HANOVER, N.H. – Dartmouth graduate students Meghan Mella and Lauren Gilbert can often be seen balancing precariously on a rope anchored between trees next to the Sphinx senior society on Dartmouth’s campus practicing a sport called slacklining. Unlike tightrope walking, in which participants walk across a taught wire, slackliners cross a loose rope approximately 20 feet long, which often undulates.
Mella and Gilbert practice what look like yoga poses on the rope, as well as other motions such as jumping onto the rope, bouncing on one foot on the rope and tandem slacklining, in which both slackliners balance on the rope at the same time.
Mella began slacklining at the University of Northern Colorado when one of her close friends took it up to improve his balance for snowboarding. She brought her equipment to Dartmouth and encouraged other graduate students in the physics department to try it.
“Initially, it seems like it is really difficult to learn, but I think it is fairly easy to see progress by your second time out,” Mella said. “The first time you step on a line, it just starts to shake uncontrollably, but once you jump on there and just start, you are pretty much ready to go.”
She said the difficulty of learning how to slackline depends on one’s natural balance. Her brother, for example, walked, turned and walked backward on his first attempt while it took Mella much longer to learn the same tricks.
Gilbert first saw slackliners when she was an undergraduate at Davidson College but never tried until this year. Mella, the only other female physics Ph.D. student in Gilbert’s year, convinced her to give the sport a chance and the two slacklined about twice a week until the weather became prohibitively cold. Mella said she hopes to set up a slackline inside somewhere during the winter to continue practicing.
In addition to recruiting Gilbert, Mella encouraged other physics students and even one of her professors to try out the sport.
Because the hardest part can be actually getting on the rope, beginner slackliners often utilize an additional rope secured over their heads that they can hold. Mella and Gilbert, however, said they always offer newcomers a shoulder to lean on as well as basic instruction.
“We enjoy introducing new people to slacklining,” Mella said. “It’s a fun activity. Everyone should try it.”
Though slacklining in front of the Sphinx drew many stares, Mella and Gilbert said it also enabled them to meet members of the climbing club and curious onlookers.
“It is fun when people come up to talk to us,” Gilbert said. We had someone tell us that he was in the circus in Paris as a tightrope walker, which was really cool.”
Slacklining originated in the 1970s as a recreational activity and has since expanded to accommodate extreme trickliners.
More extreme tricks include back flips or playing Frisbee with another person on the line, which becomes challenging when the person has to jump to catch it.
Highlining is another variation of the sport, which involves walking a slackline at incredible heights. While many slackliners walk on lines about 2 or 3 feet off the ground, some of these adventurers anchor lines on buildings or between cliffs, usually with a harness to prevent serious injury.
