Inflatable Kayak Blog

We’re here for the 2008 Outdoor Retailer Show, but till it begins, here’s more about the area near Salt Lake City.

After lunch on Monday, it was time to play a little at Snowbird Resort. Two things we wanted to try while at the lodge were the Zipline and the Alpine Mountain Slide. We had seen people riding Ziplines on TV and it always looked like so much fun. You climb a tower and are strapped in to a chair and when they open the door you fly out and down a cable zipping along until it’s stopped by giant springs at the bottom. When we got off the Zipline we took the chairlift back up to try out the slide. The Alpine sled is plastic with small wheels and a steering lever that goes down a slide much like a mini luge track. You can propel yourself down the slide at a speed that’s right for you. These were both so much fun we rode each of them three times.

To end out the day, we took the tram to the top one more time to see if we could get some more pictures. Of course we couldn’t resist one more hike out to a patch of snow. On the way, we saw a mule deer gazing on the mountainside. Going down there was much easier than the extremely steep climb back to the tram. Breathing in the high altitude slows you down a bit, too. We met a hiker who had hiked up the mountain. We were breathing harder than he was. Turns out, he’s an active marathon runner in training. We learned about his exploits and he asked us about our inflatable and folding kayaks. To top it off, we saw more mule deer on the ride down in the tram. Wow, what a day!

More fun and scenic adventures are on tap for Tuesday, then the open-air demo portion of the show begins Wednesday, when we’ll be paddling some kayaks at Pineview Reservoir.