Drescherland, adventure park, high ropes course, ferris wheel, liability waivers...these were all topics of conversation with my brother-in-laws and I during what was admittedly an alchohol enhanced brainstorming session held at Dan's house a few weeks ago. It was there that the Wray family boys were reminiscing about the zip line they had in their backyard growing up as kids and how it provided years of entertainment and countless creative games shared by them and their neighborhood friends. It was there that the Drescher Zip Line Project truly started...
Ever since moving into our house I have had grand visions of exciting things being constructed in "The Back Forty" - that being the area behind the house that we don't own but happily borrow :) Our house is on a very large and very steep hill and we don't have much flat area behind the house for playing...except for the woods behind the house. So I have continually been thinking about how to take advantage of the natural landscape to both reduce the "negative" of no back yard as well as provide some out of the ordinary opportunities for fun for the kiddos.
After some serious world wide web research and a few eureka discoveries of step by step video instructions, I finalized the design of the zip line borrowing the best aspects of all the ones I found. Our zip line is fairly simple:
- Titanic sized chains around two trees approximately ~115 feet apart ($20)
- Two industrial sized, foot long turnbuckles ($20)
- 125 feet of quarter inch steel cable ($80)
- Two cable loops and 5 cable anchors ($8)
- A Petzl Tandem Speed trolley ($75)
- A Honda Civic tire (FREE!!!)
- A hand fabricated wooden seat and three carabiners ($20)
The hardest part of the installation was getting all of the above gear up in the air about 15 feet... The chain and one end of the turnbuckles was not so bad b/c your 20 foot extension ladder can be resting against the tree. The hard part was working on the other end of the turnbuckle to attach the cable, cable anchors, and then tightening the turnbuckle to take out cable slack. Your ladder has to be resting on a slack cable that tends to sway a lot...and the chains around the trees tend to want to slide around as well....so glad that part is over.... while up there in the trees on a swaying ladder I was continually reviewing my exit strategy for if the ladder were to fall... never did come up with a good one...
The most fun part of the project was definitely attaching my 450 pound lawnmower to the loose end of the cable and using the one end of the turnbuckle as a pulley to put tension on the whole system so that I could then attach the anchors and lock the system. Having tried doing this with people power and failing misearably made it all the sweeter when, on my own, I could raise that ~100 pound cable + tire up in the air like it weighed nothing! Ah man and his machines.... love it!!
After three upward adjustments to the final height of 15ish feet, I took the innaguaral ride....and it was AWESOME!!! It truly is a bit of a thrill - with the wind blowing through your hair and then that moment... as you are about to slam into the far side tree trunk... and then thump - you hit the civic tire about 6 feet in front of the tree and get swung up perpindicular to the ground and then slide back the way you came. I had a big ear to ear grin on my face.
Come on over and give it a try!!
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