Highline Festivals - GGBY 2016

We just got back from GGBY 2016. Are there highlight festival etiquettes? Check it out on this episode of How Not To Highlight. Hi, I'm Ryan James and welcome to my garage. Today we're going to go over festival etiquettes and safety tips and we're going to cover other things like how to poop in a bag, how not to steal people's shit, and how not to grab boobies. And other things that should be obvious but apparently aren't. Before we get started, let's show you GGBY 2016. Hey, hey, can we get back on track here? We got to learn how to poop in bags. Okay, highlight festivals can be a ton of fun and yes, Kim Wiglin and I did get engaged on the space net. But there are some highlight festival etiquettes that we're going to go over. The first etiquette is returning people's gear to them. I know I was super hesitant loaning somebody out my hangover during this trip because they were going to cross the 700 and they might loan it to somebody else and I would just never see it again. It's bullshit that people lose gear. If you borrow it, return it to the person you borrowed it from and it's their prerogative if they want to loan it out again. And then look at Andy Lewis and everything he contributes. The space net wouldn't be out there with him, the whole festival probably wouldn't be there without him. And then after this trip, he walks away with losing gree-grees, his cinders, harnesses, sleeping gear, a bunch of shit that he had to post on Facebook the other day. Who the hell is taking that stuff? Look at all the gear I have and I know whether or not I have somebody else's gear. And if you have somebody's gear, you should go out of your way to get it back to them. And if you have Andy's stuff, it's called flat rate shipping. The next line of business is that everyone contributes something to a highlight festival. One person does not put this on for your enjoyment. We all come together and contribute something, much like a Burning Man culture, and then we all get to share in it. Andy Lewis brought out a space net, SlackRiteBC set up a heated mojo dojo party tent, Zach Timmons was offering free back rubs, and Mickey Wilson spent almost his entire vacation managing a rope swing so everyone would get a chance to jump on it. People rigged slack lines and tons of high lines, people brought down gallons a year of amate, came and made pancakes, came and made cookies, and God only knows how many people it took to put on a badass rave for over 400 people. When everybody contributes to these festivals is when it becomes magical. Be a contributor, not a consumer. Speaking of contributing, there's one thing you don't have to contribute, your shit. In less than a week, Kim and I made over 10 goodie bags, which I was going to lay out and film for you, but I decided to spare you, and myself. Could you imagine three or four hundred people in a small area, not willing to walk further than 300 feet past their tent, not the furthest tent, big difference, and they only bury it this deep, which, come to find out, isn't deep enough to cover your toilet paper, and you can't exactly dig it deeper afterwards, it becomes a shit show. Get it? So in an effort to leave no trace, we're now going to teach you how to shit in a bag, and if you don't have the stomach to shit in a clear, zip-lock, gallon-sized freezer bag, you can buy Wag Bags online or a local camping store near you. Step one, open the bag. Step two, roll over the top. Step three, roll it over again. And this way, you don't have to have your thumbs in there to hold it, you can keep your fingers in here. And if you were to have an oopsie and get it on the edge, the zipper part stays clean. After almost a hundred nights on big walls, I have yet to miss the opening of my bag. Just so I don't assume everyone knows this, you don't drop your pants all the way down to your ankles like a five-year-old, or you'll shit in your underwear. You just drop your pants a little bit. Then you take your bag, you go behind, and you make a face worth the task. Is this as awkward for me as it is for you? You realize by me doing this, you can now literally find how to do that. In all honesty, you've got so much toilet paper in here, you can't even see your stuff. So you take this, you throw it in a black garbage bag, you keep it under your car, and before you take off for town, you triple-bag that shit and put it in an approved container for human waste. There are more civilized ways to do this, including five-gallon buckets with larger and larger bags that you can't see through, but the idea is the same. You want to leave no trace. This is also a relevant issue for places like Smith Rock. When you hike to the top of all the cliffs, there's nowhere to go to the bathroom during the day. And if you gotta go, then you should have some sort of method to leave no trace. Please make an effort to keep our high-lining festival areas clean. Bet you can't guess what we're going to talk about next. If you're going to have fires, please bring firewood. The plants out in the desert, they're alive. They look dead, but they're not. They're homes for animals, and to replenish those plants takes a long time. Do you know how long plants take to grow in the desert? Well, neither do I, but I assume it's a long time. That whole firewood gathering thing is so 10,000 B.C. Plan ahead. If you're going to have a fire, bring some firewood. So now let's talk about boobies. Apparently there are a few creeps lurking through our parties, so let's make some basic boundaries that you can remember. If people have their clothes on, don't touch them. If people don't have their clothes on, don't touch them, unless you have clear signs that you can do so. Then you can have fun, because it's consensual. Just because you're on Molly doesn't give you the right to go touch everything that you can see. If in doubt, hands off is a good value to live by. Have fun, but don't be a creep. Now let's talk about leashes. I hope we all know that it's important to check your knot before getting out on a high line, but at a high line festival, it's really important to check the knot at the ring. It's not that uncommon for people to take leashes off to go put them on something else and bring them back and not put it on properly. Be sure that you have a proper figure eight at your ring before getting on a high line, because if you're going to free solo, you should know it before getting on. And speaking of leashes, tie the tail off to something at the anchor so the ring doesn't slide down the high line, leaving the next person hosed. In case you're really new to high lining, when you come to a high line festival, don't clip on with a carabiner to slide across the line, jacking somebody's line up. Instead, purchase a hangover from slacktivity in advance because they take a while to get. It's a carabiner with wheels, so your reputation and the line don't get damaged. Now let's talk about how not to get on a space net. First of all, you're going to need two daisies, one to unclip and clip to the next item while still being clipped in. Don't forget that hangover. Now let's use this space jumper as a bad example. Please practice before going out to the space net and clogging up the access line. There are plenty of slack lines around, so practice getting on top of a slack line. And please practice while you have your face rig on, if that's what you're going to do out there. And once you're on top of the slack line, make sure you face the clip, not the space net, while you scooch on, so you can easily transfer your daisies onto the space net. And one last space net note, please stay clipped in. You may feel immune to gravity out there, but if one leg were to go, so are you. Now let's talk about checking highline anchors. So the moral of this story is to own the risk before you get on it. For example, there were highline anchors that I was really impressed with, and then there were other ones that weren't quite as redundant as I would prefer, though I felt they were good enough, so I got on them. Then I saw this anchor that looked a bit sketchy to me. A bunch of climbing slings all knotted together with an aluminum carabiner grinding against the rock, while the line, though padded, was swinging back and forth. I chose not to get on that rig. That line did hold, considering all the whips it had on it, and it is very unlikely that a highline anchor will fail during a highline festival. However, nothing is immune to failure, and you should own the risk before you choose to get on a highline. Now let's talk about the queue. The queue is the waiting line. There are two kinds of queues, verbal and written. In either situation, if you're not there when it's your turn, you lose your turn. And please don't be that person who puts their name on every single queue, thinking that you're strategic, because if everyone does it, it just clogs the system up. Now let's talk about HHS, a common mental disorder that happens during many highline festivals. It's called hogging highline syndrome. We know you waited two hours to get on that highline, but that doesn't give you the right to spend two hours on it. If you're on the 700 footer, it's pretty acceptable to spend an hour or so. But if you're on the 40 footer, and there's 20 people waiting for you, why are you taking an hour? If you want to project highlines, go rig your own. And there's two kinds of people that get HHS. The physical elite that can just keep going and going and going, and the people that just hang on their leash after a fall so they can watch base jumpers. Please don't feel rushed when you're on a highline, but do be respectful of the queue. Let's recap everything we learned on how not to go to a highline festival. Return people's gear if you have it, contribute something to a festival, and poop in bags if that's what it takes to keep our festival areas clean. And please bring firewood if you're going to have a fire. Be sure that grabbing is consensual, and check those leashes. Don't forget to bring your own line slide, practice before getting on a space net, check anchors, and own it before you get on it, and respect the queue. There's a lot of ways to be a douchebag, or die, at a highlining festival, therefore, you shouldn't go to one. Hi, I'm Ryan Jinks, and this was another episode of the How Not to Highline series. This series is intended for people who are already slackliners, but are interested in highlining. We're not trying to guide people into the right techniques, but instead we bag on every system so you can critically analyze any system you choose to use. We hope risk awareness can keep people alive. Please don't go rig your first highline after watching the cheesy YouTube tutorial. There are a lot of experienced highliners out there who are more than willing to take helpful people. Let's try to keep this sport safe. And remember, no system is perfect, therefore, you shouldn't highline. Thanks for watching, and please subscribe. Okay, so I didn't know where to add this clip, so I'm going to add it here for the van lovers. After GGBY, we converted our camping van back into a paint van, and sped it up 70 times.