When I was asked to go ziplining in Croatia, in my mind I was picturing the type of flying fox activity that you do at school camp, or at a water park. You know, the ones that are about 10 metres off the ground and don’t require any safety gear or skill? I was wrong. In my defence, I was on a boat in the middle of the Adriatic sea and had probably more than my fair share of cocktails the night before as well as mild sunstroke.

I didn’t even have an appropriate outfit to wear – denim shorts, a singlet top and water shoes wouldn’t have been my first choice! To cut a long story short, once we had hiked to the top of what felt like the highest mountain ever (or ‘death mountain’ as I affectionally remember it), reality started to kick in when we were given our safety harnesses and helmets to assemble. It was at this point I realised I had made a mistake. Whilst I am not the classic ‘scared of heights’ type of human, I have wussed out on rock climbing before. I love rollercoasters or things where my own skill won’t be the cause of my own death, but if the rollercoaster kills me – that’s totally fine. The zipline guide demonstrated how to put our harnesses on and sarcastically asked if anyone wants to be harnessed in by them ‘like a child’. Everyone laughed but I shot my hand up immediately – I wasn’t going to fall to my death because I didn’t tie my harness up properly! I still can’t believe the other 20 death seekers laughed at me for being harnessed in like a child! They clearly had a death wish. After being harnessed in we were shown how to zipline on the practice line in the scary death mountain forest. My feet were sweating in sheer terror by this stage. I soon learned I was responsible for applying the break to the zipline at the exact right time so I wouldn’t smash into the side of the mountain. In all honesty, I received praise from the guides for my technique on the practice line, but when I get nervous I seem to forget everything (usually how to speak, as evidenced here, so I was terrified of when it came to the real deal I would forget all my scientific training. That being two minutes of a Croatian man yelling to a group of 20 hungover tourists. 

We climbed to the first line, and the guide explained that this was the fastest of the entire track, it is the longest and it goes up to 70km in speed they exclaimed proudly. By this stage I think my brain was sweating…we had caught the tail end of the group in front of us finishing their turns on the line, and the noise this thing was making sounded like a Formula 1 race car. It was too late to turn around so at this point my only option was to either jump off the side of death mountain, or attempt the zip line and inadvertently jump off the side of death mountain.

Enter my hero

The zipline guide had to go across to the other side and set up the catchment area for us so he mentioned someone could ride tandem with him to get to the other side. I don’t think I even hesitated, the poor fellow on our tour who was legitimately scared of heights didn’t even get to open his mouth before I was hooking myself into the guide’s line. After the guide made some childish jokes about our suspicious position together on the zipline (I still maintain I would rather be laughed at than dead by my own ziplining brake hand), we were on our way! I have never screamed so hard in my life – and literally the night before I thought we were targeted in a terror attack in a nightclub in Croatia – it turns out the bar had just caught on fire, but even then I didn’t scream.

When we got to the other side the guide told me because there were two of us, the combined weight makes it even faster meaning we achieved around 90kms an hour. I didn’t care at this point, I had survived the death mountain ride. Only 20 more lines to go before it was over…

After the first line I decided to try myself and was actually okay at it, thus meaning I could start to relax a little and enjoy the rest of the day as I figured I probably wasn’t going to kill myself – the safety gear might have (who knows how legit this whole operation was?) but at least I wasn’t going to flatten myself into the side of the mountain at 70kms an hour!

Lessons learned?

When asked if you want to do up your own safety gear or be harnessed in by a guide ‘like a child’ – always choose ‘like a child’, always.