Saturday, November 28, 1998

Yosemite Slack Lining

Some 1,200 feet above Yosemite Valley, Dean Potter took a deep breath and stepped with his bare feet upon a nylon rope strung 70 feet across a precipice.
      It undulated beneath him.

      Potter had just learned that he had been laid off from his window washing job. Stressed, he was chain-eating Altoids. His face, adorned with a King Tut goatee, looked gaunt, his cheekbones slightly reddened by endless days in the sun. He stripped down from his new blue jeans to his green shorts. He pulled off his black and white checked Patagonia shirt.
      Exhaling slowly, he started to edge forward. The rope oscillated like a gigantic rubber band. Potter tried to focus on his orange Peach Schnapps T-shirt tied in a knot at the other end of the rope.
      But something was wrong. Potter was afraid. He fought to quell his fear and his pounding heart, only to slip into a fierce internal debate.
      Concentrate.
      Look down. Oh my god!
      Don't even glance. Breathe. Relax.
      Look down. Holy smoke! You're going to smash your head like a pumpkin on that rock ledge. You're a goner!
      Potter hesitated. His eyes flickered, scanning the ledge beneath him. He struggled to keep his balance. And failed.
      What an idiot, I can't believe you looked, he told himself as he fell, just missing the rock.
      Potter, a 26-year-old "slack liner," was tethered to the rope by a leash attached to a harness that was wrapped around his waist and legs. He felt the sharp jolt as he tumbled seven feet and bounced back up like a yo-yo. It was a wrenching yank that hurt most in the groin where the harness circled his legs.
      Chongo and another South Pasadena climber, Darrin Carter, became obsessed with doing the Lost Arrow Spire.
      "I was scared out of my mind by it," said Chongo, now 47. "I had no idea what it was like to be that scared."
      After an hour, they were tired. Chongo didn't exercise much any more. He sat in the Yosemite Lodge cafeteria for days polishing a book he had written on climbing. Potter had hiked 19 miles up Half Dome the previous day, and climbed El Capitan, setting another time record, the day before that.
      Chongo wondered if he could repeat his previous success at Lost Arrow. Potter, yet to succeed, was unconcerned. He had been able to unwind, exorcise the stress he had felt about losing his job. He had stopped fretting about whether his mother's visit was going well. For that one hour of slack lining, he had been totally in the moment.
      Did he feel ready?
      "Who knows," he said. "I have a lot to think about before I go on that particular line."
      Two days later, he walked the slack line across Lost Arrow Spire.
      Twice.