How This Pro Slackliner Crosses Canyons

[Narrator] This slackline is less than two inches wide,

over 170 feet long,

and hundreds of feet above a canyon floor.

It may be terrifying for the most of us, but for this woman,

it's exactly where she wants to be.

My name is Faith Dickey.

I'm a professional slackliner, highliner, and guide.

[Narrator] Even getting over a fear of heights,

it's not nearly as easy as it seems.

Every detail has to be considered,

speed of the wind, placement of her feet,

tension on the rope.

It all matters if you want to make it to the other side.

When I'm on the highline,

I often make micro-adjustments with my wrists.

Sometimes I really focus on what my fingers feel like,

how the wind feels as it's blowing past them.

When I actually walked a line successfully,

it was sort of like seeing color for the first time.

I mean, my mind was blown.

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I actually got all these crazy muscles in my feet

that most people don't have.

These are all balance muscles

that we just don't get to use in everyday life.

[Narrator] That's not the only thing

that makes her different from the rest of us.

She's built a life in this death-defying world

breaking countless world records.

Faith became the first woman to cross a highline

over 100 meters long in 2014.

And she also broke the record for longest free solo

in 2012 in the Czech Republic,

which means she did it without a safety harness.

I was the reigning world record for women

in the sport of slacklining and highlining

for about six years undefeated.

It was pretty incredible.

I just was so focused and so obsessed.

I just wanted to accomplish things for myself

and on accident set world records,

and on accident became a pioneer.

If I look down on a highline,

I'm seeing everything all at once,

my feet, the exposure below me,

it feels impossible to focus on one tiny thing.

It's just kind of a mind-blowing

overload of information for my brain.

I love that feeling.

When I'm standing on a highline out in space,

so much of the experience is about the sky

and just how big the sky is above me.

[Narrator] This kind of balance and control

didn't just come naturally.

Faith had to fall a lot to get to where she is today.

The first time you set foot on a slackline,

it's really crazy how wobbly the line is.

It's really hard to commit

to actually putting your full body weight on there

'cause you feel like you're just gonna get thrown off.

There's so much falling involved.

And I think you really have to get over that hump of failure

to keep going to see your success.

I fought so hard. I fell so many times.

I fell over and over and over again.

I was black and blue covered in bruises.

And then finally, I somehow just locked in,

stood up on that highline, and step-by-step,

made it across.

[Narrator] People have been testing

the limits of their balance for centuries

on beams, tightropes, and more.

It's a tradition that spans continents and cultures,

from circus performance to Olympic athletes.

But in the 1980s,

a group of rock climbers found a new way to pass the time

when they started balancing on stretchy ropes and webbing.

And that's when slacklining was born.

While tightrope walking is usually done

on a high tension metal wire,

a slackline has more give and will bounce,

almost like a narrow trampoline.

The result is an extremely dynamic form

of balanced movement.

And just like every part of the sport,

details really matter.

How Faith sets up the line

can mean the difference between life and death.

So if I'm setting up a highline for the first time

and an area that's never had a highline before,

where there's nothing to anchor off of

like a boulder or a tree,

I'll be placing bolts in the rock.

I equalize off of at least three different points.

Slacklines are typically made from nylon, polyester.

I use steel carabiners.

I try to use all steel in my system.

I have a special device called a LineGrip

which has two rubber plates that grip the slackline

so I can pull it and tighten it.

The other thing that's really important

when rigging highlines is lots of padding.

One of the biggest risks for breaking a line

is rock abrasion.

I have these kind of Velcro sleeves that I wrap all the rope

and all the slackline with on the edges.

I only want to go highlining with people I trust.

If my friend is on the other side of the canyon,

building an anchor,

I wanna know that they're gonna do it safely.

I wanna live a long life. I don't have a death wish.

It's really about understanding what the risks are,

mitigating them,

and then accepting that there's risk involved.

There's a science to this stuff.

[Narrator] A short slackline doesn't have much movement

because the anchor points are close together.

Because of that, the line doesn't have much give

and each step lands in a similar place to the last,

just one step in front of the other.

It's far harder to stay balanced on a longer line

that has sag and sway.

It means you're going downhill and then uphill

while the wind is moving you.

When a line gets longer and heavier,

it's much harder to walk.

The line is tightest at the anchor

where it's attached to the rock or the tree.

But as you walk, that tension gets looser and looser,

and the middle is the loosest part.

The hardest part of a highline is at the very end

'cause you're walking uphill.

So your feet are slipping a little bit

and it's much more exertion.

And all you wanna do is get on that rock.

[Narrator] Because of the dynamic nature of the slackline,

each step is different from the last.

Faith's approach to this challenge

means being in precise control of her body.

I'm trying to keep my heartbeat very slow

and calm on the highline.

I can feel each little twitch in my finger

as I find equilibrium.

I can feel exactly what it's like

when the sole of my foot touches the line and rolls forward.

[Narrator] But Faith didn't always plan

on being a highlining master.

She wanted to go into fashion

but life had a different plan for her.

When I was 18, I fell asleep driving my car

and flipped it over.

The car crash was terrifying,

and it made me do a 180 in my life.

I suddenly was faced with who am I

and how do I wanna live my life?

I needed to take some time to really figure all that out.

And slacklining was a catalyst.

[Narrator] Catalyst is an understatement.

Her mental toughness and love for the sport

quickly made her a star.

Soon came the magazine articles, sponsorships,

and offers to travel the world,

teaching, and establishing new roots.

I kind of inadvertently became a pioneer in the sport

especially for women.

And along with some people who I was on a team with,

we established so many lines around the world.

We took slacklining and highlining

to places where it never existed before.

[Narrator] It takes years of experience

to stand on a highline and quickly tune your body

to match the ever-changing character of the line.

I might shift my hips.

I'm trying to keep my back straight.

Our vision is super important.

You go where you look.

If I wanna make it more challenging, I look around.

But if I wanna be as concentrated and stable as possible,

I focus on one point and that's where I walk to.

As my foot comes down and makes contact with the slackline,

there's a specific place I put it.

I don't wrap my toes around it.

It's really just about centering my foot on top of it.

If I make contact with the line a little bit to the side,

there's the potential that when I weight that foot,

I'm gonna slip off the line.

And so I have to adjust immediately.

The other part that's super key is breathing.

I like to think of my breath traveling through my body.

I imagine it traveling through my arms

and out of my fingertips, traveling through my torso

down into my feet into the line.

It's how I calm my body down.

[Narrator] It's not just about winning world titles

and having all the right gear,

Faith models her life on the lessons she's learned

from slacklining and highlining.

I think in the moment

that you're engaging with fear of death,

it becomes really clear what's important in life.

Being on a highline

and really engaging with that fear step-by-step,

it taught me that I can live beyond that fear.

It doesn't have to stop me

from accomplishing the things I wanna do.