She flies through the air...

Hits her knees on a tree...


This weekend's adventure was a trip to Kletterwald, Wiesbaden's tree top zip-line obstacle course. It rained all day on Saturday, but Sunday dawned a perfect fall day, just right for trying zip-lining for the first time. We were the first ones to arrive at the park, and in no time we were fitted with climbing harnesses and helmets, doing a trial course. An employee gave a demo on how to safely hook up the cables, and how to get up to the course and then down (by jumping...gulp!). Then, he had us give it a try.


Other than forgetting to hook up one of my cables on my first attempt, the "crash course" was pretty easy. It was only a couple of meters off the ground, so some of my nerves melted away, although I was surprised we did not “learn” how to fall... and I wondered if that meant it wasn’t likely that we would fall, or that if we did, it would be hopeless...


After being deemed “fit to climb”, we were turned loose in the park. There were three levels of courses (blue, red, and black), plus the mega-challenge: “Treeman’s Course”. Tall Guy wanted to head right to a red course, but I, still feeling a bit wary, said “nein” and we made our way through two easy blue courses first. By this time, we were warmed up, so we headed on to two red courses, which required a little more balance and a little more upper body strength. Tall Guy was complaining about having to wait while a woman struggled to cross a section of stirrup footholds on ropes hanging from a cable (“Es una croqueta, que lentitud!”). His complaining ended when he had his own problems crossing the stirrups... I was on the other side, being my encouraging self – “You can do it! No seas una croqueta, you’re nearly half way there!” 


Although we were starting to notice a burn in our arms and our hands were getting red, we decided to push ourselves to the limit and try out the black course. Now, I am the kind of person who doesn’t generally “do black” (no black diamond ski courses, no crazy hills on bikes or roller blades, no steep waterfalls, no roller coasters...), so this was a big deal for me.  The challenge began with a climb up a narrow rock wall (flashbacks to being stuck on a rock wall when I was 12 ensued), but I made it up quickly and smoothly. Watching too many episodes of “Man Vs. Wild” paid off – “three points of contact!” was running through my mind the whole time. The next challenge was to cross a kind of fence (boards with “rock wall” grips, spaced out along a cable), and I did that too! Then, there was a balancing act of walking on upright logs strung on a cable, a tight-rope walk across three ropes at different levels, a tree top hanging rubber tire nightmare, a crazy swing-yourself-off-a-trapeze-and-land-on-a-swinging-log-thing-then-repeat, a chin-up bar zip across the forest, and finally, a jump down to the ground. 


Amazingly... I DID IT! And well! It was wonderful to be outside, up in the golden-orange tree tops, having fun. I never would have thought that by the end of the morning I would voluntarily try a staggeringly high and challenging zip line course. What is even more amazing is that I plan to go back to conquer the Treeman’s Course, and bug the staff to change its name to Tree-Girl, or at least Tree-Person... 


Until next time, this is Tree Girl signing off: Aaaaaaaa aahhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!