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FacebookTake a high wire trip through the trees
Friday, July 25, 2008
ROCKBRIDGE, Ohio — If you want to swing through the trees like Tarzan — or Jane — you might not have time to monkey around with a trip to Africa. Fortunately, Rockbridge is a mere two-hour, divided-highway drive from the Miami Valley.
The barely discernible dot on the southeastern Ohio map is the home of Hocking Hills Canopy Tours, "Ohio's First World-Class Zipline Adventure!"
And if you know zip about a zipline adventure, here's what it is:
For $75, guides take you to a platform several stories up a tree, put you in a harness, hook your harness to a cable and then watch as you launch yourself off the platform and slide above and between a lot of other trees toward another platform. You will travel as high as 80 feet off the ground at speeds of up to 35 mph over distances as long as 572 feet. After two hours or so you will have done this 10 times and you will have experienced what TravelAdvisor.com has referred to as this country's most popular attraction based on reader rankings.
Since its opening in April, Hocking Hills Canopy Tours has attracted zippers from the minimum age of 10 up to the age of 81. On the afternoon that staff videographer Jim Noelker and I made our maiden zips, we did it in the company of mostly under-30-somethings: a pre-wedding bridal party of four from Canton and an 18-year-old birthday girl from Delaware, Ohio, with two of her girlfriends.
At this point I'm supposed to write about how scary it was. But even though I'm not particularly brave, even for a columnist, there was no fear factor during the short zips from platform to platform. At least not compared to walking across four suspended rope bridges — the kind you see in all those Indiana Jones movies — with a group of Echo Boomers who thought jumping up and down on a swaying bridge over a deep ravine was a hoot.
Unless you are profoundly clumsy or incredibly acrophobic, though, zipping through the trees is not nearly as frightening as changing lanes on I-70 going through Columbus. At all times when you are off the ground you are secured in a harness attached to a cable. The harnesses, the guides will assure you, are tested to hold up to 5,000 pounds; 26,000 pounds can be suspended at one time from the cable. And you will be wearing a red helmet, although the guides do not explain exactly how a helmet is going to help you in a 70-foot fall.
So whatever fears any of us had before our 110-foot first zip may have about our own competence: What if I don't brake in time to keep me from becoming a part of a tree? What if I brake too soon and wind up hanging from the middle of the cable like a harnessed pinata?
But despite nicknames given by the guides to some of the segments — Leap of Faith, Banzai — a few hours spent zipping through the
sycamores and oaks of southeastern Ohio is not likely to make you go ape, man.
C
ontact this writer at (937) 225-2439 or at
dlstewart@DaytonDailyNews.com.
