Just wondering, anybody else out there into walking on difficult railings?
My favorite unitrials area is down a very long set of stairs to a log beach, and parks workers just installed the most outrageously cool railing - about 3" diameter round wood railing that zigzags for about 100 m length down to the beach. It’s way too hard to ride but yesterday I walked it, steep enough to be interesting and just barely grippy enough in 5.10 shoes on steeper sections. Awesome! Next goal is a different beach entrance with a much harder/steeper/slightly scarier railing - much more like a climb with some difficult hop and step transitions between railing sections. It’s funny that the parks workers thought they were reducing the challenge… =)
Wow that sounds like the ultimate skinny challenge on a uni! Speaking of that though, I “walked” my new trials set up just to go through the line and check all of it for stabilty before actually riding on it. It’s definitely an interesting sensation compared to riding it. It’s deceptively easy to walk through it (at least my course) and you get the feeling that riding it should be easy too…NOT! :o
I walk on railing a lot just wondering around. Nothing specail, but I’ve gotten to the point I can jump to about any normal round handrail and walk just about all of it in a few goes.
Whoa, Kris is saying something is way too hard to ride?
Haha, anyway I enjoy walking on rails just if I’m bored, I’m not very good at anything that’s very rounded, but there are a few good square rails on campus to mess around with.
Railings are great; I guess it falls a more in the category of Freerunning as a sport. The harder steep railing near my place actually might require some prep work (sanding)to walk as some of the steepest sections are a bit over the friction limit due to algae growth.
I do this a lot when I’m waiting for something and am by a rail. I’ve walked down a 17 stair round rail at my school I think it was first try, but it was awhile back. It’s very fun to do. I’m terrible at unicycle skinnies though :o
I always walk on rails when I’m waiting around for stuff…a week ago I was waiting for the schoolbus and got up on a hand rail (I even stood with one leg on each side first to make sure I wouldn’t nut myself lol) and i just stood on it for 30 seconds or so and got off, but then a security guard came over and told me not to do it again. whatever…
I’m thinking of maybe getting into slacklining this summer. It looks pretty cool.
Yea, me and some kid on my cross country team a couple years back used to see who could balance the longest on one foot.
It got super tiring after a while
I would say that i dabble with free running a bit. and sometimes… if i find some skinny i will see how fast i can walk it. or if im out at one of our local climbing areas there are fallen trees with crisscrossing branches that you can scurry around.
our climbing gym has a retaining wall and sometimes we will get a running start and try to launch off the retaining wall and grab a good hold. My record is 12 a 12 foot gap from the retaining wall to the climbing wall without touching the ground
Finally, I got it!! Here’s a link to the railing walking line: 200 m long with 80 m vertical rise, and some hard step cruxes at breaks in the railing. http://www.krisholm.com/trail4railing/index.html
It’s hard to tell steepness in the photos but some sections are at the friction limit of shoes with climbing shoe rubber on the bottom. It took about 20 minutes for the ascent, and by the top it was pretty hard to keep focused.
The stairs are the access to a beach I often ride trials at and I did it after a ride, so was wearing a helmet, let armor, and wrist support gloves (KH29 is in the top shot because I took the photos a later day). Falls would be tricky to land OK, especially for sprained ankle potential, but it worked out OK. I don’t think I’d do it without protective gear.
