First off, I’ll say that it was an absolutely fantastic experience. None of us really knew fully what to expect when we got there.
Anyway, let me get started on why we were looking for a place like this. Back in the second week of July, we did a family trip with another couple, our kids and their kids. While we were there, we went on a zipline tour, and all of us loved it…well, the boy didn’t love it as much as the rest of us. They were also pretty “loose” with the rules, and once we got the hang of basic ziplining, they let us screw around a bit. Case in point (friend’s daughter):
And a little while later, my wife (no she’s not naked, just wearing tan clothes)
Ok, so once we got done, we were all hooked, and wanted to find something similar around here. Smaef mentioned This place (this is a link) to me on Facebook, so we looked into it when we got back.
Well, we went on Saturday. They fit you with full harnesses, go through the safety course, and then you hike up to the starting platform. Now, trying to describe how the harness system works will be difficult to relate, but I’ll try. Basically, you have two large nylon-covered cables attached to your center loop at your belt buckle area. At the ends of these cables are large caribiner-style clips to hook onto the safety lines that traverse throughout the whole park. At all times, one of your caribiners is locked and one is unlocked. When you first get onto the platform, you place the unlocked caribiner onto the safety cable. Then you use a “key” called a tweezil that is also attached to the cable, lock your caribiner, which unlocks the other one, which you then also attach to the safety cable. So essentially, you’re always attached to a safety wire, everywhere in the course, which also means that the course is unguided, and it’s up to you to navigate it.
The courses are rated like ski trails, yellow for novice, green for beginner, blue, black, double black. We started with the easier green, stepped up to the easier blue, and then Kayla (daughter) and I hit the harder blue. We made it halfway through, and both of us couldn’t go any further due to muscle fatigue. Luckily along any of the courses, there are exit ziplines just for this event, so we did that.
All in all, if this place was less than 30 minutes away from here, I would make it my gym. They’re open daily until the 5th, and then just weekends until 10/9. I’m going to try to make it at least 2 more times this year.
Few crappy pics along the way.
The 4 of us
On this one, you’re locked onto an overhead safety device, you then jump on the snowboard, which then hauls down a zipline to a platform, and you have to time your jump off the snowboard to the platform.
One of the more typical bridge-type crossings
