Podcast presented by Citizen Watch Canada.
Spencer Seabrooke is an airtime master, a highliner, base jumper, a snowboarder, climber, mountaineer, jindle boarder and all-around adventure-seeking kinda dude. And he knows a lot about airtime.
In 2016 he was featured in the highlining documentary Untethered, walking a then-world record highline in Squamish with no safety tether. He’s also known as a co-founder of SlacklifeBC, Canada’s best slackline community/shop, and has a bonkers-awesome Instagram feed you definitely want to check out.
A few highlights from Feet Banks’ conversation with Spencer:
FB: How did highlining come into your life?
SS: So after starting to climb with Brent and Adam [Plumley], we started going to the Reel Rock Film Tour and we were always excited for what was coming out next. And I think it was in 2012 we went and there was the film, Sketchy Andy. And I walked out of there a changed person.
I hadn’t seen slacklining like that. It didn’t really relate to me. At this time I had just learned to climb. I’d been up in the mountains, you know, and suddenly I saw Sketchy Andy and he’s highlining and base jumping and doing all this rad stuff. And it really motivated me.
It opened my eyes to what was possible. I felt like I getting to the top of the mountain wasn’t really enough. I felt like I wanted to learn to do handstands or something so I could get up there and do something else rad.
But I found this. And then I walked out of there and I was like, I’m going to do this, guys. I’m going to go highline. And they kind of rolled their eyes in the beginning, because again, I am the one who dives in head first and doesn’t really think about it much.
FB: Was it easy to find other people who wanted to do it, or did you have to talk people into it?
At the time there were not a lot of people at all… just a handful who were slacklining in the area and then even fewer interested in highlining. And so my first times highlining we were looking on our phones at how to set up the backup… and really just using our own judgment of how to do it. None of it was conventional by today’s methods. People today would look at what we were doing and say, What the hell were you doing?
But through the climbing experience and just common sense, you can realize what’s really safe and what’s not, by making things redundant.
FB: obviously you’re always kind of on the edge of scaring yourself, but did you ever like really freak yourself out during those early years?
SS: I lowered myself down just to hang from an ankle from the highest line I could be on just because you need to also trust it. But I mean, honestly, no, I think I scared a lot more people around me than I did myself. I was always in control and it never felt out of control. Even if I wasn’t tied in and I had to catch the line. It never really set me back. You know, it was just reassurance.
Related content from ML:
FB: What’s the physical necessity to be able to do that versus the mental necessity? Obviously, you know, you can’t just get off the couch and do it one day, but what’s the mix there? How much of it is mental? How much of it is athleticism?
SS: I think walking the slackline becomes very easy, you know, time and time again, but then it’s the fear that really makes it hard…. If you’re the type of person who panics, you don’t want to be there.
FB: Is it a similar sort of flow-state focus that you could find, you know, big mountain snowboarding in a no fall zone?
SS: Absolutely. When you’re doing it, there’s nothing else on your mind. There couldn’t be.
Check the full conversation here.
