New mid-air ropes course challenges even champions
- Details
- Created on Tuesday, 26 April 2011 22:32
- Written by Dena Rosenberry
When the Wind Walker ropes course debuted at Cave of the Winds in Manitou Springs this month it attracted an unlikely disciple — mountain running legend Matt Carpenter.
The three-story steel frame strung with a spider web of wobbly suspension bridges, bobbing rope nets, swaying strands of cord and other agoraphobic challenges was conceived to appeal to tourists.
Check out these jaw-dropping photos of the Wind Walker Challenge ropes course.
But it held an irresistible allure for Carpenter, who is fiercely competitive (he holds almost every mountain running record in the country) and has issues with heights.
“My knees are shaking already,” he said on a recent morning as he climbed into the course.
Each climber wears a harness hooked to the steel frame, so you can’t fall more than a few inches.
“And kids and parents love it,” said course supervisor Don Weeks. “You can push yourself to any level of challenge.”
That’s how Carpenter got hooked. He had seen the frame rise while running in the area. As soon as the course opened, he took his 8-year-old daughter Kyla for a trial run of the ropes.
“She schooled me,” he said. “She was swinging like a monkey while I was holding onto a pole for dear life.”
But Carpenter tends to fixate on a challenge until he bests it. He is so competitive that he once made his wife sell her Ducati motorcycle for fear that he would keep pushing himself on it until he died in a wreck.
He returned to the ropes course again and again, shakily working through the simple challenges on the second level to airier bridges on the third level.
The employees joked that no one could hug a pole quite like Carpenter.
“Tease away,” Carpenter said. “I didn’t win the Pikes Peak Marathon on my first attempt, either.”
On a recent visit, he was ready to attempt the most hair-raising routes, which jut out above Williams Canyon.
“I consider myself a mentally strong person,” he said with a nervous grin. “But this freaks me out.”
A 12-year-old boy stepped ahead of him, swinging across a 20-foot procession of U-shaped ropes hung 70-feet in the air.
“OK,” Carpenter said. “If he did it, I have to.”
He silently stepped out onto the swinging rope, trembling, white knuckled, and edged forward, one step at a time.
Finally he reached the far side, and raised his skinny arms in the air. “Ha! Ha! It’s mine!” he yelled.
Later, both feet on the ground, he was planning his next visit.
“I want to eventually do all of these with no hands,” he said. He took a deep breath, still a little shaky, and added, “You don’t get that rush from running.”
Wind Walker Challenge Course
Info: Caveofthewinds.com
Who can do it: Anyone taller than 48 inches.
Cost: $15 per person, $10 with cave tour.
Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Fridays to Sundays through May; 9 a.m.-9 p.m. daily after Memorial Day.
—
Contact the writer: 636-0223
PHOTO: Izabella Duhon, 12, and her brother, Keegan, 10, of Altus, Okla., make their way through the third floor of the Wind Walker Challenge Course at The Cave of the Winds on Friday. The three-story rope course recently opened at the Manitou Springs attraction. Christian Murdock, The Gazette
Weather
Current Contests
