Document-my-life: July 2011

Hello Family, friends & curious readers,

Wow, today I had the greatest adventure in Wrightwood, CA. I took the canopy adventure with Navitat (http://www.navitat.com/) (855) 628-4828 or (760) 249-9990. This canopy adventure is so much more than just ziplines, it is also suspension bridges & rappels, and more. And yes folks, I enjoyed it so much so that I have put their contact info on this blog.

But, before getting to the Navitat location I had about an hour to spare, and along CA-138 there were some beautiful rock formations I had to stop to explore. These rocks are the Mormon Rocks in the background of a firestation. There is private land in this area, with well-marked signs, and a well-defined trail for hiking. Enjoy some of the pictures I took in my 1/2 hour exploration of this natural & decorative rock formation.

So maybe only about 10 miles away from the Mormon Rocks formation with clay & sand earth, chapparel growth and unsheltered sunlight is the Christmas town of Wrightwood, CA., nestled in the evergreen firs & spruces of the Angeles National Forest. Navitat's canopy tour is spread out on 60 acres of a 300-acre mountain forest ranch in the San Gabriel Mountains. All in all, the canopy tour is 10 ziplines spead between tree platforms, 4 suspension bridges & 3 rappels. The guides are knowledgeable and share information about the natural environment and the history of the mountains, flora & fauna, and even a legend or two of the how some plants received their local names. Navitat is impressively "green" using technology to cause as little harm to the environment as possible (ie "the Bonsai Bond"), with a primary concern for our physical safety - at no time is the adventurer NOT attached to a cable that can hold 10 times our own weight, even on the suspension bridges.

The adventure starts in the Navitat office in the town, where we get equipped in our harness & helmet & leather gloves. Then we take the military transport vehicle up into the mountains to the start of the canopy tour. From here we have about 3 hours of arborreal & aerial excitement. From the vehicle we walk up a path to the first platform and get a quick lesson on braking and positioning. Then we are off. I thought it was exciting from the beginning, but there was an immediate hardboost in excitement when one of the zips came out of the treeline and had me soaring a couple hundred feet above the treeline over a canyon with nothing but the wind at my ears and the platform another 1,000 feet ahead. Of course I'm careening like a human cannonball and braking my speed caused smoke to come from my gloves but all the more for excitement! There are few words to describe the sheer awe-inspiring views, the speeds of up to 40 MPH, zipping over treetops on a cable about as thick as my index finger, the rappels and suspension bridges, the smells of the trees and sounds of the forest.

I am looking forward to sharing my next visit with family.

I did go alone on this first visit, and being an individual I was able to fill an open space in a tour already with 7 adventurers, making 8 tourists and 2 guides. Our guides were Sean & Scott, and occassionally assisted by Jackson. The other tourists in my zip party was a family of 4 persons (Tracy, Laura, Alissa & Rhiannon) and a group of 3 young men (TJ, Yogesh & Manjiv).

For additional pictures that aren't below please click here: http://document-my-life-additionalpics.blogspot.com/2011/07/07172011-navitat-wrightwood-canopy-tour.html. All the pictures on my blogs are resized from 3296x2472 to a standard wallpaper of 1024x768. I have all the original sized pictures still and they are available upon request by email. All the pictures can be used at will and come with my implied consent.