“Nosedive top to Nosedive bottom,” comes the voice over the walkie-talkie. “Sending riders on lines one and two.” “OK, on three, two, one....” Three seconds after that, I’m out over the edge of the Gondolier precipice, dangling 130 feet above the sharply descending face of Mount Mansfield, pulling back on a lever for all it’s worth, straining to allow gravity to pull me down nearly a mile of inch-thick cable, working to squeeze every possible mph out of this mecha-spider web strand. Stopped halfway down on the parallel line, photographer Mike Hitelman quickly gets closer and closer, and—zoom!—see ya, Mike! The operators of Stowe Mountain Resort’s ZipTour Adventure remind you to go to the bathroom before you get on, which is sage advice. There are other ZipTour rides on other New England mountains—one of them, Attitash, has a 4,969-foot span, which it claims is the longest single zip line in the East—but Stowe must have them all beat when it comes to overall length. We’re talking almost two miles of cable-riding at speeds that would get you pulled over if you were driving your car that fast on the way to the resort. Starting near the top of the gondola, Nosedive Zip—the first and longest of the three legs—drops you about the height of an 80-story building, 803 feet. At top speed, you’re going about 60 mph, but you’re so high above the treetops that the broccolilike canopy seems to move at a fairly languid pace. That’s an illusion, much like being in an airplane, the slower the ground seems to slide on by. The third and final leg, the Perry Merrill Zip, also achieves that 60-mph speed, but it seems faster because you’re much closer to the tops of the trees. In one segment, you’re zooming through a veritable trench, an arboreal version of the assault on the Death Star, jagged branches lingering exhilaratingly, scarily close. In between there’s the Haselton Zip, a relatively short jaunt at 2,247 feet with a 472-foot elevation drop. Yes, that’s what qualifies as a short zip line at Stowe—almost a half-mile long.
Getting started The adventure starts with a wee demonstration zip line, about 130 feet long, a place to learn how to use the trolley system and listen to directions, and learn sign language from the operators at the bottom of each zip: hand signals for slow down, stop, and bring it on. In the case of one rider who came in hot and slammed into the safety springs at the end of the Perry Merrill Zip—think of the runaway truck ramps common on steep stretches of road—those hand signals expanded to waving the arms frantically back and forth, followed by a shrug of exasperation. Red-shirted resort employees load you onto the line at the top and remove you from it at the end; there are absolutely no do-it-yourself aspects to getting on and off the thing. The combination butt and chest harness is comfortable enough; with a 76