FAYETTEVILLE, W.Va. -- These days, you need a good cable connection to take in the sights along the rim of the New River Gorge.

Ace Adventure Resort got the trend off the ground last year, when it opened a seven-stage, 2,000-foot zipline course/canopy tour along its stretch of clifftop and forest near Minden.

But no one has more New River Gorge cable access than Adventure West Virginia's TreeTops on the Gorge Canopy Tour, which opened Friday with a mile-long zipline course through the forest adjacent to the fabled whitewater and climbing canyon.

It's not for couch potatoes.

The tour involves 10 treetop-to-treetop zipline crossings of up to 800 feet from platforms crafted to provide minimum damage to the trees on which they are perched, but give maximum views of the forest below.

Ziplines are a series of steel cables to which small tandem trolley rigs are attached. Canopy tour participants, who wear full-body climbing harnesses, are clipped onto the trolleys and zip from platform to platform.

At several points on the tour, the ziplines are more than 70 feet off the ground, and participants are sliding at speeds approaching 35 miles per hour. To brake for a landing on a treetop platform, zipline riders press a thickly gloved palm against the cable and apply pressure.

In addition to the ziplines, the course includes the crossing of five narrow Indiana Jones-style suspension bridges and three short hiking trails.

Sturdy nylon lanyards attached to the climbing harnesses are clipped onto the cable at all times as a safety precaution when canopy tour participants are standing on the treetop platforms and crossing the suspension bridges.

"We start in a deciduous forest that's just now starting to bud out, then descend into an evergreen forest of hemlock and rhododendron along Mill Creek, which we cross eight times," said Geoff "Tiny" Elliott, a veteran whitewater guide who now guides on the canopy tour. "You get the full spectrum of the forest we have here in the Gorge." 

Each canopy tour group consists of two guides and no more than eight guests. After donning and adjusting climbing harnesses and helmets, participants are issued thick leather gloves and taken to a training zipline -- a short, low-to-the-ground cable where braking and self-rescue methods are learned and practiced.

Then it's off to the first platform and the start of the canopy tour.

One guide crosses each zipline first, so he can signal participants when to begin braking, then assist them onto the treetop platform, while the second guide makes sure everyone is securely attached to the trolley and ready to slide.

The concept of using a zipline to tour a unique natural area got its start decades ago in the rainforests of South America and Central America, where scientists studying tropical canopy life used cable-mounted pulley systems as a low-impact way to collect data and make observations at treetop level. Later, ziplines were used to promote ecotourism in fragile rain forest environments.

John Walker, founder of Bonsai Design Inc., the company that laid out the TreeTops course and trained its guides, spent weeks climbing trees on the Adventure West Virginia property at Ames Heights to assess the terrain and visualize sites for ziplines, skybridges and treetop platforms.

FAYETTEVILLE, W.Va. -- These days, you need a good cable connection to take in the sights along the rim of the New River Gorge.

Ace Adventure Resort got the trend off the ground last year, when it opened a seven-stage, 2,000-foot zipline course/canopy tour along its stretch of clifftop and forest near Minden.

But no one has more New River Gorge cable access than Adventure West Virginia's TreeTops on the Gorge Canopy Tour, which opened Friday with a mile-long zipline course through the forest adjacent to the fabled whitewater and climbing canyon.

It's not for couch potatoes.

The tour involves 10 treetop-to-treetop zipline crossings of up to 800 feet from platforms crafted to provide minimum damage to the trees on which they are perched, but give maximum views of the forest below.

Ziplines are a series of steel cables to which small tandem trolley rigs are attached. Canopy tour participants, who wear full-body climbing harnesses, are clipped onto the trolleys and zip from platform to platform.

At several points on the tour, the ziplines are more than 70 feet off the ground, and participants are sliding at speeds approaching 35 miles per hour. To brake for a landing on a treetop platform, zipline riders press a thickly gloved palm against the cable and apply pressure.

In addition to the ziplines, the course includes the crossing of five narrow Indiana Jones-style suspension bridges and three short hiking trails.

Sturdy nylon lanyards attached to the climbing harnesses are clipped onto the cable at all times as a safety precaution when canopy tour participants are standing on the treetop platforms and crossing the suspension bridges.

"We start in a deciduous forest that's just now starting to bud out, then descend into an evergreen forest of hemlock and rhododendron along Mill Creek, which we cross eight times," said Geoff "Tiny" Elliott, a veteran whitewater guide who now guides on the canopy tour. "You get the full spectrum of the forest we have here in the Gorge." 

Each canopy tour group consists of two guides and no more than eight guests. After donning and adjusting climbing harnesses and helmets, participants are issued thick leather gloves and taken to a training zipline -- a short, low-to-the-ground cable where braking and self-rescue methods are learned and practiced.

Then it's off to the first platform and the start of the canopy tour.

One guide crosses each zipline first, so he can signal participants when to begin braking, then assist them onto the treetop platform, while the second guide makes sure everyone is securely attached to the trolley and ready to slide.

The concept of using a zipline to tour a unique natural area got its start decades ago in the rainforests of South America and Central America, where scientists studying tropical canopy life used cable-mounted pulley systems as a low-impact way to collect data and make observations at treetop level. Later, ziplines were used to promote ecotourism in fragile rain forest environments.

John Walker, founder of Bonsai Design Inc., the company that laid out the TreeTops course and trained its guides, spent weeks climbing trees on the Adventure West Virginia property at Ames Heights to assess the terrain and visualize sites for ziplines, skybridges and treetop platforms.

"He's an interesting character," said Class VI River Runners managing partner Dave Arnold, whose company is now affiliated with Rivermen and Adventure Mountain River under the Adventure West Virginia umbrella. "He uses a weird combination of art, physics and botany to design his canopy tours, and it really seems to work."

In the United States, Walker has designed canopy tours in Alaska, California, Texas, New Hampshire and in Ohio's Hocking Hills. The TreeTops course is the largest.

Guides on the canopy tours point out the basics of the area's forest types, wildlife and geology. One topic sure to come up on every tour is the infestation of the hemlock woolly adelgid, an insect that is destroying hemlock forests throughout the East.

In the extensive hemlock grove through which the TreeTops tour passes, all hemlocks 4 inches or more in diameter will be inoculated to save them from almost certain death from the pests, which have already arrived in the Gorge. One dollar from each canopy tour ticket sale will be matched by a dollar from Adventure West Virginia and be dedicated to saving hemlocks along Mill Creek.

A week before the TreeTops Canopy Tour opened, more than 1,000 reservations had been booked, with little publicity.

"We're planning to keep it open seven days a week, well into fall," said Brian Campbell, owner of the Rivermen. "We're hoping to stay open in winter, at least on weekends. A canopy tour that opened at a ski area in New Hampshire runs year-round. Zipping through the snow-covered hemlocks and rhododendrons here would be a beautiful experience."

"There were more zips than I expected, and the height made it interesting," said Adam Federico, an Australian snowboard instructor who was in a small group on a pre-opening tour of the course Tuesday.

"I thoroughly enjoyed it," said James Lloyd, a fellow Australian who works with Federico and Fayette County native Melissa Wagner, who was also on the canopy tour, at The Canyons ski resort in Utah. "It was long enough to be interesting, but not too long, and very picturesque. It will be amazing when everything blooms."

Reach Rick Steelhammer at rsteelham...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5169.

If you go

Cost for the TreeTops on the Gorge Canopy Tour is $89. For reservations, call Class VI Mountain River at 1-800-252-7784 or Rivermen at 1-800-545-7238.

Cost for Ace Adventure Resort canopy tour is $75 for adults and $69 for youth. For reservations, call 1-800-787-3982.

The tour is open to anyone age 10 or older in reasonably healthy condition weighing between 70 and 250 pounds. Reservations are strongly recommended for the tour, since a maximum of 144 people a day can travel the course.