Knowledge; Slacklining; 'No Knots, You WAnchor!'

Imagine yourself in the following situation;

You've set up your slackline - a trickline setup.
Your line is between two trees, about 7 metres apart, just over a metre high. You've tightened the ratchet because you're practicing new tricks that involve vertical spice; the butt-bounce, the vertical jump etc.

You've just learnt the butt-bounce about ten minutes ago - salivating at the mouth to stick as many as possible before the sun sets.

But there is a problem.

That knot that you tied into your anchor sling last weekend, the one that has infinitely tightened itself into a nugget of indestructibility, the knot that you thought was doing you a favour by adjusting the length of your sling when you needed to shorten it.....

That knot has created a weakness.

You're facing away from the ratchet. You take off for the butt-bounce, everything is in slow-motion now. You beast your legs to the right of the line, trusting that you won't miss and that the line will take the strain. Your butt makes contact, everything is still slow and feels epic.

Then, time catches up with you, fast-forwarding and compounding in to one big BOOOOM!
Time speeds through you - your sling snaps, the ratchet flies into your right hip and butt cheek, hitting you in three different places simultaneously, your coccyx hits the floor - and then the pain hits.
Oh, the pain.

You're rolling around on the floor, man-screaming, shouting, venting all that anger that is now raging out of your body - anger towards the line, the company, that damn ratchet, the world itself for letting you get beat so bad.

After a good minute or two of pain-vent, an elderly dog walker appears, towered over you at the level you once were, butt-bouncing in pure, naive oblivionauto at what was about to happen.

He asks 'You alright son?' thinking to himself 'What on earth is going on here?'

'I think I'll manage,' you respond, slowly coming back to reality and feeling the immediate bruising begin to escalate.

'I'll leave you to suffer then,' he says jollily, as he walks on to his dog.

You get up, already limping, and to your surprise, you see that is wasn't the ratchet that fucked you up.
Oh no, it was an anchor-sling breakage - at the very edge of that knot you so cunningly tied last week. That point in the knot had one butt-bounce too many, and that was it, finished.

All the thoughts start racing through your head; how luckily you escaped, what if that ratchet made contact with your face, how many points of impact can one arse cheek take? etc

You pack up, half pissed off, half laughing, as the sun sets and everyone else around you has no clue as to what you just went through.

Then your conscience kicks in, telling you 'You must share this with the others! So that it doesn't happen to them!'

So there you have it. For your arse's sake, 'No Knots, You WAnchor!'








Any recommendations towards what gear to upgrade to so this never happens again, would be much appreciated. Likewise, if you want to donate some gear so that my hips, arse and coccyx don't have to go through that ordeal again, that would also be much appreciated.

Cheers,