Your average Monkey has above-average slackline skills. That’s because your average Monkey has mucho free time. And at some point, all that low-to-the-ground slackin’ practice leads to a highline, like this one 100-plus feet off the Valley floor. Without the focal points the ground offers (and with the increased adrenaline from the exposure), it’s 10 times as difficult to span the gap.

When I first met Dean Potter, in the mid-1990s, he lived in the SAR site and washed windows for money (this was before the big sponsorship deals). While it seems everyone has an opinion about Potter these days, he’s one of the more generous Monkeys. Here, Potter has decided this petrified heron carcass would make a great prop for a portrait shoot.

Life as a Monkey means you’ve opted out of the 9 to 5, and the rewards are often moments like this, chillin’ in the meadow after a smoke break. Here, you see three notorious Monkeys — Chongo, Potter, and Ivo Ninov. Dean is perhaps our biggest, boldest Monkey, Chongo our most homeless and legendary big-wall quantum theorist, and then there’s Ivo, who showed up in Yosemite fresh from Bulgaria in 2002. Ivo learned English from the Monkeys, and it’s priceless to hear him say “bomber” and “jingus” in his Bulgaro-Californian accent.