BURSTGerman climbers Lukas Irmler and Antonia Rüede-Passul recently sent the first-ever highline from the summit of Trango Tower (6,251 m) in Pakistan. The 21-metre-long line is now the highest highline ever walked in the Karakoram.
They first climbed Great Trango Tower (6,280 m) to acclimate before going up the famous Eternal Flame on Nameless Tower. In walking the 6,251-metre highline, Rüede-Passul set a world record for the highest line ever walked by a woman, beating her existing record of 5,860 metres set in Chile on Ojos de Salado. Rüede-Passul and Irmler made headlines earlier this year when they walked a highline on Aguja de la S in the Fitz Roy range of Patagonia.
The first recorded walk on a nylon webbing highline is credited to Scott Balcom, 20, and Chris Carpenter, 17. Their line, now known as The Arches, stretched approximately 10 metres long and hung 35 metres above the ground in Pasadena, California. On July 13, 1985, Balcom successfully crossed the Lost Arrow Spire highline in Yosemite National Park, a milestone in the sport’s early history.
A decade later, in 1995, Darrin Carter completed unprotected crossings of both the Lost Arrow Spire in Yosemite and The Fins on Mount Lemmon Highway near Tucson, Arizona. On July 16, 2007, Libby Sauter became the first woman to cross the Lost Arrow Spire successfully. The following year, Dean Potter became the first person to BASE jump from a highline at Hell Roaring Canyon, Utah.
On Aug. 3, 2006, Christian Schou walked a highline at 1,000 metres above the ground at Kjerag, Norway. Aleksander Mork repeated the project in September 2007. Rafael Zugno Bridi later set a world record by walking a slackline between two hot-air balloons. In 2015, Stephan Siegrist walked a slackline near the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro at an altitude exceeding 5,500 metres above sea level.
In July 2021, German athletes Friedi Kühne, Lukas Irmler, Quirin Herterich and Ruben Langer set a record for the longest highline crossing, traversing a 2.1-kilometre line suspended more than 500 metres above the ground between the Lapporten mountains near Abisko, Sweden. Between July 4 and 6, each athlete walked the entire line without falling, taking between approximately 70 and 180 minutes to complete the crossing.
Free solo highlining, performed without a safety tether, demands an even greater level of skill. German slackliner Friedi Kühne walked a 110-metre-long line suspended 200 metres above the Verdon Gorge in southern France, setting the record for the longest free solo highline. On July 7, 2022, Lucia Bryn set the women’s record with a 33-metre crossing in Yosemite on a line suspended 80 metres up.
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