How do you top a banner ski winter if you’re a Vermont resort? Show summertime adventure-seekers a new way to play on the mountain. Or, in the case of Stowe, two ways.
“You should see the launch pad from the top of gondola,” said Mike Colbourn, the resort’s spokesman, practically whistling in appreciation of the first nearly mile-long drop in a 10,000-foot zip line descent down the face of Vermont’s highest peak. “It’s really something.”
This weekend, Mount Mansfield is opening up for the summer season. The resort starts running the gondola on Saturday and opens its farmers market on Friday, July 3, capped by its second annual Independence Day tailgate party and fireworks show.
But the big news of the summer is its double dose of adrenaline offerings, being unveiled next month: the Stowe Ziptour Adventure and the Stowe Treetop Adventure course.
The new activities, after years of planning and permitting, will feature cutting-edge engineering that makes the old, dearly remembered Alpine Slide look like a quaint concrete trough.
Barring setbacks in construction, the Ziptour will start taking reservations July 10, and the Treetop Adventure course a couple of weeks later, July 27.
The new attractions mean new jobs, too. Up to 60 people will be needed to run the attractions, and many will be as excited about the adventures as the people about to take them.
“In the summertime, there are hundreds of thousands of people within two hours of Stowe,” Colbourn said. “It’s going to be a learning summer for all of us.”
Screaming down Mansfield
Just as there’s no easy way to jump out of airplane, there’s no easing into the zip line down the front of Vermont’s highest peak.
It just drops.
The zip line consists of three pitches, and the first one takes up roughly one-third of the whole journey. It drops at a sharp diagonal pitch that roughly parallels mountain’s fall line, 4,500 feet from the top station on Upper Perry Merrill trail.
Here’s a fun fact: If you can scream for 51 seconds straight, you’ll have traveled that first pitch at 60 mph.
Holding it all together are anchors at the top, bottom and two switching areas made of enormous blocks of concrete.
“Those blocks aren’t going anywhere,” said Dave Merriam, Stowe Mountain Resort’s director of mountain recreation.
Resort officials have taken rides on Ziptour sites in New Hampshire, but so far only the arborists hired to work on the Stowe project have been down the zip here, Merriam said. Non-tree climbers, like everyone else, need platforms — still under construction — to get off the thing, so it remains unridden by most.
While the resort isn’t disclosing how much it’s investing in the equipment, gear and people needed for the new summertime activities, it isn’t cheap. For instance, the trolleys — the essential hardware that connects users to the zip cable, a hefty 10-pound apparatus with the latest in zip tech — have a hefty price tag, at about $3,500 apiece. And Stowe bought 80 of them for starters. That’s $280,000 worth of trolleys.
“We’re estimating that 100 to 150 people a day will be a big day,” Colbourn said.
The trolley is controlled by a wooden handle that riders use to control their speed: yank back to slow down, push forward to let gravity do its job. Merriam said the trolleys have a “sweet spot,” neither all the way forward, or all the way back, where friction is the most minimal, and where speed will be the fastest.
The zip lines are designed to be accident-proof, with the bottom 65 feet of each cable made of springs, a last-ditch feature for people who don’t pull back on the handle.
“We don’t encourage people to come in hot, but if you do,” the ride will stop the riders, Merriam said.
Treetop adventures
A few other mountains feature zip lines down their faces. Gunstock, Attitash and Wildcat in New Hampshire have all partnered with Ziptour. But other places require riders to walk a ways between platforms, or be bused from the ticket office to the zip lines. At Stowe, everything’s right next to each other. Unhook from one cable, and hook into the next one at the same platform.
The Mansfield Base Lodge will be the center of operations — they call it “the Gear Zone” — for the new summertime activities. Guests will gear up and head around the back of the building, turning right for the zip tour or left for the treetop adventure.
The Treetop Adventure course is located just off the Lower Tyro Trail near the Adventure Triple chairlift, and is largely hidden from sight by the forest’s edge.
But inside the woods is something the Swiss Family Robinson might have used for a gym.
Right now, with construction still going on, the cedar used for much of the project is creamy white, but that will fade over time, making the whole area blend in.
“It all just disappears into the canopy,” Merriam said.
Platforms, cables and ropes crisscross the canopy, with all types of choose-your-own-adventure implements: bridges, trapeze bars, cables, cargo nets, climbing walls, rope swings and slides.
The treetop course is a self-guided adventure for all ages, with varying levels of difficulty: a yellow course for the kids, and green, blue, red and black courses for the adults and bigger kids.
As with the luxury-style gear for the Ziptour, Stowe Mountain Resort went upscale with the technology for the adventure course. And with that extra investment comes extra safety.
Perhaps the most key piece of the kit: a smart belay device called the Clic It. Designed by French mountaineers, the Clic It consists of dual carabiners connected by a cable that synchronizes the open/closed positions so it’s impossible for both ’biners to be open at the same time.
“There’s not a lot of creative interpretation on that one,” Merriam said.
Unlike the Ziptour, where customers go up and come down in a rush of adrenaline, the treetop course is a place to hang out, trying any of the 60-plus obstacles for as long as you want, or as long as your body lets you.
The black course, the most difficult, “can get you gassed pretty quickly,” Merriam said. “It’s pretty strenuous.”
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