Riding high
Sally Cook, 95, rides down “The Floater” zip line at Whitefish Mountain Resort on Wednesday afternoon.
At age 95, Sally Cook flew down the 1,300-foot long “Heaven” zip line Wednesday, coming to a stop on the landing deck with perfect form: knees up, arms fully extended.
It was her third run of the day at Whitefish Mountain Resort and an experience she will not forget.
“You just feel light,” she said afterward. “Everything’s taken care of. It just feels great.”
Cook took up the zip-line adventure along with her daughter, Christine, and friends Lucy Carlson and Nancy McDowell. They were part of a group of 14 that included children and other elderly women.
Cook is the oldest person to fly on the Big Mountain, resort spokesman Donnie Clapp said, adding that 9,400 people used the zip lines last summer.
It wasn’t Cook’s first rodeo.
She went on a hot-air balloon ride when she turned 90, and her daughter recalls that her mom and the rest of the family got caught in a severe storm while sailing from Venezuela to Miami in 1955.
“I just like all new experiences,” Cook said. “I’m not fussy.”
The zip lines are set to carry people weighing up to 220 pounds. The heavier you are the faster you go, so some of the men in Cook’s group were fitted with mini parachutes on their harnesses to provide some drag on the way down.
On “The Floater” zip line, people have reached speeds up to 50 mph, Clapp said.
“It doesn’t feel as fast as I think it looks,” said Cook, who weighed in at no more than 95 pounds. “When you do it doesn’t feel like you’re going that fast.”
Things are about to get a little scarier, however, with two new spans being added to the resort’s zip line tour this year.
There’s the 1,700-foot “Highline” and another line that will carry people 1,900 feet and more than 300 feet off the forest floor. It is so high that the resort had to string a parallel line with large balls to serve as visual markers for aircraft.
That line, which will be named through a contest, still is being tested but will open soon, Clapp said.
“A lot of people who did the tour last year said that was awesome, please build some more” zip lines, Clapp said, explaining the decision to expand the tour.
The zip lines and the resort’s new alpine slide have been game changers on the Big Mountain.
“Because we had this and the alpine slide, we had more people up here doing everything” from mountain biking to hiking, Clapp said. “It just livened everything up.”
Zip line tours are carried out in groups of 14 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. During the peak days of summer, the tours are filled well in advance.
Clapp said that he recently searched YouTube online and found at least 100 zip line videos that had been posted by people who visited the resort last summer.
He expects the new lines will get lots of attention. Three lines are currently operational at a cost of $29 per person for a tour that takes about an hour-and-a-half.
The resort will charge $49 for a short period when all six lines are operating, but the cost will be raised to $75 for a full three-hour tour.
Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com.