Zipling at Heavenly Lake Tahoe

I was up in Lake Tahoe with my family for the weekend and we decided to make the trip to the fun ski resort Heavenly which is in South Tahoe, We started our day on the north side of the lake, and we checked out of our rented house and we started the long drive around the lake.

The ride was pretty scary, with all of the winding roads, but we stopped at a look out that looked over a waterfall and some random island in the lake. You can literally can climb down to the bottom of the about 30 or 40 foot waterfall. I think the place was called Vikingholm but I could be wrong.

We continued down the road to another little park area, where we took this path called the Rainbow Trail, it was very nice and they have a really nice underwater observatory.

Finally we got to South Tahoe and parked in the Harrahs parking lot and walked to the Heavenly tram station. Tickets were pretty steep, I think around $30 for adults just to ride the gondola up the mountain.

So going up the gondola I noticed it was made by Dopplelmayrl, who built the roller coaster Vertigo in Walibi Belgium, they also built all of the ski lifts there to.

Finally we get up to the zipline and there are two lines, so it means two people go down, then they send the harnasses back up and the next people strap in. Everyone in my group had a partner except for me, which stunk but I paired up with a nice guy named Sam whose wife chickened out. Basically the two people working at the top pull back the harnass and then you get in the seat and you get squished against a door and then they open the door, and you go flying down the mountain. It was really scary, but once you got going, you were cruising and the cold mountain air feels amazing, and it really is a fast ride that you can feel.

I know it isnt roller coaster oriented, but it is a thrill type of ride, and I thought I would share my experience, plus I love writing and reading trip reports. Also the company that built this thing is from Wyoming, and one of the ride operators we talked to helped build the zipline, he also told us that they have their engineers inspect the thing on a weekly basis.