Alex Honnold’s historic free solo of El Capitan back in June of 2017 may have opened the general public’s eyes to a form of rock climbing they likely had no idea even existed. More accurately, Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s film Free Solo that chronicles the feat likely did that.
As it happens, where there are sports with ropes and harnesses, there are extremely talented (albeit crazy) athletes that will throw caution to the wind and forego such fail-safes.
Enter: Spencer Seabrooke. In 2015, Seabrooke set the new world record for the longest “highline free solo” – a form of slacklining done hundreds of feet above the ground without a harness to catch you if you fall. As with the rock climbing equivalent in Chin and Vasarhelyi’s film, a single wrong move means plummeting to the valley floor below.
Seabrooke set the world record by walking a 950-foot high, 200-foot-long line called “The Itus” in Squamish, British Columbia.
Filmmaker Levi Allen documented the feat, which represents the dramatic finale to his film Untethered. The flick profiles the free solo slackline scene in British Columbia, a scene you very well may have never known existed.
Allen explains in title cards at the beginning of the film, now uploaded to Youtube, that he accepted a two-year exclusivity deal upon releasing the film in late 2015. “That deal was a mistake,” he says. With the two year deal up, Allen is free to do what he wants with the film and has now put it online for all to see.
We are forever grateful.
