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www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM
Earthshine Mountain Lodge
Flight Through the Treetops and
High Ropes Course (Lake Toxaway
near Brevard)
With six ziplines and one sky bridge, built in
1998, Earthshine Mountain Lodge claims to
be the first facility in the United States to offer
canopy tours. www.earthshinelodge.com
Scream Time Ziplines (minutes outside
Boone in the High Country)
Home to the first triple-wide 2,000-foot line
called the “Super Zip,” which is an add-on to
the standard six-line tour.
The Beanstalk Journey at Catawba
Meadows (in Morganton)
A blend of zipline tours and ropes courses.
www.thebeanstalkjourney.com
Hawksnest Resort Zipline Tour
(in Seven Devils near Banner Elk)
This resort has 10 ziplines that create a 1.5-
mile course with some lines 30 to 180 feet off
the ground. Hawksnest added nine additional
ziplines and more than 3 miles of cable this
summer. www.hawksnest-resort.com
Richland Creek ZipLine Canopy
Tour (at the base of Purgatory Mountain
in Asheboro)
Glide along a total of 15 ziplines in the forest
beside Richland Creek at the base of
Purgatory Mountain on more than 1 mile of
cable lines, including two new skywalks.
www.richlandcreekzipline.com
Kersey Valley (near Highpoint)
This course offers 14 ziplines, 10 engineered
Sky Towers and a themed closed course
including Flight School.
www. kerseyvalleyzipline.com
Plumtree Canopy Tours (Toe River
Lodge on the edge of Pisgah National Forest)
Eleven zips and four sky bridges fly over
treetops, mountainsides and underground
mines as high as 60 feet above Isaac’s
Branch Creek. www.wildwaterrafting.com
U.S. National Whitewater Center
(Charlotte off I-277)
Riders take off from the top of the 46-foot
Mega Tower and fly over sections of Class III
and IV whitewater rapids. www.usnwc.org
-www.visitnc.com
near Fayetteville, to experience ziplining for ourselves. (Despite my
acrophobia, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I was not
going to pass.) None of us, except Trish, really knew what to expect.
Norwood Bryan’s family has built the course out of an undeveloped
55-acre forested parcel of land that once belonged to Frank
Stout’s father prior to the Bryan’s midcentury purchase. The Bryan
family has created a beautiful state-of-the-art site that includes
three Indiana-Jones-style cable swing bridges and eight ziplines,
all high above the tree tops. The property includes a waterfall
along with the remains of a mill.
Participants wear gloves, a helmet and a full-body harness with
a carabiner that is attached to a pulley that is placed on the cable
strung between the platforms. At the tour site, we were assigned
a pair of guides. Orientation, and instructions about putting on the
harnesses, adjusting helmets, and the basics of platform arrival and
departure followed. Then on to a practice run or two on the bunny
zips. The guides stayed with us the entire time — one in front, the
other to the rear.
After climbing to the first platform atop a floating spiral staircase
attached to a massive tree, we dropped off the platform and
zipped along the cable, zipping from platform to platform.
The swing bridges were another animal, striking fear in the heart of
even the staunchest in our group.
Our guides, Ryan McClymonds and Lindsay Trigboff, took
extremely good care of us and made our field trip an unforgettable
day. —Pat Bradford
Allison Potter
Trish Matson
Pat Bradford