High wire artists cross the mighty Victoria Falls

via High wire artists cross the mighty Victoria Falls | The Herald 10 November 2014

TWO professional rope walkers spent two years preparing for one of their most challenging feats — crossing Zimbabwe’s famous Victoria Falls.On Friday (November 7) 26-year-old economic science student Lukas Irmler from Germany and 34-year-old journalist and author Reinhard Kleindl from Austria both made the spectacular 100-metre crossing on a slack line slung across the face of the falls in a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the border with Zambia.

The falls — known locally as “The Smoke that Thunders”— on the Zambezi River carry more than 500 million cubic meters of water during the rainy season and the drop is about 100 metres to the canyon below.

At their widest point they measure about 1.7 kilometres.

It took the pair several months to get permission from the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority to place their line over the planned crossing.

After that it was a question of nerves and balance and both made the crossing without falling off and having to rely on their safety lines.

Later Irmler said: “Here you have a lot of spray, a lot of water in the air, floating beside you, splashing your face and it’s intimidating on the one side but also distracting.

“You need to have a clear visual view of the environment, you need to be focused on the anchor point to the very end you want to walk to and not getting distracted by a lot of water crashing by the side, which is very hard mentally as well.”

Kleindl added: “Optically it’s very difficult because the spray comes from the sides and it’s like waves, they try to drag you, so it’s really difficult for the optics and obviously everything is very heavy because it’s soaked with water.” — Reuters