Imagine soaring over and through lush treetops with a bird’s eye view of the dense forests and surrounding Great Smoky Mountains. Zip Lining, currently one of the most popular adventure sports worldwide, gives visitors to the Great Smoky Mountain a chance to experience the wonder and awe of the majestic mountains on a whole new level. There’s nothing that quite compares to the thrill of zipping over and into one of the most bio-diverse places in the country (over 16,000 species of flowering plant and 66 species of mammal).
Zip Lining is sure to get your blood pumping and adrenaline flowing as you fly down mountains. It’s an experience not to be missed during your Smoky Mountain vacation.
Marketing Director for Foxfire Mountain Adventure Park Mike Williams notes: “Zip Lining is a wonderful family experience for families and individuals. We have had guests as young as 6 and as old as 80. When you zipline you feel like you are actually flying through the air. [It] is a unique experience and one everyone should experience at least once.”
As Andrew Wagner-PR/Marketing Director for CLIMB Works advises, “Zip lining is a must. …[It’s important to] match the right zip line to the experience that you want to have. If you’re limited on price and time you may want to choose a zip line that is short in duration but those tend to provide you a view of a parking lot or field. Whereas, if you have more time and higher budget that will allow you an experience to see the national park for a number of hours.
Smoky Mountain Zipline Guide Director, Part-owner and operator Ross “Bodhi” Ogle urges, “Ziplining is an experiential activity as opposed to just a vacation attraction. By this I mean, that when you get geared up into a harness and go on tour with trained guides that are not only entertaining, but safety conscious, you leave our property or many of the other ziplines in the area with a sense of accomplishment and a memorable experience. Ziplining is much more than a thrill ride down on the parkway, [It’s a] high-flying family adventure that can be shared across the generations!”
Kevin Griffin, Marketing Director for Perry Smith Developments (Legacy Mountain and Adventure Park Ziplines) adds, “Zip Lining is a must because it allows families to pause and be with one another. In the busy world we live in parents don’t always get to spend quality time with their children or each other for that matter. When you see a family member having fun, ziplining above the trees, seeing them doing something you never thought they would it really is amazing. When a parent watches their 7-year-old zipline across an 1,800 foot line over the Smoky Mountains it really is an amazing sight to see.
All the rage, Ziplining began in Costa Rica and has swept around the globe and through the United States as the latest adventure craze. It began in the lush rainforests of Costa Rica; its no wonder Zip lining is so popular in the Great Smoky Mountains. A temperate rainforest in and of itself, it makes perfect sense that people would desire to explore and fly over this lush forest floor and canopy to experience as the inventors of this adventure sport first did in Costa Rica.
Zip lining originated not as a sport but as a necessary means for people in mountainous regions such as the Andes, Himalayas and more to traverse steep ravines and move supplies from higher to lower elevations.
Mountain climbers have long been privy to the necessity of zip lining to carefully traverse over two steep points. In fact a Tyrolean traverse is a common mountaineering practice where a mountain climber shimmies across a line to cross between two steep points, sometimes without a pulley at all.
The inventors of the first “Zip Lines,” built upon the Tyrolean technique by using the gravity of the slope to make the process a little quicker. In addition, this sport sprang from a practice of wildlife biologist. Many of these biologists strung up lines over rainforest canopies to investigate and study densely packed forests.
Zip lining (canopy tours) as an adventure sport was birthed in Costa Rica amidst the lush rainforest canopy and as part of the growing “Eco-tourism” boom that began there.
Today Zip Lining continues to grow in popularity; zip lines have sprung up throughout the United States and internationally. Visitors to the Great Smoky Mountains now have numerous choices to select from when planning a Zip Lining adventure. Read about these different companies to choose the best experience for you!
