Hugo Thomas, a professional “highliner” and yoga teacher, has become the first person to traverse Iceland’s Sólheimajökull glacier by walking above it on a rope suspended between ice anchors.
The location was not chosen at random. Sólheimajökull is one of Iceland’s fastest-retreating glaciers, receding by 50-100 metres a year since 1995, according to the World Glacier Monitoring Service. Thomas’s goal was to use sport to draw attention to its gradual disappearance: a metre of line for every metre of ice lost each year.
In a process that took about four hours, the anchors were drilled directly into the glacier and a 57-metre line was threaded through them and pulled tight to create enough tension to hold Thomas’s weight. He crossed at 10pm in Iceland’s midsummer light – a time of day when the winds tend to ease.
Highlining emerged from the climbing community in California’s Yosemite national park in the 1980s. What began as a way of balancing on short lengths of webbing evolved into a discipline that combines climbing, athleticism and intense mental focus. Today, highliners travel to the world’s most remote places, rigging temporary crossings that are dismantled within hours, leaving little trace.
In two years’ time, the location of Thomas’s line will probably have melted.
Photographs by Austin Bradley
Photographs by Austin Bradley
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