The sport has since evolved and diverged into sub-genres, including tricklining (on one- or two-inchwide slacklines low to the ground), longlining (a test of distance) and highlining (high up, usually with a leash and safety harness). You’ll find all three varieties in Montana, on college campuses and beyond. Payton, now living in Moab, Utah, perfected his front flip and Buddha pose during a 2009 hitchhiking trip that brought him to Missoula. He’s since won tricklining competitions around the United States and Europe, including the 2010 tricklining world title. In Montana, slacklining is getting a bounce with the help of athletes like David Hobbs, a University of Montana senior from Whitefish. Hobbs first encountered the sport in 2007 when he was a high school senior on a visit to UM and met a group of slackliners who (amazingly, he thought) could turn, lie down and do 360s. Four years later and now doing 360s himself, Hobbs says on-campus slacklining hasn’t changed much. But the truth is, Hobbs is the guy who took it to the next level. In the spring of 2008, Hobbs rigged and walked the longest slackline in UM history: a 160-foot line between two trees on campus, six feet off the ground. In 2009, Payton and Hobbs teamed up and smashed that record, making it 240 feet. “It’s meditative in nature and requires so much focus,” Hobbs explains. “It helps me relax after taking a test and allows me to find peace,” he adds. “Slacklining can clear the mind when there’s something to mull over.”
Payton goes the distance on a 190-foot longline.
International slackline competitor Emily Sukiennik sits...carefully.