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About a year ago, Mich Kemeter performed the feat captured in this photograph: he crossed a slackline suspended 3,000 feet above the Taft Point gully in Yosemite National Park—without a safety harness. And as remarkable as that seems, the fact is, he does this kind of thing a lot.
In this interview, I attempted to ask the obvious— why??? how???—and Kemeter graciously tried to answer. But my biggest take-away is this: there are so many different kinds of intelligence in this world. Kemeter performs these kinds of feats when, and only when, he knows he can do it. How exactly he acquired such extraordinary levels of mental and physical mastery is a mystery to me, but I came away from even our very short chat wholly convinced that there’s nothing reckless in what Kemeter does. He just knows what he’s doing in a way that most of us never will.
About Mich Kemeter: Austrian-born Michael “Mich” Kemeter is 24-years-old. He has a diploma in weapons engineering, and he was an internationally-ranked pistol shooter before turning his attentions to slacklining, BASE jumping, and climbing in 2007. In the space of five short years, he has achieved five world records.
Photo by Alexandre Buisse, used with permission from Mich Kemeter.
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