Are Zip Lines Safe?

Or 3 Reasons Not to do the Adventure Course at Callaway Gardens

My nine-year-old daughter’s favorite shows are Survivor and American Ninja Warrior, so maybe it’s my fault she’s been begging to go ziplining. She’s an adrenaline junkie by proxy. She’s seen ziplines on commercials and YouTube vacation videos. Everyone seems to be doing it. Why not? There are a ton of places to do it here in Georgia, so…we headed down to Callaway Gardens to try their Treetop Course. From what I could see from the check-in desk, it didn’t seem so bad and she just cleared the minimum height requirements, so I coughed up $45 for the TreeTop Course and another $15 and added in the Lake Course, so she’d get the full treatment.

Well, folks, I fancy myself a responsible parent. I know my way around ropes better than the average mom—actually I’ve trained years ago as a ropes course facilitator. And around element 3 of this 26 element course, I started seeing giant, huge red flags on this course.

Unfortunately, by this time my kid was on her way up a 20-foot rope ladder. However, here’s what I saw going on.

First off, Callaway uses a static belay system. It’s basically the same technique the Georgia Power guy uses to climb poles. Only he’s a professional. My 9-year-old, not so much.

lena donut

Basically, you’ve got a Y-shaped piece of rope connected to your harness with a carabiner on each end. You can kinda see it in the pic below of Lee.  You’re supposed to hook and unhook yourself as you climb, go around trees, etc. so that one carabiner is connected to the cable at all times. That’s a lot to manage for anyone, much less an ADHD nine-year-old with five minutes of training.

lena

I would estimate Lee had to make about 50 transfers during the 26 element course. That means this precious ninja had 50 opportunities to mix herself up and become completely unattached from the safety device at heights of up to 70 feet.

Second, for most of the high elements of this course, staff were located on the ground. There was no one on many of the platforms with participants. That means if my child got mixed up, she would be receiving verbal instructions shouted from the ground. Okay…

So by this time the mom—and the camp counselor in me—were going into quiet alarm mode.

I immediately asked to join Lee on the course—luckily it was a super slow day, and a staff person let me quickly sign a waiver and I was up the tree a few elements later. It had been years since I’d used the Georgia Power hook-unhook belay system myself. Seriously! I was getting tangled! So I asked (read: demanded) a staff person to be there with us throughout the course. Again, this couldn’t have happened on a busy day.

belay hands

And, people, I’m not kidding here. Five minutes after I joined my daughter, I approached a platform to find she had unhooked both her safety carabiners and was standing on a ten-inch wide platform, 30 feet off the ground, totally unattached from any safety wire. Nothing, nada. The kind instructor was inches from her and totally oblivious. I gave him a look of sheer terror and calmly hooked my daughter into the nearest cable.

Ok, so on to the Lake Course. The staff person said he’d accompany Lee on this portion.  (Oh, did I mention that participants are also in charge of connecting their own zipline pulleys, normally without staff people?) Anyway, I was under the impression the staffer would be on the platform when Lena went off, but no. He went down the zipline before she did—leaving her attached but completely alone at the top of this rope ladder 70 feet off the ground—with plenty of time to make her own mistakes or get tangled before beginning her descent.

rope ladder crop

The platform’s at the TOP of the ladder…

Finally, zip lines at Callaway are single cable. That means your safety rope and your pulley are on the same cable. This is a pretty common practice, but a two cable system is superior.

The safety issues here seem obvious. Kids making countless transfers at 30+ feet? Are you kidding me? On platforms by themselves? What? Rigging their own pulleys and belays on a single-wire zipline? Seriously, people, I’m going to hyperventilate.

On a busy day, static belay courses can have a 15:1 participant to staff ratio. As a staff person, how can you oversee every transfer going on? And if there were a problem, would a user be able to figure out the problem with no one up there to help him?

On ropes courses like this, I have seen children clip their second carabiner into their first, then unclip their first carabiner, and think they were good to go–when actually, they had just unclipped themselves from the system. Participants also tend to make transfers too rapidly and end up with both carabiners unattached at the same time, as my daughter did.

There is also the chance of strangulation in the Y harness. A teen died in Tennessee in that position last year, less than 15 feet off the ground.

Another child fell to her death last year at Camp Cheerio in North Carolina when the harness rope connecting her to the zipline got wrapped around the zipline and burned through.

Human error was also to blame for the death of a teenager at Young Life’s Carolina Point camp last year when she fell 100 feet from the Freebird Swing element. It appears she may never have been attached to the swing at deployment.

When I was trained as a ropes course leader by Project Adventure in the 1990s, high elements were belayed from the ground, in a dynamic belay, with belayer using safety equipment and his own weight to suspend the climber in case of a fall. There is a 1:1 ratio of belayer to participant. Personally, I much prefer this method to the static belay, for one-day adventures. Participants and staff can check the security of equipment before climbing and transfers happen on the ground, not mid-air when participants are shaking from fear.

The third form of belay that is popular in high-volume, for-profit venues is the closed-track, continuous belay system. This is the kind of system in use at Stone Mountain Park’s SkyHike. I think it’s a little safer than static belay, although it isn’t totally secure. Here’s a pic I took at SkyHike. See how tiny the little shuttle is that slides along with you? Are you cool with that?  There’s no backup line.

sky hike

A small bend in the rail of the track or a damaged shuttle could result in a fall. And that’s what happened to a man in Orlando when his shuttle came off the track at the Sky Trail ropes course at Artigon Mall last year.

There have been other zipline deaths abroad and in the states recently, as the amusement has skyrocketed in popularity with little oversight. After my experience this weekend, when I saw my daughter totally detach herself from a tree thirty feet off the ground, I’ve done more research. And I’m no longer a fan of the zipline craze. The possibility for human error, equipment failure, and the ever-changing environment of the forest make risks too great for ziplines to be a regular weekend activity or a must-do adventure during every vacation. It’s not something you want to pull over and do on your way to the beach.

fo
(Did I mention Callaway has a beach?)

 

My kids and I had a great time at Callaway Gardens. My daughter and I rode a tandem bike (not without a decent amount of hazard), did the inflatable obstacle course on the lake, and a ton of other fun things together, including just walking through the woods. It’s a treasure of a resort. What I’m questioning here is their adventure safety protocols.

And I’m also starting to question our thrill-seeking culture of late–that puts risk-taking as the focal point of vacation fun.

Remember, you don’t have to be 30 feet up to have an adventure. But, if your family is dead-set on an extreme challenge course or zipline, look for programs that stress team building, and where high elements are introduced after serious training and are belayed by trained adults on the ground.

The program should be run by seriously experienced rock climber types, not Carnies at a roadside attraction, making a living by how many tickets they can sell before closing.

Know the venue, understand the equipment, look for redundancies, stay with your child, and if you don’t feel safe, don’t do it.

My goal for future vacations is to slow down and literally lower my kids’ expectations. You don’t have to be zooming at 20 miles an hour, 50 feet off the ground to have fun. FDR’s Little White House is a few miles from Callaway. Next summer we’ll go there.

Really, my daughter survived Treetop Adventure, but I hope she’ll look back at this summer and remember her biggest thrills were elsewhere. She and her church buddies packed 300 sandwiches in under an hour for the homeless during their service day camp. Wow! And I’m sure there were a few scary moments before the director said, “ACTION!” during her make-a-movie acting camp. Being in front of the camera is pretty exciting, even if the greatest risk is falling out of character.

Next summer, I’m going to keep my kids’ feet on the ground, and their eyes on what really matters.