SPORTS WRITER
OURAY -- A day-glo green, nylon rope wiggles and bounces under Daryl Buffington's weight.
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His arms look like he's dancing the YMCA, except his arms keep spelling YC, YC.
He goes to take a step and the line swings to the side.
Now, standing on one, shaking leg, he yells.
Ten stories below him, water hits a huge boulder and explodes into white.
The noise bounces up the jagged, icy pillars on the gorge's walls.
This is Ouray Ice Festival's Slackline contest.
"It's a really big adrenaline rush, but I also find peace at the same time," said Buffington, a "slacker" from Denver. "It's really loud and really quiet too."
Buffington is now bent foward. His leg is still shaking.
He falls.
Fear momentarily fills his eyes while he reaches out for the rope.
He catches it and wraps both arms around it.
He pulls himself on the green rope, places one foot on the day-glo line and tries to stand up.
Nothing about it looks easy.
He's able to stand back up, but he's never able to regain enough balance to resume walking.
Soon, he's hugging the rope again while his feet are dangling.
"The sense of accomplishment (from walking a high-line) is the best feeling I've ever felt," said Buffington. "I didn't get it today, but it was definitely worth going for."
An orange rope hangs above the day-glo one.
Buffington and "the Clay Man," Clay Usinger, are two of the only competitors who try and walk the festival's high-line without grabbing the orange rope.
Both of them have walked what many slackers consider the ultimate line in high-lining, Yosemite's Lost Arrow Spire, a gap 2,900 feet above the ground.
On Friday, they meticulously walked the festival's 120-foot line, but only got about a quarter of the way across it.
"It takes me a while to get zenned into it," Usinger said. "But, when I'm on it I get super dialed in."
"This is a scary line," Buffington said. "I've walked seven different high-lines and this is the hardest."
What's so hard about the festival's line is its sensitivity.
"Springy, that's the key word," said Steve Ahlgren, a Golden slacker. "It's so long that every (movement) is amplified."
"Normally there's not overhead protection," Buffington said.
In the competition, however, the only people who are able to make it to the other side hold the orange rope almost exclusively.
"I wanted to try it for real so I let go (of the top line)," Ahlgren said. "Let go."
Ahlgren started to slack as a way to rehab his back.
Now, he stands on the slackline in his back yard while he talks on the phone.
"It's a really meditative thing," Ahlgren said. "It's all about hanging out and being mellow.
At the ice festival, however, the slacker had a hard time standing on day-glo green line without holding the orange line.
As soon as he let go, his legs started bouncing around with the slightest movements.
"It was a good ego check," he said.
Another competitor, Shannon Heringer of Black Forest, Colo., was slacking for her first time at the festival.
"At one point I lost my focus and looked down at the gorge," Heringer said. "Adrenaline rushed through my nerves and endorphines started really flowing; it's a fun feeling because you know you're safe."
"The feeling you get is better than any drug," said the Clay Man. "You're stoked."
Joan Grant was one of the last slackers to sign up for the event.
"I'm excited for the adrenaline; hopefully it will help me out," she said. "I ditched school (at Fort Lewis College) to come up here."
When Grant got close to the other side of the line, she stopped and lifted one of her legs above her head.
Her friend missed the shot, so Grant did a few more yoga moves so her friend could take a picture.
"Now she's just showing off," the announcer said.
While nobody was crowned the winner of the ice festival's slackline competition, it seemed like all the slackers had a good time trying to walk over the gorge.
"It's just a game," Ahlgren said. "It's wicked fun bouncing."
Kaitlyn Heichel wrote on Nov 3, 2009 2:01 PM:
Sarah Bond wrote on Jul 13, 2009 5:31 PM: