Sky Trail debuts at Weirs Beach

WEIRS BEACH — This year is one to celebrate for Lakes Region residents and visitors who like their recreation with a dash of altitude, as 2011 marks the opening of three attractions that offer the chance to climb, walk and balance on an aerial ropes course. Gunstock Mountain Resort in Gilford built one this year and Monkey Trunks will soon open at Funspot in the Weirs.

Daytona Fun Park, also in the Weirs, opened its ropes course three weeks ago and owner Rusty Bertholet said it offers a new amenity to the park he and his wife Kim operate. He added that their ropes course offers an aerial experience distinct from those at Gunstock or Monkey Trunks.

While his competitors use apparatus constructed mostly from timbers or, in the case of Gunstock's course, living trees, Bertholet chose to use a Sky Trail course created by the Michigan-based Ropes Courses, Inc. company. He chose that system because of the safety of its design, which features steel construction and a feature that ensures that the harnesses adventurers wear are always "locked in" to a rail system that will catch them if they slip from any of the 18 different challenges on the course, which range in height up to 50 feet in the air.

The unique safety rail system never requires climbers to unclip from one safety line to another when they transition from one obstacle to the next. "With this system, you're never disconnected," said Bertholet. the system also allows for climbers to stop at various platforms on the course and let another person pass. "You can change direction any way that you want to," he said.

Admittance onto the Sky Trail costs $18 and climbers can spend as much time on the course as they like, workers, who remain on the course whenever there's a person using it, said the average person spends about an hour exploring the challenges. Use restrictions are set in accordance with available harness sizes, anyone taller than 40 inches and weighing less than 300 pounds is able to take to the course.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Sky Trail attracted a large group – the summer staff of the Waterville Valley Recreation Department – which drove to the Daytona Fun Park for a day of team-building exercises. "We were looking for a place which could hold a bunch of people," said Director Rachel Gasowski, and found that the new Sky Trail had what they were looking for.

Bertholet said he started the Daytona Fun Park in 1986. The Sky Trail is build over the miniature golf course. Other amenities include a go-kart track, bumper boats, a trampoline, arcade and a batting cage. "We're always looking to add new and fun things," he said. Referring to aerial ropes courses, he added, "It's one of the newest things out there, it fit easily into the space we have left."

CAPTION for SKY TRAIL in AA:

Beth Russo of Belmont traverses an obstacle on the Sky Trail aerial ropes course, a new amenity at the Daytona Fun Park at Weirs Beach. (Laconia Daily Sun photo/Adam Drapcho)