Across the Sky: One Man Walk 1,630 Feet Across the Utah Sky

Watch: 500-Meter Slackline Walk Between Desert Towers

Across the Sky: Theo Sanson is quite the slackliner

The walk set a new world record

On November 15, 2015, Frenchman Théo Sanson walked high in the air along nearly 500 meters (1,630 feet) of slackline. Slackline is a flat webbing with far less tension than a tightrope, allowing for more bounce and stretch. Sanson’s line extended between two of Castle Valley Utah’s towering edifices: The Rectory and Castleton Tower, which both rise 400 feet. You can see members of his 15-person team standing atop each of the two soaring sandstone skyscrapers, watching Sanson’s every step.

Slacklining is an activity that’s popular among rock climbers (and kids who belong to outing clubs at liberal arts colleges). Basically, you string up a piece of webbing or rope between two objects — often trees, but in this case, massive rock formations — but you don’t pull it tight. So, while a tightrope is taught and steady, a slackline is wobbly and moves underneath the walker’s feet.

One of the team members, Brian Mosbaugh, commented on this adventure journey. “In the world, there exists a very small niche community of highly trained slackliners who devote their lives to balanced practices daily and break staggering world records regularly. The observation I’ve made of these talented individuals is that the majority of them aren’t pursuing this challenge to stroke their egos or for any real claim to fame. Walking across a slackline is a very arbitrary and personal accomplishment all things considered, and there is little notoriety for it in mainstream culture. Instead, what I’ve experienced is that their deepest motivations and desires, to push the limits of body and mind, stem from a profound need to be the best version of themselves. To explore their outer limits and see what is humanly possible when strict rules and definitions are ignored. During this Fall season, those limits were pushed longer and higher than they ever had been before.”

Brian continued. “As it stands, the current world record length high line crossed without falling has been claimed by Theo Sanson. Naturally being a Frenchman, he was joined by his traveling companions Antony Newton and Thibault Arrappiccatu. They came to Moab, the mecca of infinite High lines, to give this challenge some serious attempts and keep the stoke high. This line spanned across the iconic Castelton Tower all the way to The Rectory in Castle Valley, Utah. Arguably one of the most beautiful slacklines I’ve seen in person, its total distance was 1,617 feet long and was rigged with less than 300 pounds of standing tension. For anyone out there that doesn’t want to think about math, that means the line had about 80 feet of sag with an average-sized person in the middle. The summits of The Rectory and Castleton Tower don’t stand at equal heights as well, with about 100 feet of altitude difference between them. What you have then is a very loose and sagging monster slackline with hundreds of feet of dizzying visible exposure.”

ACROSS THE SKY – a world record \ Theo Sanson

The film by Camp4 Collective gloriously captures the Highline walk. As stated in the video’s notes, rigging the line was perhaps as significant a feat as walking it. The team to make this happen included Andy Lewis, Brent Cain, Aleta Edinger, Sylvan Slacks, Scott Rogers, Brian Mosbaugh, Homer Manson, Ryan Zorg, Thibault Arrappiccatu, Mathieu Pertus, Crack Mouse, Sara Zorg, Guillaume Rolland, Antony Newton, and Mimi Guesdon.

It was filmed and edited by Tim Kemple, Renan Ozturk, and Anson Fogel.

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