Complete History of Zip Lines

  Mountain climbers have used zip lines for years. Techniques like the Tyrolean traverse are used by mountain climbers to shimmy between two different points. While the Tyrolean traverse occasionally uses a pulley, it is sometimes done with nothing more than just a rope making a primitive zip line. Mountain climbers use this technique to travel between two steep points without the danger of trying to climb between them.

  The Hualapai Indians use ropes made from local plants to make zip lines to cross various parts of the Grand Canyon. This way they saved a lot of time and danger in crossing steep cliffs. They were remarkable in escaping other native Americans as well as the white men that were their enemies. At one time it was reported that they had over a hundred such zip lines set up to cross over some of the deepest parts of the Grand Canyon.

  Known for his science fiction and imaginative novels, H.G. Wells was an innovator in more ways than one. Back in 1897, H.G. Wells used a zip line in the novel “The Invisible Man.” He called the zip line an “Iinclined strong”. It was placed on the village green and used a pulley-swung handle for villagers to use. His use of the zip line was not without precedent. Over 100 years earlier, in 1739, Robert Cadman became known for his use of a zip line. As a steeplejack, Cadman had to climb tall structures and chimneys to make his living. He died tragically one day when his rope snapped as he zip lined from St. Mary’s Church, in Shrewsbury. While H.G. Wells may not have been aware of this particular story, he was undoubtedly familiar with the ropes and pulleys used by steeplejacks to climb chimneys and steeples when he first wrote about zip lines. 

  Despite the centuries-long history of zip lines, modern recreational courses can trace their origins back to the 1960s and 1970s. It was during this time that Donald Perry, a graduate student at California State University, Northridge, was doing research in the rainforest of Costa Rica. Perry was pursuing a doctorate in biology and he was fascinated by the diverse wildlife found in the forest canopy.  
  Perry pioneered the study of what he calls the “main level” of the rain forest, the canopy, where upwards of 40 percent of all life on earth exists. Navigating through the trees of the jungle was not an easy task, as tree limbs were prone to breaking and they were crawling with a variety of poisonous insects. 

Originally, Perry used a crossbow to shoot a rope into the branches of trees so he could climb them. The locals started calling him el Hombre Mono (the Monkey Man) because he was the only person bold enough to climb through the canopy.  In 1979, Perry devised a better way to make his way through the trees: a self-designed zip line. In his book Life Above the Jungle Floor, Perry recalls his first zip line adventure, “I watched the platform recede and felt a sense of ecstatic joy as I glided past branch tips, where only the lightest of jungle animals could venture, and into the airways of butterflies and birds. My zip line saved my life” 

  Donald Perry’s inventive way of zip lining the rainforest soon attracted media coverage from Smithsonian Magazine, Scientific American, and Geo (Germany’s National Geographic). Perry’s exploits in the jungle even earned him a consulting role in the 1992 movie Medicine Man, in which Sean Connery zip lines through the Amazon rainforest to find a cure for cancer. Inspired by Perry’s zip lines, Canadian entrepreneur Darren Hreniuk built the world’s first recreational zip line course in Monteverde, Costa Rica in 1995. Although Hreniuk tried to patent the concept and aggressively block rival course from opening, the courts ultimately ruled that zip line technology belongs in the public domain.