We did it! The Lapporten Project by @northernlines_slackline officially got a highline world record at 2130m long (1.3 miles) but it isn't just the length, it was in a really remote location making the rigging quite complex. A full feature film by Pinewood Productions will be aired on Swedish TV and submitted to film festivals. This was the first slackline project to be sponsored through crowdfunding. We made soft shackles with the dyneema tag line as a gift to them and you can see more about that in this VIDEO Intro and Ending music by Martin Gravdal Some clips provided and edited by PineWood Productions Some clips provided and edited by JoEight Maps by Henry Adams (a highliner) Behind the Scenes These types of projects take a year from inception to published video. It's the fun part of the channel that I get to join in on such complex and expensive projects. Now it's pretty hard to get a large highline project sponsored, even if it is going to be a world record and when you do get support it becomes stressful to try to make sure it is actually successful. One can plan all they want but you are at the mercy of luck and the weather gods, and northern Sweden isn't known for fair weather. SPIDER SLACKLINES gave them a killer deal on the webbing and Volks Wagon lent us free vans to make the very long drive north and covered gas and there were other sponsors who helped which you can see in the description of the video on Youtube. But it still takes real money to run a project like this and so I tried to get 100 people to donate $50 to make this the first crowdfunded project and it worked. It helped cover almost all the expenses of this project and we all paid for our own expenses to fly and drive to Stockholm where we started the journey. It's pretty neat when a community works together for a goal. As a thank you, we made soft shackles from the dyneema tag line and mailed them to (almost) all the crowdfund sponsors. That proved to be more work than we realized and CRM systems and shipping is best left to a store. We were fortunate to have even more help and LINEGRIP INC managed all the shipping. Everything was hard about that project than originally thought, including the edit. It was such a good story and so successful that it deserved more than just a 8 hour edit. But if you put in that much work, add music. Then add maps. Then scrounge for better footage for this one part and reshoot this other part and so on and so forth. I estimate it was a total of 60 hours on premiere making this my most detailed video to date and I think for the budget of $0 and mostly cell phone footage, it came out super good enough. I'm now inspired to do nicer "films" a few times a year to see if I can expand my story telling and editing skills. After Posting Thoughts The audience responded positively and it seems most people who don't slackline got the gist of even if they can't go rig a line after watching it. I thought, being slackline content, that it might get 10,000 views or if I'm lucky 30,000 views but after 28 days, I crested over 100k views with 30% of people who made it to the 10 minute mark made it all the way to the end. Blows my mind. Sure makes me want to put out more quality videos. Thank you for the positive feedback. We have another VIDEO showing the California record that was 861m long or half a mile in Yosemite. That required 5 days just to get the line across!

HOW bad is it to fall on personal anchors? It's obvious-ish that it's not a good idea to fall on a short rope since there isn't much there to absorb your fall, especially if it is really static. We drop tested cow's tails, which are personal anchor systems (PAS) that cavers use. We were hoping the dynamic ropes would absorb enough to not hurt but damn, since we were dropping 300lbs/136kg it still got to forces that were pretty gnar. Dropping the same cow's tail after the knot cinched up took it from 6kn which is survivable to 10+kn which isn't. Just extending the length of it a bit got it to enough force to break... a dynamic rope! When you fall twice as far as you have rope in the system, that is a fall factor 2 (FF2) and that is when things start breaking. Static material is even worse. Semi static got us above 10kn with fresh knots but then it was just breaking stuff after that. The super static polyester rope broke on the first drop. The Petzl Speleoglyca dyneema PAS didn't break on the first drop only because the stitching broke. Our Data What's Next We cross loaded a carabiner in our drop tests. See this video to watch us do it on purpose!

The Purcell Prusik is a personal anchor system or tether that supposedly absorbs shock if you were to fall on it by slipping a little. It's never a good idea to fall on any sort of tether or PAS, but are Purcells better??? What Are Prusiks? Friction hitches, including prusiks, grab ropes like an ascender without teeth. A prusik is basically a loop of cord that goes inside of itself 3x while wrapping around a rope. Because it's symmetrical, you can slide it up or down and it will always grab the host rope when weighted. Ideally, host ropes should be 3mm or bigger than the cord you use for the prusik itself. Purcell Prusiks A Purcell is a special kind of prusik, a loop of cord that is folded in half with a prusik going around itself. You can adjust it to be as short as folded in half or as long as fully extended. The side you attach to yourself with a girth hitch can either be the end of the loop of cord, or you can isolate an eye using a BFK (Big Fucking Knot). It can be used as a tether, but also as a foot loop and adjustable legs for a rescue litter. Here are some screenshots demonstrating how to tie it. See the video at 2:21 for detail. Cost A short one takes 10 feet of 6mm nylon and a longer one is about 15 feet. At $0.59 per foot, this would cost you less than the carabiner you are clipping to it. Fun Facts Most adjustable personal anchors are easy to pull yourself tighter with one hand but sometimes difficult to loosen. Purcells are the opposite. You can loosen them while they're weighted, but it takes two hands to shorten them. They don’t get you close enough sometimes. You can extend it out all the way and clip that smaller loop at the end to a carabiner directly clipped to your belay loop, putting you only 2 carabiners away from whatever you want. Want to be further? Make your loop bigger until you get to the normal working range of your Purcell. Results When does it slip? It’s random. How well did you tie it, dress it, and cinch it down? Is it old and fluffy? Does it have sap on it? Is it super slick because it’s new? When does it break? 6mm broke around 10kn, 7mm around 15kn, and 8mm around 20kn. 6mm didn’t seem super strong for a personal anchor if it’s the only thing holding you and you fall hard onto it. In our drop tests, especially when we used our heavier weight, you can see that our lowest force was 8kn. Where Does it Break? Usually, girth hitches weaken a sling enough to be where it breaks. It actually was the BFK each time. So it’s not a risk girth hitching to something, because the knot seems to fail long before the hitch will.. Other Testing Kyle Pease did a bunch of testing in 2011 and you can read about it in this pdf. In summary, they got much higher forces. They dropped it a few times but they had a bunch of variables, their load cell only went to 4kn and their drop tester wasn’t built for some of the high forces you can get when falling on such a short piece of rope. It’s great to see other folks' tests so we can compare what we got and learn way more. Go check it out. When Do YOU Break? I have hurt myself at 2kN in short bounces, but I’ve gotten 5kn in a rope swing and it didn’t hurt at all because it took so long to achieve that force. So it really depends. If you quickly got to 6-8kn on a static personal anchor, you’d likely be hurting (if not broken). Anything in the 12-15kn range, it’s just a recovery at that point. The conclusion is... DON’T fall on personal anchors. Even Purcells. They might slip and absorb a bit of force, but it's not nearly enough for most situations. Tethers should be used for positioning, not catching a fall. What's Next What about Cow's Tails? How do they work?

The S.W.A.M.P. (shelf without a master point) is a climbing anchor that has been around for a long time but was never widely adopted. It is quick and efficient to set up with two bolts, pieces, or ice screws, but is it strong enough? Is it redundant? Would you use it? We put the S.W.A.M.P. to the test on the Slacksnap machine to find out how good, or bad, it really is. What is the S.W.A.M.P.? Setting up the S.W.A.M.P. is as easy as it gets. Tie an overhand knot in the middle of a sling, creating two loops. Clip each loop to an anchor piece, leave the knot hanging down between them. Clip a carabiner through both the loops behind the knot. That's it! It only takes a single 60cm sling to make the S.W.A.M.P. Our Tests We tested the swamp using 60cm Dyneema Slings and 60cm Nylon Slings. We also pulled one end of the swamp to see how redundant it is. Finally, we loaded the swamp to 6kN (the force of a pretty big fall on to the anchor) to see how hard it would be to untie the knot. 10% Supports HowNOT2 Climbing, Caving and Canyon gear here Results We were pretty impressed at the breaking strength of the S.W.A.M.P. anchor. All four of our break tests were near or above MBS of the sling, those were better results than we were expecting. In the redundancy department the results were mixed. With a nylon sling we think the S.W.A.M.P. anchor displays okay, but not great, redundancy. With a Dyneema Sling the S.W.A.M.P. was not very redundant. It came unraveled under a constant load of 3.74 kN. We were surprised to find that after weighting to 5.5kN the nylon sling was still easy to untie. After a 6kN load it took us about 45 seconds to untie the dyneema sling, which is not too bad considering it would take a huge fall onto the anchor to generate 6kN. Conclusion Does the S.W.A.M.P. anchor get our seal of approval? Is it super good enough? It's okay. It has the major advantage of requiring very little sling material and it is easy to build with one hand. It doesn't have a traditional masterpoint, it's not great in the redundancy department, and it's possible for the knot to get pretty welded in Dyneema. We see this type of anchor being most usefully in alpine ice climbing where abrasion is of little concern, every gram of weight counts, and being able to set up the S.W.A.M.P with one hand and gloves on could be an advantage. We would opt for the Girth X anchor in most of the same situations. The Girth X uses all of the same gear but has greater redundancy and it is easier to disassemble. What's Next? Want to see how the girth hitch master point holds up? Check this episode out.

Beware: This makes carabiners break A LOT lower Carabiners break pretty reliably when pulled the way they are intended, but cross loading them can happen from the nose getting stuck to a sling catching on the gate, so what ACTUALLY happens when you cross load a carabiner. OUR RESULTS Trango was the hardest to get stuck in a cross load orientation, locking carabiners were easy to cross load, and the steel carabiner was way higher than MBS. They sure broke weird. The wire gates would flip 180 and get stuck on the spine. What's Next What happens if you put 3 carabiners in one hanger?