When we arrived in Thunder Bay, I noticed brochures for a place that we could go zip-lining near the city. It wasn’t on our itinerary, but I kept thinking about it and kept the brochure in my bag.

I kept bringing it up to the others, hinting at the fact that it was such a tease to see this brochure, and not actually go through with the experience. So, on the second last day, we brought it up to our guide Mike, from Epic Adventures.

He went out of his way to move some things around the next day, and build it into our busy itinerary. We had to miss out on walking a trail down to a Bald Eagle’s nest near Hurkett Cove, but we were lucky enough to see one swoop down right in front of us during out shortened visit to the bird conservation area.

It would have been interesting to see an eagle’s nest, but I was a bit more excited to do some flying of my own in Eagle Canyon!

With that, we made our way to the park. Upon arriving, we signed in, hopped on a buggy and started driving to the top. If we had some more time on our hands, we could have hiked to the top, and walked across two long suspension bridges, one of which being the longest in Canada.

As we arrived to the zip-lining platform, we were able to take a quick walk out onto the suspension bridge for a few photos.

But, there was something more important at hand–flying down the canyon on a cable.

I quickly volunteered to go first, without a second thought. I was super excited, and ready for some adrenaline. I climbed the platform and got all strapped into my harness. I had to wear water shoes, because I only had flip flops on, so they were secured in a small bag that would hang below me.

I walked up the stairs to the launching area, and sat on what was basically  little swing. It attached to the zip-line, and I gripped onto the handle bar above.

In front of me was a 175 foot drop to jagged rocks and a river far below. Individual rock columns spiked up sporadically along the edges, and vegetation grew on the ground beneath. It was a wide canyon, and there was nothing in front of my feet but space and a long way down.

“3… 2… 1… Fly!”

My instructor called out the countdown and I was ready to go. I didn’t even take a moment to second-guess the decision to basically jump off a mountain, I simply kicked my feet forward and started to fly.

As the platform disappeared from under my feet, I tried to let out a loud “Woohoo!”, but mostly just took a large gulp of the air that was rushing at my face. Instead I made a huge smile and leaned back as far as I could. I dangled my neck back, and turned around to look at the ground rushing by far below.

I wanted to spend as much of the ride looking below me, as possible, to try to get the adrenaline high of being so high in the air. My eyes started to water in the wind, and I was rushing toward the landing pad.

I started swinging my feet around as I neared the end, wanting to do it all over again. It was an awesome rush and the perfect ending to our North shore of Lake Superior adventure trip.

I would do the Eagle Canyon zip-line again in a second, and hope to try other zip-lines around the world, as I continue my travels.

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Thanks to Michele Peterson for the images!

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