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Brothers Set Yosemite's Record For Longest Sky-High Walk

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Hiking Yosemite National Park can be treacherous. There's slippery snowmelt, steep cliffs, wild animals. But some adventurers choose to cross through the park from up high, more than a thousand feet above the ground.

DANIEL MONTERRUBIO: I'm Daniel.

MOISES MONTERRUBIO: And I'm Moises.

D MONTERRUBIO: And we are highliners that set up ropes between canyons, and we try to walk them.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

The Monterrubio brothers claim to have just broken a record in Yosemite - and in California - for making the longest walk across a sky-high, inch-wide nylon rope.

CHANG: The brothers say they got approval from the park to string up their line. They anchored one end to an old, thick tree and attached the other to a granite cliff looming over the Yosemite Valley called Taft Point.

D MONTERRUBIO: That place is very special to us because that's where we walked our first true highline - like, a very exposed and above, like, hundreds of meters. That was two years ago, and that was only a 30-meter line.

SHAPIRO: This time, they walked for more than half a mile. The brothers wore a harness for safety, which left them dangling in midair during some inevitable falls. But they say that wasn't even the scariest part.

D MONTERRUBIO: The dangerous part was actually getting the line across.

CHANG: Putting up that half-mile line across treacherous terrain took six days and a big team. And they spent a lot of time together.

D MONTERRUBIO: We made some family meals for everyone. We ate together.

M MONTERRUBIO: We also had arguments - in a good way, constructively. Yeah, there was a lot of things involved, a lot of emotions.

SHAPIRO: As for why they do it?

M MONTERRUBIO: We just see something that could be turned into something beautiful. We just imagine a line across. Yeah, I guess now it means we actually broke a record.

SHAPIRO: The Monterrubio brothers broke that record by almost three times and now aim to break a much longer world record walk, not to get in a record book, but for the love of the sport.

(SOUNDBITE OF FOUR TET'S "TEENAGE BIRDSONG") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Christopher Intagliata is an editor at All Things Considered, where he writes news and edits interviews with politicians, musicians, restaurant owners, scientists and many of the other voices heard on the air.
Anna Sirianni

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SOMOS CONNECTICUT es una iniciativa de Connecticut Public, la emisora local de NPR y PBS del estado, que busca elevar nuestras historias latinas y expandir programación que alza y informa nuestras comunidades latinas locales. Visita CTPublic.org/latino para más reportajes y recursos. Para noticias, suscríbase a nuestro boletín informativo en ctpublic.org/newsletters.

The independent journalism and non-commercial programming you rely on every day is in danger.

If you’re reading this, you believe in trusted journalism and in learning without paywalls. You value access to educational content kids love and enriching cultural programming.

Now all of that is at risk.

Federal funding for public media is under threat and if it goes, the impact to our communities will be devastating.

Together, we can defend it. It’s time to protect what matters.

Your voice has protected public media before. Now, it’s needed again. Learn how you can protect the news and programming you depend on.