How do you rig mid lines let me show you in this episode of how not to highlight
Hi, I'm Ryan Jenks and welcome to my mid line. This mid line is just a few minutes away from my house and is permanently set up
And I want to show you how to rig one as I've been asked many times
how to do it first of all let me define what a mid line is some people say that it's just a slack line
That's too high to fall from but the definition. I use today is a high line
That's low to the ground, but high enough that it's safe to take a whipper
and
If the main line fails you still won't hit the ground
If you land on the backup so you can see here that I'm about thirty feet high
And this slack line is a hundred feet long so roughly three to one and I find that to be a good safe
ratio for height so if I have
Find fifty or sixty feet up I could rig something that's about a hundred and fifty two maybe 180 feet long
So fifty or sixty meters divided by three folks
I'm gonna use feet here
So if I am thirty feet high on this hundred foot high line
These backup loops are still safe enough for me to take a main line failure and still not hit the ground now
Let me emphasize something real quick you have to be high enough that is the number one thing
I want you to walk away with from this video
Otherwise you basically break it like a slack line in the park and throw it another line underneath it
That's the quick version, but it's very important to be high enough
I was zealous when I started and I just wanted to get up high and
rigging a high line Yosemite can be complicated if you're new so I thought I have a balcony I
Have a tree 30 feet away from the balcony
So I gurth hitched my post with a climbing sling and tightened a single piece of webbing not that a backup would have helped
and
makeshift a leash out of a carabiner
And I whipped
Now I was only
10 15 feet off the ground as you know we're at a height of a balcony in
My head I did a flipper whipper because I've been out of it
came that close to the ground
According to my friends who are watching?
so
Make sure you're high enough in case you were wondering why I call the channel how not the High Line, okay?
If you're not sure if your main line were to fail if you would hit the ground or not a great way for you to
test that would be for you to get on the backup line before you tape it and
By doing that you you'll end up sliding down quite a bit so hang on or use a rope to hang on
Slide out to the middle and see if you're high enough above the ground
Lower yourself onto a leash and make sure you allow enough clearance for the rope to stretch or the anchors to cinch down
now that you know your maximum length for your backup line you go back up to the anchor and mark it and
Make sure that it doesn't ever exceed that mark you could always make it tighter to lead even more of a safety ratio
But at least you know and you're not guessing whether or not you'll be safe if the main line were to fail
So check out our other video where we set up a line just right above this one
Slid out a whole bag on this full of rocks and then cut the main line
We got to see how close we got to the ground now keep in mind that was
Excessively large loops that we tested the loops
I have here are only half as loopy so that was I would consider worst case scenario and that gives us the
Three times as long as you are high rule that I completely pulled out of my ass
So I'd like to just plug real quick my patreon account
I'm asking for one stoked dollar per episode if you enjoy watching this channel
I try to make every episode a little bit better either in quality or content
Than the last one and that's why they progressively get better
But it does cost a little bit of money to do that and if I have some help with that
It will make it easier for me to make these better
Please get involved and donate $1 to my patreon account so
Location was very important on where to put it on this tree this tree does not have branches down low
anymore and
I didn't want it to be hard to get on and off because if you're just hanging here
It could be it can be a bitch so there are two branches. You can see that. I'm standing on here and
Here and that gives me a nice stable platform to kind of stand while I'm tying in
Now the other side doesn't really have a good
Spot to get on and off
But I'm never trying to do that over there so this
Tree just happened to have a really great place for me to rig the line
You can see here that I wrap my span set around the fork in this tree
And that's a nice place for it to sit now. You don't have to have a fork
It just happened to be a nice spot, which is about four feet up from where I can stand comfortably
Do I really have to use a disclaimer that says?
Use a tree that's big enough
Please don't use a tree like these ones over here
Those are too skinny if it's something you're willing to slack line on double it and that's probably big enough
Remember my number one advice for safety is to make sure your high line is high enough
But my number one advice for ease of use is to make sure that your rope
Goes above the master point the rope that I jug up your with is
10 to 15 higher than my master point right here, otherwise if you're juggling a rope
You can't come obviously to the very very top of it. It's tied
It's got a knot and it's attached to your harness
You would end up being about 4 feet lower than your master point and then you got to do some
Possibly sketchy things depending now you tie yourself in to get up to where you can tie your leash on
So you can see here that my ascender is
Higher than my master point but lower than the very top and that gives me the flexibility to go in and out
To work comfortably down here and tie in easily now what I have up
there is another fork that I
Wrapped the rope around and just try to figure eight
And you can see how I've padded everything really well because this is a long term rig
technically even short term rigs should be padded, but anyways what you see right here is just an
independent wrap around and
A figure eight coming off of that independently and this allowed me to have two points of contact between
my jug rope tail and
The other branch that I tied off and this thing is
The thing that I can tie off my tails to which I'll get to in a little bit
So I highly recommend putting your access rope much higher than the master point which will give you so much flexibility
To work around this now
How you get up a tree? I have no idea I used a ladder to get half way up and then girth hitched slings
Around the tree it was a little janky. Anyways that is not what I'm good at so
I'm not going to show you how to do that anyways
Once you're up your tree you tie off your rope
And you kind of have to do it on both sides before you
Basically even start and of course it helps having a second person
You don't need a second person you could just attach your fixed sides repel down and come up
But anyways these ropes are in the bone now. This is not my house
I paint houses and this is one of my customers houses so every few months
I do a little paint job forum to rent the top half of their trees
Pretty fun trying to explain that to somebody who's never seen slacklining before hey
Can I walk on a rope?
Thirty feet in the sky in your backyard so anyways I didn't want the rope just coiled on the ground
I want this to kind of be out of sight out of mind, right
I do regret not cutting my rope
Longer I put it at about waist level and just like that you want more than you need you technically want
More rope than you need at the bottom
If you repel up the end of your rope you're already on the ground
But I mean you kind of fall on your ass if you do that
Accidentally so this is not complicated
I hope you slackline before you try doing something like this so you understand kind of what it takes to rig between two trees
but anyways this is a twelve foot span set that is folded in half and
Wrapped around just like you see here, and then I I have all this gear that
I just never use because I don't you know use big shackles anymore
So I thought what a great place put this stuff for a permanent line. Here's a big fat
Shackle now you can see I duct tape carpet to it padding a tree is important
But if you're going to leave something up for a long period of time
Padding your equipments important to even a span set so it goes from the span set to a rigging plate that I have no
use for
I don't see the value of rigging plates even if I'm rigging long lines. I just embed my
gris-gris or my break inside of my pulleys so
These are nice for some things, but I just put it up here
Which gives me flexing to do a lot of things because I come up here. I experiment. I've done videos up here in the past
but anyways
Another steel shackle on a web lock that I don't really use any more. I use the 4.0
So the pure shackles so this is all
Gear, that's not old. It's just
Stuff that I'm not gonna prefer to use out on an expedition
So this is great gear for a mid line, so I've had this set up for about a year and a half
You can see how its discoloring some of the equipment. How you get
discolorations things like that in
where the dirt sits
But the webbing of course you cannot leave up here for that long especially in the Sun the rain the wind
This is arrow to I change out my webbing every nine months to a year
And even then that's kind of pushing it I feel I'm not too concerned about the dirt on this because it's a span set
it's like super bummer, but my
Jug line this is getting kind of old. I definitely want to change this out soon
I like to clip off my leash or tie it off and
So I just put it right there on the rigging plate, and that's pretty much all there is to it
So as you can see here my backup is a frost nut now if you are gonna use a frost not
Make sure that the main line, which is this line here is sandwiched in between
This bottom loop and the tail and that puts it in the middle of the knot
The bend radius and knots is what makes it bad a web lock has a nice bin radius and so it
Retains more strength of the webbing than a knot this knot has been
Favored among people for holding. I think around 60 ish percent of the strength of the webbing which
Is fine for this backup line in this?
Situation I like to take these tails and I like to tie them off to this carabiner up here which is
Tied to two points up there so really I have
Two more master points that these tails are tied off to in case something were to go wrong with my master point
Which is reassuring even though it is Ballmer
Before we continue. Let me share with you the church of slack life
Go to slackline calm and join the church by sharing your slack life
testimony the church of slack life has its own YouTube channel
So make sure you go to that and subscribe to see our weekly sessions
Which is everyone?
Who's stoked about the slack life sharing the slack life and don't let the r-word scare you we're not your average religion
We don't manage your morality. We're just here for each other and want to cherish the Stoke
There's also options for really cool shirts on the church website like this one here
So go on there check out what other people have put check out the shirts and get involved okay?
So now I'm on the other side now. This is an awkward side
I have to use a daisy in order to not slide to the middle. It's really nowhere to stand
But here, I have the span set just like the other side
carpeting over the branches
And then I have someone looks right here in order not to crowd out my backup point here is
I put a big Delta quicklink in here then clipped a steel beam er to that so it's not so
clustered up, but anyways
How do you back up those tails?
Now you can see here that the second loop on the balanced community webbing as they come with two loops is
Clipped to my rope that I jogged up here with originally to rig now. I rarely if ever dug up this rope
Because this is not the side that I tie into the leashes over there
but you never know even if it's a span set or say steel connector if it's gonna fail so I
Always like to back it up to something extra now. I don't feel like I should have to say this, but I'm going to
Please don't do this in the park do this on your own land
of friends that you know
But don't just try to go up trees in the park rig this and get slackline and shut down for everyone
slacklining is already a
Access issue in part. I just can't imagine if people started to try to do mid lines in the park. You know
You can see over there where the branches are that I can't walk the last 10 feet of this line
I also technically can't walk the last few feet of this line because I have this branch there though this mid line and
Most mid lines you do you won't be able to walk the last few feet of either anchor so you are limited
How long you can rig these?
But it's more fun to do tricks on them and just go back and forth then it is to try to get ascend, okay
So I'm half way down this rappel
And I want to make some few notes on what not to do with your
Jug line those two points worth mentioning here one
Is this branch is awesome to step on but do you see how the rope touches it I duct-taped carpet to there
obviously
You also want to make sure that this rope isn't going to rub your slackline
Or your anchor or your rope because I mean you you don't want this to break either
So you really got to be conscious of that since your rope goes higher than your slackline?
You don't want any nylon sign going on while you jug this rope okay fun fact
make sure your rope is long enough because my feet aren't quite on the ground yet, but
Here's my tail
So it's always unnerving when you come off this thing
Because you could land on your ass
You can see here that it only comes to my chest and it'd be really nice if it came to will
Ground okay, in case you don't know how to ascend a rope there's lots of ways to skin this cat
I'm just going to show you how I do it at our midline
and a cinder is helpful, but I only use one I have a
daisy
Personal anchor that I connect myself to in case the Grigri were to slip
it could happen you never know and
I've got my gris-gris on there with my short ass tail
So my preference is just to push the ascender up which is what?
My hand here holding the gimbal is holding the ascender
And then I just step up in the viateur that I have here the rope ladder
and then I just stand up and pull the Grigri through the
device leg and
I like doing that because it's
redundant
if the Gregory were to slip for any reason my personal anchors on the ascender and
I just have two ways that I'm connected to this rope and then when I get up there the Gregory's already on so I can't
install it wrong and then slide down the rope and
Possibly kill myself, so I know the Gregory's on correctly before I ever get up there or I wouldn't be able to get up there
So I like having both the ascender and the Gregory I can slide the ascender up and
Cinch up my personal anchor and sit in that so I can cinch up my Gregory here and sit in that
So just the carabiner shifting and this way I mean
Safely connected to this tree in two ways a personal anchor in my gris-gris while I?
Tie into my leash here and when I first set up this mid line Kim was new to ascending
She wasn't super familiar with it so I know that this Gregory is incorrectly is
in
correctly
When she's up here once you're tight in
You just unclip it and let it hang here, and then it's ready for you to go
Back down, just don't forget the ascender. We've done that a couple
Just because mid lines are lower to the ground
Doesn't mean they're safer
They actually have a higher risk because you're close enough to the ground to hit it even if your equipment doesn't fail
So make sure you take a lot of precautions, and you still might get hurt
Therefore you shouldn't midnight
Hey, thanks for watching
But don't be an idiot go rig your first mid line without doing it with someone who knows what they're doing
There's way too many slackline festivals these days to try to learn this stuff on your own Kim also organized over
1300 slackline groups from all over the world
Go to slackin demux calm and see if there's people in your area that you can learn from
But until you get the chance to learn from someone who knows what they're doing check out our other videos and don't forget to subscribe