Ziptrekking is a real scream

Travel by Tim Richards

I’ve done a fair few adrenalin-rush sports on ski holidays. I’ve looped-the-loop in a glider in the Rockies and I’ve parachuted off snowy mountain tops in Switzerland; I’ve even done the Olympic bobsleigh run in Lillehammer, but Ziptrek was a new experience.

I was in full harness with buckles everywhere. They hooked my pulley wheel over the taut, steel wire and just told me to pull my knees up towards my chin.

That would have been fine except I was standing on the bottom step of a flight of timber stairs that just ended in a 150 feet void. Below me there was nothing but the raging torrent of Fitzsimmons Creek thundering down the mountain. And I was pushing the safety parameters, too. There’s a weight limit of 125 kilos and I’m no featherweight.

But once I committed my bulk to the zipline and started tearing towards the other side of the canyon, the scream of steel on steel was deafening. It was literally in my face. But like every adventure sport, within a couple of seconds the adrenalin rush of fear soon turns to the positive exhilaration of excitement.

Ziptrek, high in the ancient forest of British Columbia, is a real winner.

It’ll cost you a little over £45 this winter for an eco friendly hike through the towering forest of Douglas firs and including five zipline runs some of them as long as 350 metres when you’ll fly along at more than 50 miles an hour.

The oldest person known to have flown the ziplines was an 86-year-old, but nobody is going to force you to try it and

for some people that’ll be a pittance to fork out for big kicks; others more inclined to the couch potato lifestyle may consider it a rip off.

Whatever your view on the cost, the sheer majesty of the trees and the setting between the two great ski mountains of Blackcomb and Whistler is impressive. The engineering, to demanding Canadian standards which won’t damage the trees, is another fine achievement.

And Ziptrek is just one of a handful of non-skiing winter adventure sports which make a winter holiday in Whistler so appealing.

There are light aircraft landings on nearby glaciers in the area north of Vancouver with a game of comedy golf and a cut-glass picnic thrown in.

Snowmobiling and dog sledding are commonplace and you can be driven for a mountain top "salmon bake" in a muscular, four-by-four Hummer. Wimps can take sleigh rides, go fishing or take a trip in a hot-air balloon. But very emphatically it is not just a matter of going skiing every day.

And that’s one of the great misconceptions held by people who’ve never taken a ski holiday. They presume there’s nothing else to do but slide downhill with your planks on.

Wrong.

Obviously most winter holidaymakers into the mountains of Europe or North America will concentrate on the skiing and that’s where Whistler has such an unbeatable reputation.

It’s already been chosen to host the Winter Olympics in 2010 and it’s regularly voted the best ski resort in North America by ski magazine readers.

It’s most impressive statistic is its vertical drop – exactly a