A Hocking Hills Highline

Last spring Levi(aka: Levi Tate, The Levitater, Mr. Evil) came to town to visit friends, family and possibly climb. He came during an amazing week of weather that allowed us hit the local Athens bouldering by day and paint the town red by night. We also managed to travel to the new for some bouldering, helping the crew dial in some problems before the rendezvous. While we were sitting around afterwards he mentioned that he was interested in setting up a highline at one of our only local crags( if you can call it that).

We decided that we would head out the next morning a set up a line at the Hocking Hills climbing and rappelling area. We planned to set it up on the gap between the "Rectangle Block" and the adjacent cliff, over the trail. It was about a 25ft gap and close to 40 ft to the deck, not to bad for our first highline. Being that this would be our first time setting a highline, we decided to not screw around and carried a ton of gear into the woods. However, two expeditions packs full might have been too much.

It took us about an hour to figure out what we need to set up the line. If you look at the photos you will see that we were pretty redundant. The core rig of our set up was the "slackline brothers" tension system, fully backed up. Our line was double threaded to make it both stiffer and stronger. The whole system was back up with a dynamic line that was ran under the line and taped to it.

The plan from the very beginning was for Levi to walk the line and if I was feeling up to it, I said I would give it a try, however my fear of heights said "NO". I will have to say it was pretty coll to see Levi on the line.

Check out the rest of the photos and the video below.