Balance artists want some slack as activity raises eyebrows

By Joe Schoenmann

Monday, June 21, 2010 | 2 a.m.

Walking on inch-wide nylon webbing strung between two trees several feet off the ground is hard — and getting local authorities to understand that it’s a new and increasingly popular balance sport is no walk in the park either.

A few weeks ago, Jeremy Hilgar, a 21-year-old UNLV biochemistry student, was kicked out of Sunset Park for “slacklining,” as it’s called.

Although it has been a part of rock-climbing culture for more than 30 years, slacklining is a relatively new phenomenon in urban settings. Newspapers have noted its rise in Sacramento; Boulder, Colo.; Seattle; and other places within the past year.

Hilgar says about 100 people in Las Vegas are into slacklining. The local “slackoff” page on

MeetUp.com has about 30 members. Hilgar says at least one other “slacker” who uses that page has told of being tossed out of a county park.

Anything new will always garner attention. Sometimes it’s welcome, as when Hilgar and his girlfriend, Fatima Alcaraz, 20, introduce curious onlookers to the sport. Hilgar has lost count of the number of times people have asked if he’s in the circus or if he’s trying to “take down the trees” with the lines.

“This doesn’t look like the most efficient way to take down a tree, does it?” he usually responds.

Slacklining isn’t “tightrope” walking. The line is slack, not tight, which allows it to sink a few feet under someone’s weight. And although a tightrope might sway back and forth, a slackline does much more than that. It moves up and down and herky-jerky seemingly at will.

Slackline kits can be bought for $80 to $100. The line is winched between two sturdy trees after pieces of carpeting are wrapped around the trunks to protect the bark.

Hilgar and UNLV student Atom Fogarty have been “walking the line” for about two years together, although Hilgar started a year earlier than that. He has gotten so good at it that he can do tricks while balancing, such as taking his shirt off then putting it back on.

Over the years of practice, Hilgar has been questioned many times by park police. Recently, one officer told Hilgar he had “heard about you ‘swindlers.’ ” Hilgar says he had to explain that the correct nickname is “slackers” and what they’re doing is slacklining.

Some of the police were friendly, others weren’t — “but they still let me do it” — until three weeks ago when one of those officers kicked him out of the park.

Hilgar left, but he decided he wasn’t going to just roll over. So he did some research and couldn’t find a county ordinance or law that slacklining violated. So he called his commissioner, Steve Sisolak, whose district includes Sunset Park.

Sisolak called Jane Pike, head of the county’s Parks and Recreation Department, and Pike set up a meeting with Hilgar.

“We care about the trees,” Pike says. “That was the main concern.”

There’s an understanding now that slacklining is a fair use of park space — with some caveats.

Pike says she will draw up some guidelines for slackers to protect trees, such as putting up carpeting as Hilgar does, and to use only trees with substantial, sturdy trunks.

“To me, this isn’t any different from all the other activities we have in our parks,” she says. “It seems like a great sport.”

Sisolak calls it “a good, wholesome activity, though I don’t think I could slackline if the thing was 3 feet wide, let alone 1 inch.”

Now that Clark County has apparently accepted his sport, Hilgar’s next target is UNLV, where he was also ordered a few months ago to take down his slacklining equipment because of a campus rule against attaching anything to trees.

“I’ll probably try to work through student government and get that changed, too,” he says.

“It’s not that I want a fight. I don’t have the time. It’s not like I’m fighting for anything like women’s rights or free speech. I just want the right to walk on webbing strung between a couple of trees.”