Blog for Zipline Attraction in the Smoky Mountains
Located in Pigeon Forge, TN and near Gatlinburg and Sevierville.
Springing Into A New Zipline Season!
By Ross Bodhi Ogle
Posted on March 19, 2024
Smoky Mountain Ziplines is excited to announce that we're open for our 2024 season. We've actually been at it for a few weeks, but now we're making it official. And boy, was our timing right. Our opening has lined up nicely with the arrival of spring, which has already been pretty kind to us in terms of weather. We've had some wonderful, seasonal and sunny days to ride the lines, and the overall outlook would seem to suggest that our chilliest days are behind us for a while.
As always, there's a lot to look forward to this year. If you've never been ziplining before, then you absolutely need to plan a trip to the Great Smoky Mountains and book one of our Pigeon Forge canopy tours. Of course, if you're a zipline veteran or if you've been our guest here before, then you know what to expect. For our part, we expect to have a great 2024.
For those of you who may not be familiar with what we have to offer, let us set the scene: You're immersed in the woodlands of the Smoky Mountain foothills. In the distance, the mightiest peaks of the Smokies range dominate the skyline, and when the skies are clear, the views are impressive. Our seven-line zipline course allows guests the feeling of having escaped into the remote wilderness of the Smokies, but conveniently, our outpost is only two miles from the Pigeon Forge Parkway.
Once you arrive on site and check in with our staff, you and your fellow zipliners (there may be as many as eight people per group) will be teamed up with two of our experienced guides. Their first task: to get you geared up with the safety equipment that we provide to each zipliner. That includes a protective helmet as well as leather gloves and the all-important safety harness, which keeps each passenger securely connected to our zipline cables.
After getting outfitted with gear, it's time to hop aboard one of our military transport vehicles, in which each group enjoys an open-air ride to the top of our mountain. It can be a bumpy ride at times, but it's actually a lot of fun, and the scenery is nice even as you're headed upward.
At the start of the course, your guides will go over all the safety procedures and rules, so if you've never been on a zipline before, you'll have no problem getting quickly up to speed on what you're supposed to do. From there, you'll start on the easiest and shortest of our ziplines, which is designed to help you get your feet wet, so to speak, and get used to the sensation of stepping off the launch platform, keeping yourself pointed straight as you ride the zipline and successfully land at the platform on the opposite end of the line.
Each zipline generally gets a little longer and a little faster, maxing out with lines that are as long as 800 feet and as high as 100 feet off the ground. There are moments when you can get going pretty fast, and the wind is in your hair, and you're surrounded by beautiful mountains. It really is a one-of-a-kind experience in the Smokies. And it's also further into the course that the most expansive views of the mountains really open up and make you want to take all those photos and selfies.
But it's not just ziplines you'll encounter along the way. We have a cool vertical-descent feature set up between two of our longer ziplines. So after your landing on the first of the two, you'll step over and basically rappel from the landing platform about 30 feet to the ground below. You're not really bouncing off a solid surface, however; it's more like your guides are gently lowering you to the ground, but our guests really like it. At that point, you're all queued up at the launch platform of the next zipline, ready to go.
At the end of the day, you'll get another fun open-air ride back to the outpost, you'll probably have a lot of pics on your phone, and you'll certainly have stored away a lot of great memories of your zipline outing.
So let's get it started, shall we? Give us a call soon to schedule a tour on your next visit to the Great Smoky Mountains.
