The Real Skywalker: Freddy Nock

Fancy a little walk? How about doing it on the cable of a cable car in the Alps with 150 metres (500 ft) of air between you and the ground? How about doing it over a kilometre, a mile, or more? That’s what a real Skywalker does for a living and currently to set some records.

Freddy Nock, circus artist

Freddy Nock is the scion of one of Switzerland oldest and most renowned circus dynasties. He started doing the tight rope just as soon as he could walk, at the age of four, and started on the slack rope not much later. Since then, he seems to have lost any kind of fear, and many a highest and longest record in both disciplines has fallen to him. His latest venture took him to the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest mountain.

Walking up to the top of the mountain on the five centimetres (two inches) thick cable of the cable car spanning the glacier, Freddy Nock even took time out to wave to the spectators. He sauntered up from the station building in the valley at 2588 m (8491 ft) to the station on the mountain top at 2950 m (9679 ft) without recourse to a safety file and without using a balancing pole.

The slack rope acrobat was aided in his bid for a Guinness world record by perfect weather conditions; a light cloud cover spared him any glares, and almost no wind disturbed his advance. He walked on the cable over the distance of 995 m (3265 ft) at times balancing over an abyss of 150 m (500 ft) from the ground. The conditions in fact were so perfect that he was to show off several balancing acts on the way up despite the steep incline of the rope of up to 57 percent.

The world records for the longest distance slack rope walk completed entirely without balancing pole as well as the one completed at the highest geographical altitude are just the first records to fall to him in a program with more to come. Freddy Nock stages a tour called Seven Records in Seven Days as a charity event in favour of UNESCO’s educational charity.

With the tour kicking off splendidly on the Zugspitze, his next stop will be Austria’s Feuerkogel. The records he wants to break there are the one for the longest slack rope walk with a steady incline (of between 41 and 52 percent) as well as the record for it to be done at the highest geographical altitude. The next stop after that will be the Diavolezza on the Bernina Pass in Switzerland. There the records for the longest slack rope walk ever completed over 3574 m (11726 ft) as well as the one for it to be done at the highest geographical altitude will e in his view.

So far, Freddy Nock had been going upwards all the time; when he gets to the Corvatsch near the Maloja Pass in Switzerland, though, he will go downhill in a bid for the longest slack rope walk over the distance of 1600 m (5249 ft). His next stop will be Bern in Switzerland, where he will tackle the record for longest and highest tight rope ride with a bicycle. Suspended between two cranes, the rope will be 150 m (492 ft) long and 50 m (164 ft) above ground.

Further reading
History in the Alps: Flüela Pass
Bern: Seat of the Swiss Government
Nonexistent Switzerland