Forest Flyer
Wrrrrrrrrrrh! Catch the exhilarating whine of metal on metal as you fly through the treetops.
You’ll soar from tree to tree to sky-bridge along the route of Ozone Zipline Adventures. All you need do is take a deep breath, step out into sheer air and you’re up among the birds.
The new zipline zigzags through Camp Kern, a YMCA camp in Ohio’s Warren County, about 10 minutes from Kings Island. Five steel cables criss-cross the forest, and the camp is adding as many as six more lines. Ozone aims to become the largest zipline in the Midwest.
As the leaves fall, you’ll see the terrain from an eagle’s perspective, out to the Little Miami River and far into the forest. With the zipline open into December, there’s time to bundle up and fly above a silent, snowy landscape. Each zipline adventure takes about three hours, with time in between zips to learn about the area’s plants, fossils and history, especially the Ohio Indians who built nearby Fort Ancient.
And there will be time for physics, too — specifically the science behind flying 30 miles per hour on galvanized steel cables.
Ozone is a not-for-profit adventure, whose goal is to raise money to support Camp Kern’s outdoor education programs for Ohio school kids.
“We want to tell the schools that we won’t raise the rates for outdoor programs, ever,” says Jeff Merhige, YMCA Camp Kern executive director. “And we’d like to reduce them.”
Ozone comes from the original name that Carl Kern gave the camp in 1910. Nearly a century later, it seems the perfect name for a zipline that asks you to step out into the ozone with a giant leap of faith and a big gasp of air.
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