Gravity Canyon

The ski season has officially kicked off although it is slow going and not a lot of snow at the moment – only 61cm. However, because this is the busy time of year for Ohakune we are getting plenty of special offers and freebies through work. One of the freebies was a bridge swing at Gravity Canyon. I went along with the staff at Kings but James stayed at home (chicken…). Gravity Canyon is about an hour away from Ohakune and they do a bridge swing, a bungy jump and a flying fox off an 80m high bridge over the Rangitikei River. The scenery is amazing it’s such a nice place – that you can appreciate after you have done your activity, not before!
The bridge swing is something that can be done either solo or tandem, but seen as there were 7 of us in our group I volunteered to go solo and I went first! You start by walking out along the bridge to a little gated platform and you put on your harness, the staff (Mel) then hooks you up to the line and opens the gate and suspends you over the edge whilst they take photos like the one above. In my case though the photographer then had to run around to the viewing platform to take some more photos leaving me hanging for a couple of minutes. When all photos were taken Mel asked me how I wanted to do it and when I said ‘I don’t know’ she said ok you’re going NOW and pulled the cord that dropped me. You fall 80m before swinging out to the other side. I only just got a short scream out before I lost all my breath (although face still poised as if screaming!) but when it got to the swing bit it was incredible! The whole thing only lasts around 30seconds and then they hoist you back up to the bridge. It was very scary, I thought about backing out, it was great fun in the end and…it was free!

Check out their website http://www.gravitycanyon.co.nz/activities/swing/videos where you can watch videos of other people doing what I did!