anniversary of his Lost Arrow Spire walk--Chongo and Darrin Carter joined him. Balcom intended to walk Lost Arrow again. Chongo and Carter had already done it.
      Chongo mounted the rope, his Walkman pounded out a tune by the Indigo Girls, "Secure Yourself to Heaven." And Chongo walked the line.
      Balcom was last to cross. The valley spread beneath him as though he were on some tiny island in the sky, trees blurred into a vast green carpet parted by occasional black ribbons of roads. Buses looked like ants, the lodge and maintenance facility seemed no larger than his fingernail. Water from Yosemite Falls crashed loudly against the rocks, or maybe the pounding was his heart.