Zip Lining

Zip! [photo lifted from Activity Centre website]

It was a cool, wet afternoon in late May 2011, and we had a couple outdoorsy friend visiting us for the weekend.  We had already done some hiking and biking, and they were ready for more activities.  So we decided to give zip lining a try.  It was a spur of the moment decision, and we were caught without proper shoes, but since we were in the ski village, there were ample gear shops packed full of athletic footwear.  You can always use an extra pair of sporty hiking shoes!  We were also caught without a camera, hence the lack of original photos in this writeup.

I'll start by saying that you need to book this in advance (we booked day of, about 2 hours ahead), which you can do at the Activity Centre in the slopeside village.  Full details are on the Activity Centre website.  The zip line course is about a five minute walk from the pedestrian village, at the end of a trail that leads into the woods and over a creek.  You're greeted at a gazebo where they gather some demographic info, I suspect mostly to ensure you're not above the weight restriction, and also to get you to sign liability waivers (don't worry, it's safe).  After this, your group is led to the equipment area where you get fitted for a helmet and harness, and receive training on how to do double clip-ins, the same safety technique used in the Via Ferrata.

From there, the course begins.  If you've never done zip lining before, I'll do my best to describe it.  To begin, you climb up a ladder to an elevated platform about 10-15 feet up.  This gets you off the ground, and into the tree elevations.  You have a pulley wheel connected to your harness, which you clip onto the heavy gauge wire that connects to the next platform, and you zip across!  Each platform is a circular deck that is anchored into the tree trunk at various elevations.  On the higher platforms, you do feel a bit of a sway, which gives you an appreciation of how magnificent an engineer mother nature is...the trees are so strong, yet flexible.

Now, it's not just zipping from platform to platform.  In fact, only about half of the traverses from station to station are done via zip line.  Many others require you to inch along wire, or crawl through hoops, or toe along a plank bridge.  It really is fun, and we saw all ages and all fitness levels on the course with us.  If you're afraid of heights (like me), you may have a couple scary moments, but overall it was fine.

So would I do it again?   Eventually...for me, it's not the kind of thing I'd come back and do again and again  and we may we have another go next year.  But if you haven't tried zip lining yet, I would definitely recommend it!

Oct 2014 Update:
There is a new zip lining adventure at Tremblant now, which we had front-row seats for when we had lunch at the Casino patio.  So while the experience we describe above features some zip lining, the new ZipTrek is zip lining with a capital Z.  We haven't tried, but it looks amazing.  At first we thought it was just from the rocky peak at Versant Soleil and spanning the entire valley below.  But now we realized it does a circuit of zip lines all around the top of the ski mountain...based on the screams and shouts of joy we heard, it is exhilarating.