High-Flying Fun West of Portland
Safely tethered, you’ll fall head over heels for these aerial obstacle courses.
Ted Katauskas
Kate Loftesness
Tree to Tree Adventure Park
At Tree to Tree Adventure Park, you’ll find half a dozen routes color-coded and named like ski runs. But instead of being paths down a hill, these routes take adventure-seekers high up in the trees — that’s the name of the game at this aerial obstacle course that combines the childhood thrill of tree climbing with zip lines, rope and tire swings, trapezes, ladders and tightropes.
People come to Hagg Lake to boat, bicycle and swim, so why not another outdoor adventure?
Julie Beres
The brainchild of entrepreneurs Julie and Gerry Beres, transplants from upstate New York, the 26-acre park opened in 2010, and its strict safety protocol (guests wear helmets and climbing harnesses that are double-tethered to an overhead wire) is modeled after a similar course in the Adirondacks. The facility’s Aerial Adventure Park has six levels and more than 60 obstacles total, while the Ziptastic Zipline tour has a 1,200-foot run, in addition to a 40-foot rappel.
“These parks are really popular in the United Kingdom and France and only recently moved across the pond and into Canada and the United States,” explains Julie, a former real estate developer who decided to tap into the market for aerial adventure in tree-blessed Oregon. And Hagg Lake, a 1,200-acre trout-stocked reservoir in North Willamette Valley wine country, provided the ideal setting. “People come to Hagg Lake to boat, bicycle and swim, so why not another outdoor adventure?” she asks.
Pumpkin Ridge Zip Tour
About 25 miles north of Tree-to-Tree Adventure Park, Pumpkin Ridge Zip Tour is also capitalizing on thrill-seekers’ need to get up in the forest canopy. Husband-and-wife team Eric and Jennifer Marter, who helped design Tree-to-Tree, manage the zip tour park and the two-hour, reservation-only tours it offers. Visitors fly through the trees as high as 120 feet in the air on the property’s seven zip lines. You can get off the ground and stay on your own two feet with the three suspension bridges Pumpkin Ridge Zip Tours also boasts.
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