Last month, Melissa posted about
Chase's 4th birthday party which we held at a place called My Gym. During the party they took the kids for rides on the indoor zipline.
It was fun, and the kids loved it, but it was just too short and didn't go fast enough. But the wheels started turning. Before we even left the party, I had Marc (my brother) googling info about ziplines. Over the next week or two I continued to research and eventually found a good zipline kit on ziplinegear.com. I prepped the two trees in the back yard that would be the ends of the zipline. The two trees are 180 feet apart.
The zipline "Viper Kit" arrived last Saturday morning (8/4). I knew we were in for some good fun when the box said "Caution: Contains Awesomeness".
My research showed that you should have 6-8 feet of rise per 100 feet of length, so I settled in the middle. 7 ft per 100 feet equates to about 12.5 feet of rise for the 180 foot length. My low end would be 10 feet high, so the high end is 22.5 feet.
After prepping the back of the tree with four 1"x4" boards (to keep the tree from dying with the wear of the cable), I looped the short cable around the tree and attached the turnbuckle.
Then I attached the 200 foot cable to the turnbuckle and headed all the way across the yard.
From the tree supporting the high end, looking across the yard to the lower end tree (circled in red).
Once the cable was connected to the tree at the lower end, and all bolts were tightened, we gave it a few test runs. I sat on the wooden plank seat (supported by a rope through the middle of the plank) and held on to the pulley handle bars. Melissa pulled me as high as she could get me, about half way across the yard, and let me go. My weight was supported just fine, so we hooked up one of the swings from the swing-set and buckled Chase in.
We gave Chase a few test rides by pushing him as far as we could before he got too high to reach...again, about half way across the yard. It didn't take him long to start asking to go all the way to the top. And yes, that's my car in the backyard. Melissa had the brilliant idea to hook the cable to the hitch of the car to tighten it up. It worked great!
Without a good rope, I used a 50' utility extension cord and had Chase hold on while I pulled him all the way to the top. Yippee!!
Anthony took a few turns without much emotion and then Graham took a few turns. He wasn't really sure and finally on the third run, he decided he wasn't a fan quite yet. Chase on the other hand loved to just run beside the triplets as they came down the second half of the run. Jack never did want a turn on opening day, but did finally give it a try a few days later. The brake line at the end keeps them from hitting the tree...brilliant!
The Sharp's came over so Brady and Blake got to ride as well. Again Chase loved to race beside them on their way down. Here he is at full speed running beside Blake.
Here's a shot from underneath Chase while he's at the top getting ready to let go of the "rope".
I've pulled Chase across the yard so many times in the past few days. It'll be tons of fun for a long time. On this one, I climbed the ladder all the way to the top and pulled Chase up to me. First, I got this snapshot. Notice the back garage on the far left side of the picture. We are way above the gutter level of the garage.
Ready, set go...and away he went. This video is with my cell phone, so it's not great quality, but you can see how far he goes and from a great view above him. With your volume turned on, you can hear the whiz of the zipline as he picks up speed. It's pretty impressive. Needless to say, the zipline is fantastic entertainment these days at the Liner household!!
