Growth of Highlining: Rocklands Highline Festival 2026
Highlining is a discipline of slacklining practiced at awe-inspiring heights. It requires a separate set of skills, techniques, and specialized gear. The Rocklands Highline Festival hosted in the Cederberg, and the Mayhem Mountain Festival hosted in Waterval Boven continue to grow the slacklining and highlining community in South Africa.
Beginners take leash falls for the first time, while the countries' best slackliners walk comfortably on one-inch-wide webbing suspended in the sky.
Specialized Gear for Highlining
Main and backup webbing, leashes, webbing lockers, soft shackles, hangovers, line grips. Highlining requires specialized gear developed and tested for its life-supporting role. While a slackline does not need to meet these high standards, it can see similar forces of between 200kg to 600kg at the anchors.
To ensure life-supporting use, highline gear is typically produced to withstand upwards of 1800kg of force, with some components like leash rings and weblocks withstanding upwards of 4000kg. This allows a 3:1 safety ratio for the weakest link and often five times the required strength for other components.
The Rocklands Highline Festival rigging team, led by Leighton, prepared, rigged, and monitored gear that is a collection of privately-owned, community-owned, and borrowed equipment. Viper Slacklines lent the festival three highline leashes and sent our ambassador to setup two slacklines, one two-inch kit and a 20-meter primitive kit.
Learning How to Highline at RHF
Disclaimer: You slackline and highline at your own risk.
While we host great slackline introduction days and progression sessions in the city, the Rocklands Highline Festival is the best place to learn how to highline. Each day, there is a workshop helping you learn to climb your leash and mount the highline from underneath. A good technique goes a long way in conserving your energy on the line.
Beginners at the festival learnt to tie a figure of eight knot, learnt to mount the highline, learnt to sit on the line, and when comfortable, learnt to take a fall into the leash. These three steps are fundamental and give you confidence to do a sit-start, stand on the highline, and take your first steps.
Noa’s Experience On the Line
There is a singular gravity to having your life on a line, tethered to a rope bound by a knot of infinity. Your name echoes off the sun-scorched cliff edges—a chorus of screams and celebrations that form the wings of a family surrounding you, supporting the weight of your fear until you finally take flight.
The air is thick with the scent of crushed fynbos and the lingering ghosts of campfire smoke. Your mouth is dry, the salt of sweat on your tongue and the desert sun pulling at chapped lips, yet your focus is absolute. As you move, the world begins to fractal; the swaying trees and ancient rocks below merge into a rhythmic tunnel of hyper-detail, where colors brighten and the end of the line becomes a hypnotic point of oblivion.
Every breath pulses vibrations deep into the rock—a rippling wave that follows you back to your tent and enters your dreams. Fear feels like a symptom surmised by the psyche, with the only remedy realised through radical self-compassion.
11 Highlines and New Anchors
This year's festival saw a record number of 11 highlines rigged and sessioned by more than 80 people. Anchors for a new 20-meter-long line suited to beginners was bolted in the gulley alongside the existing 20’s. In addition, the vertical bolts used to anchor the 35-meter-long line were replaced with horizontal bolts improving safety and stability.
The highlines ranged from three 20-meter-long lines, two 35-meter, a 40-meter, a 45-meter, two 65-meter, and two 200-meter long lines. Through great preparation, all of the highlines under 200-meters long included bungee’s in the anchors to improve the dynamic range of the lines, reducing the forces felt during leashfalls.
Polyester lines are preferable for longer lengths, and the two 200-meter lines included high-tech webbing constructed with ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) webbing. These low-stretch pieces of 50-meter long webbing were combined using soft shackles and grog splices.
Activities at the Rocklands Highline Festival
If acro-yoga, bouldering, or climbing are not your vibe, there are a handful of craft workshops to keep you engaged. From the woodcarving workshop hosted by Connor Trembath and Jack Dicey-Rutherford, to the embroidery hosted by Küra, or the tie-dye, and linocut sessions, this year's festival brought many crafts to the campsite.
There was a palpable energy in the campsite as the rhythm of a drum circle draws you in. Flow Arts workshops and a fire dancing performance inspired beginners to learn the basics of poi and staff. An open microphone jam session gaves rise to creative expression, music, and poetry.
Down the Pakhuys Pass the 5km Sevilla rock art trail, starting at Traveller’s Rest, offers a glimpse into the spiritual and ritualistic paintings of the first people of South Africa. Depictions of figures in trance states, animals with human attributes, and men with hunting bows set a scene from thousands of years ago which is vividly experienced in the untouched landscape.
Highlining at Mayhem Mountain Festival
Living in Johannesburg or Pretoria? MMF is held over Easter near Waterval Boven and offers a long weekend of highlining, slacklining, climbing, yoga, trail running, and allot more. The introduction to highlining here feels poignant seeing as the location has recently hosted the longest highline in Africa, 1200m.
Photo: Danie from Surefooted Photography
Taking your first steps on these exposed lines, or climbing the red sandstone rockfaces will ensure you return with vivid memories. All while sharing in a great community spirit around a central fire in the evenings. The Friends and Allies climbing gym in Randburg is the home of the 'slackling in the city' community.
We Look to the Future
Our Gravity Groove and Progression Session events share our love for this growing sport and look to build a community that can reach new heights (and longer distances). If you are interested in learning to highline, or you simply want some advice on which is the best slackline to buy, reach out to us.