With birds chirping sweetly and the 80-foot Onomea Falls rushing above him, nineteen-year-old pro slackliner Alex Mason caught his balance on a course that snaked up to the waterfall's edge.
In what could be a world's first, Mason traversed an eight-line "slackladder" across 120 feet of waterfalls in Hilo, Hawaii, reports Outside Magazine. And naturally he threw in a few tricks.
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Mason didn't just set this whole magnificent course up on a whim -- or without help. He's a pro who has been slacklining since 2008. At 16, he won the World Slackline Championship in Vail. Outside Magazine called him a "slacklining wunderkind."
The slackline course in Hawaii required nearly a mile of lines and cable to create. Mason worked with famed slackliner Andy Lewis on what project sponsor Red Bull dubbed a slackladder, basically a series of lines zigzagging through the tropical spot. Getting from one line to the next higher one required carefully planned transitions made more challenging from the damp, slippery lines.
Take a look at it here:
"I was pretty worried I was going to fall 15 feet to rock. On my neck," Mason told Red Bull in an interview. But then he stepped onto the line and got into the zone.
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The slackladder took Mason and Lewis more than 200 hours to create. Although the Botanic Gardens of Hilo are renowned for being a beautiful and serene, the two encountered fire ants there. At one point the biting ants prompted Lewis to strip naked, cover himself in mud, and run off screaming, Mason recounted to Red Bull.
Despite the terrifying insects and risky conditions, Mason makes ascending the slackladder look easy. Traversing the lines in his muddy sneakers, he occasionally lifts one arm up in a balletic motion for balance, and at various spots springs into somersaults and flips.