First Tracks – Online Ski Magazine
Deep Creek Lake, MD – Wisp Resort in Deep Creek Lake, Maryland’s only ski area, has expanded its summer activities with the opening of the new Flying Squirrel Canopy Tour, located above the Wisp Outdoors Adventure Park.
This new participatory guided tour is a combination of a challenge course and zip line. Phoenix Experiential Designs of Linville, N.C., was contracted to engineer and construct the guided canopy tour. Construction began on April 26, and after two months of construction, testing and training, the tour opened at the end of June.
Wisp Resort’s General Manager, Tim Prather, was among the first to try the newly constructed guided tour.
“I thought it was going to be fairly tame but, oh man, it is not! I felt like an eagle landing on a postage stamp,” said Prather.
The Flying Squirrel Canopy Tour begins with gear preparation at the Wisp Outdoors Adventure Building. Two Wisp Outdoors Adventure Guides outfit up to eight guests per tour each with a climbing harness, two safety tethers, a micro-trolley, safety helmet and gloves. The Adventure Guides then escort participants up the Bear Claw Conveyor Carpet to the practice area where guests learn how to brake, steer and zip along the cables.
The canopy tour starts with a scurry up the cargo net feature to the first platform. Once secured onto the 12 foot-high platform, a 160-foot zip transports guests to the next challenge – a Burma Bridge – where participants navigate the three-point rope bridge carefully to the next platform and prepare for the second zip over 150 feet of cable. A Plank Bridge, with a few strategically missing planks, must be crossed carefully to set up for the third zip of 180 feet to the “Eagle’s Nest” platform, at over 40 feet the highest point of the canopy tour with a view of McHenry Cove on Deep Creek Lake. Guests then face the tour’s longest zip of 400 feet across the Bear Claw Tubing Hill onto the seventh platform, known as “Mallard’s Landing,” before a final zip of 400 feet back across the tubing hill to the “Leap of Faith” platform where the only place to go is down from 30 feet back to the ground.
The new guided canopy tour costs $39 per person and reservations are recommended. The Flying Squirrel Canopy Tour is open daily during summer season from 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
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