Six days walking a challenging trail through the Venezuelan jungle, with 25 kilos of luggage on his back, was just the beginning of the odyssey faced by Rafael Bridi last October, to reach the Salto Angel waterfall, in Venezuela, considered the highest in the world, at 979 meters high. In that place, which the indigenous Pemón people, native to the region, call Körepakupai Wen (or “the most beautiful”), he and his team installed a 148-meter-long highline ribbon to cross the entire distance of the jump 29 meters above the water line. With this, he managed to register his name in the “Guinness Book of Records” as the most exposed, longest and highest vertical crossing ever made.
The expedition brought together an international group of highliners and mountaineers, with a strong participation of German athletes who played a decisive role in the conception and execution of the project. Alongside Rafael Bridi, the team included Lukas Irmler, Jens Decke, Karl Schrader, Valentin Rapp and Antonia Rüede-Passul. During six days of trekking, more than 85 kilometers were covered through dense forests, swamps, rocky labyrinths and unpredictable weather. All equipment was transported in backpacks, with the essential support of local guides and porters from the Pemón people, who took an active part in the expedition, contributing to navigation, logistics and decisions in the field. Installing the line required technical precision and courage, with remote anchor points, exposed approaches and long journeys across the top of the tepui —a mountain with a table-top, similar to Mount Roraima, characteristic of the region.
“As a professional highline athlete, I always try to look for places that involve much more than just the highline itself, but that have this entire planning process, in places that are little frequented, with difficult access and that have a relevant history”, Bridi told Folha shortly after confirming her record. And when he talks about planning, he’s not kidding: it took ten years of preparation to achieve his feat.
“Santo Angel brings together everything I had been looking for for years,” he says. “It was the natural choice, despite involving a whole bureaucracy, and difficulties in access and logistics, as it brings together ancestry, isolation, some of the oldest rocks in the world, billions of years old, and a strong history linked to balance”, he adds. “Choosing the place was easy, it was really difficult to get there, with a scenario that changed completely every day, with five rainbows a day, moments of completely closed sky and everything pulsing around us”, he says.
Other athletes in the sport had already performed shorter jumps, in 1988 and 2015. Bridi went further. One of the biggest difficulties was getting sponsorship for the project which, in the end, would cost around US$32,000 (R$176,000 at the exchange rate on Tuesday, 30th). With the providential support of sports equipment manufacturer Columbia, the project finally got off the ground.
Arriving at the tepui, it was necessary to identify the ideal points for such a long anchorage. “People who had been there couldn’t tell us what would be good, most of those who visit the place arrive by helicopter and at most sleep there and rappel down, there are parts where we attached the line that no one had ever been to, which is an unforgettable feeling”, says Bridi. To extend the tape, instead of using drones, they opted for the more difficult method — they climbed the rock walls and crossed the Kereparkupai River from above, pulling the tape along slippery rocks at the edge of the high waterfall. A thinner rope helped to pass the ribbons (one main and one backup) on which the crossing would be made, with two teams, one on each side of the waterfall, meeting in the middle. I work so that no one can make a mistake.
A curious fact about the process is that, in Venezuela, the entry of drones is prohibited, which is part of the national security of the complicated local government. But to obtain the images that will become a documentary recording the feat, the equipment would be essential. And the drone passed the border without any major problems. “They asked if I had a drone in my backpack, I said no, and I really didn’t, and we passed without any major problems”, says, amused, the athlete who, between crossings and crossings, manages the company he founded, Natural Extremo, in Urubici, in the mountains of Santa Catarina. There, the layman who wants to feel a little of the excitement of a crossing, come on, much more modest, can do a pendulum jump, a traditional zip line or a bike zip line — all at 120 meters high. It’s nothing, it’s nothing, it’s already quite a chill.
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