Highlining involves walking over a thin, slack line, strung over deep canyons.
ADVERTISEMENTThe world's best highliners last week gathered way above the Russian Caucasus countryside for the sport's third international festival.
Arguably one of the most spectacular sports in the world, highlining involves walking over a thin, slack line, strung over deep canyons.
Experienced walkers say it's perfectly safe as long as you stick to the rules, and the hardest part is overcoming fear.
Two competitions were held within the programme of the festival: speediest walk and most extravagant trick on the slack.
Lukas Irmler, holder of three Guinness World highlining records, explained: "The rules for the contest are quite simple. Everyone gets five minutes of time on the line to perform their best tricks and we are judging those tricks on three different categories.
"The difficulty of tricks is one category, the other category is style and variety and the last one is basically like the creativity of participants – which new things they can do, how they entertain the audience."
World highline record holder Freidi Kuhne walked the longest highline in Russia, setting a new Russian record of 1 km. He also set a new record when he walked the same line blindfolded.
Kuhne said: "If you go through all the steps making sure that everything is perfect, and don't let your ego grow stronger than your consciousness, slacklining can be the safest sport in the world."