GROVELAND

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District plans to give park a makeover

Cepoi were leading the effort. Other experienced highliners, including Ryan Sheridan, Tom Brown, and Steve Griggs also helped out a lot. “I think they’ve left out other people contributing to the project, pushing us forward to make it happen,” Daniel Monterrubio said of previous news accounts of the new record-length highline in Yosemite. “Ryan Sheridan was a great asset getting permission from the park and helping us with the rig and rappelling on one side. Tom Brown helped us with the tagging, getting the rope across. That was the major feat with this whole line.” It took them five days to get the first rope across the proposed line, because the terrain at each end, from the Yosemite Valley floor to rim, is so steep, difficult, and challenging. Daniel Monterrubio said that if drones were allowed in the park, the rigging team would have used one to get the rope across their objective. Steve Griggs, who rooms with the Monterrubio brothers in Richmond, filmed the whole rigging process and conceived the idea of using weather balloons to de-rig the line without leaving any trace and without the risk of the derigged line becoming stuck, Daniel Monterrubio said. Kristen Gershkoff was the first woman to walk across

the line. She walks in a very unique way, sideways like a crab, and she fell once. Daniel Monterrubio began rock climbing nine years ago in Pachuca, Mexico, doing multi-pitch and sport climbs. One of his friends in Pachuca had a slackline and let him try it. He did it just once and thought it was cool. “Then about three years ago, me and Moises bought a slackline from REI and set it up in a park in San Francisco,” Daniel Monterrubio said. “It was about 10 meters, in the Marina area, 10 meters between two trees, like 3 feet off the ground, 2 inches wide. Then we decided to get a 1-inch line, and set it up at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco in 2019, around the same (length and height off the ground).” The Monterrubios went a long way from slacklining 3 feet off the ground to setting highlining records thousands of feet off the deck in Yosemite and at other locations. Cepoi has been pushing the brothers from the beginning, Daniel Monterrubio said. “All the stars aligned for this location,” he said of the new record-length line in Yosemite. “We had the gear and a team of people who were stoked to help us.” The brothers have sponsors now, including the digital-camera maker GoPro. They also have plans for more projects, including an even longer highline somewhere in Mexico, as well as a few more lines planned in California. The longest known highline with a successful send, meaning an individual walking the entire line without falling, is about 2 kilometers long — equivalent to 6,561.68 feet — in Asbestos, Canada, Daniel Monterrubio said. The new record-length line in Yosemite, referred to by many highliners simply as the “Record Line,” had 30 total crossings with two sends while it was up, Daniel Monterrubio said. The new line was taken down and derigged on June 14.