Ziplining in New Hampshire (or Mass Plus Momentum Equals 'Holy Cow!')

There I was, perched on the ledge of a platform built in a huge white pine tree 50 feet off the ground getting ready to make my first zipline “jump.” My heart was racing and even though I had seen most of our group go before me it wasn’t much comfort at the moment. The biggest question in my mind was, “Am I actually going to do this?”

Ziplining, for you that aren’t familiar is, by definition, a person riding on a cable stretched through trees and over valleys on nothing more than a small trolley and harness. The speeds that you reach doing these spectacularly insane runs are sometimes in excess of 50 miles per hour.

It looked easy on the video and not too scary. After all, how scary could gliding over hill and dale high above some of the finest scenery in the world really be? Well to be perfectly honest, really freakin’ scary!

Even though I had my safety carabiner on the cable, which, by the way, waggled around like a jump rope in the hands of a school girl with ADHD, my fight-or-flight mechanism was “full on.” I tried to calm myself with expressions like “No guts, no glory” or “You only live once (and die once also)” or “Only you can prevent forest fires” or “A penny saved is ....”

OK; I was nervous. But despite my growing reservations there was no way I could turn back.

“Why not?” you ask. Because my wife Anita was getting ready to jump from the next tree over and even though there was the possibility that a cable could snap and I could bury my head in a New Hampshire mountainside, it would be far less painful than having her taunt me for the rest of my life about her jumping and me wimping out. In other words, she was my total motivation at that moment.

She didn’t fool me though. I took a picture of her right before this first ride and she flashed me one of her brave Dudley Do-Right Smiles, which told me she was just as nervous.

But it was actually no problem on that first “jump.” It was over before we knew it. All you needed was the grit to leave go and gravity did the rest. Yep, gravity made me scream like a little girl, gravity made me almost pee myself and gravity made me darn glad my feet touched the ground again.

Anita said she didn’t remember anything. So gravity must have done her a favor and blocked her delicate psyche. But there were four more different types of courses to ride before the day was through and gravity was going to have to be a lot kinder.

Our host for these thrill rides was Alpine Adventures in Lincoln, N.H. We had seen their ads online and since they were located in the beautiful White Mountains and also on our vacation path we thought, “why not.” Billed as the longest and highest Zipline Canopy Tours in New England, how could we lose? After all, the Boston Globe wrote that they were, “magical, breathtaking and awesome.” But then they were just talking about the female guides.

We did, thankfully, adjust and relax somewhat to the speeds and heights encountered.  Launching ourselves either from the ground and flying out over beautiful canyons or from trees (the most daring) certainly became easier than that maiden flight.

So for the balance of the tour, our group, which consisted of people from as far away as  Los Angeles and Iowa, rode cables over beautiful valleys and through fall foliage. Since we were all novices there was a great feeling of camaraderie. The jokes started in the store where we were outfitted with harnesses and helmets and continued on the bumpy ride to the top of the mountain and really got cranking during the rides themselves. Everyone was enjoying themselves.

The last ride was the most intense, being the steepest fall, and ended with me swinging  like Tarzan back and forth as my heart retreated back into my chest and away from my mouth. Looking down from the launch area, one person in our group actually did chicken out. He took one look and said, ”No way!” Keep in mind that he had made the four jumps before this.

The cable bridges connecting some of the trees were in themselves a bit of a challenge and I don’t believe that I can write about the total experience unless I include them. With just two metal cables, one for each hand, and a small, foot-wide plastic plank for my feet even the safety line didn’t give much comfort. I’ve seen this basic design minus the safety line in pictures from the Andes and the Himalayas. Made of wood and rope these more primitive bridges must be at the very least a test of one’s courage or at the most a form of population control. Doing the hippy hippy shake in the trees higher than your house is a good way to make you appreciate walking on solid ground.   

But all-in-all, my recommendation is to try ziplining. It was a great experience and certainly worth the bragging rights and, at $90 per person, easy on the wallet. If you aren’t completely comfortable with heights, like I am, you can still pull it off by summoning every particle of courage that exists in your body and resisting the thought that you never jump out of a perfectly good tree and “just go for it.”

On the Internet at http://www.alpinezipline.com

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