The one-kilometre-long Crazy Rider Xtreme at the TreeTop Adventure Park on the New South Wales Central Coast in Australia, takes visitors on a “twisty, curly, thrilling ride in the tree tops”. Starting 18 metres above the ground, it zigzags through 40 obstacles, completes 360-degree loops as well as a 540-metre circle around a tree.
The Xtreme takes up to five minutes to complete and is more than three times the length of any tree-based zipline in the world, surpassing the 300-metre-long Forever Florida in the US as the world’s longest curving zip wire. Those less brave at heart can try the 330-metre-long Pioneer zipline instead, which dives through a series of 10 curves, including a 360-degree turn and a dramatic drop.
Both ziplines are said to give riders a feeling of flying.
"It is not really about the speed but more about gravity, especially in the turns," Sandrine Gaymard, the owner of the park, told the Sydney Morning Herald. "The acceleration and deceleration is what makes the ride thrilling."
The ride is said to be the first of its kind made with new 'high-wire technology' developed by Ms Gaymard and co-owner Fred Galimard, who wanted to create a ride that was longer and scarier than others. "Ziplines usually travel in a straight line but we thought it would be incredible to build some to go around the trees, up and down, and even with 360-degree loops to really ramp up the fun factor," she said in a statement.
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This is the latest in a series of innovative and impressively long zipline rides to have opened in the past few years. Italy’s 2,213-metre-long Volo dell'Angelo (the Angel Flight) travels at speeds of up to 120 kilometres an hour, and is said to be the current world’s longest and highest continuous zipline.
It is followed by the Eye of the Jaguar, set in Peru’s Sacred Valley north of Cusco, which spans 2,130 metres and is said to reach speeds of up to 110 kilometres an hour. The Zip World Titan, Europe’s first four-person zipline, has opened in Snowdonia, giving adventure-lovers the chance to soar in unison at speeds of up to 95 kilometres an hour.
The zipline at Llechwedd Slate Caverns near the historic mining town of Blaenau Ffestiniog is the third in Snowdonia run by Zip World. The company launched the Big Zipper in 2013, the longest zipline in the Northern Hemisphere, which reaches speeds of up to 160 kilometres an hour over a distance of more than a kilometre and a half.
This article was written by Soo Kim from The Daily Telegraph and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.
