August 16th 2014: Ziplining in Hillsdale, NY

This morning, I headed with my friend into Hillsdale NY to do some ziplining at Catamount Aerial Adventure Park, which is also Catamount Ski Area in the winter.

We were early, so we decided to find something to eat, settling for Four Brothers Pizza Inn in town.

The restaurant itself looked pretty nice, but the turkey sandwich my friend got was just alright.

He should have gotten the pizza instead. Oh well.

When we got back, everyone else had arrived, so we went to get our tickets, discounted if one of the participants is a AAA member. We received our harness and gloves,

and after putting them on, we were subjected to a live tutorial as to how to traverse obstacles in the course,

including how to use our alternatingly locking carabiners and ziplining trolleys,

which ensures that we stay attached to the lines while up in the trees. Unlike my last ziplining experience which was guided, we had to do everything by ourselves today, which made everything much more exciting.

Each route has a different grade of difficulty as well, with yellow being the easiest, and the double black diamond being the hardest. In order to climb to the upper level to do the harder courses,

we had to do a green or a yellow first, so we decided to go with a green first. The bridges we had to traverse were tough enough though.

When we got to the blue level, I almost gave up on my first obstacle, but somehow I made it through,

sometimes just barely.

Our final course was the black one, which had its challenges too, but somehow we had grown used to it all, and even though it took a while, we managed to finish it in its entirety, ignoring all the quick exits along the way.

After the last course, we decided to call it a day. We missed out on the Green Rapids path though, which had a lot of ziplining across the open ski slope. Next time I guess.

With that, we headed back into Massachusetts for the day. More details about stuff I did after follow here.