Tom’s Tips – Kauai Zipline Tours

Kauai has followed a general pattern over the course of years regarding activities of an adventurous nature. Kauai was the very first island to offer helicopter tours of any kind. With other activities such as ATV rides and Zipline adventures, Kauai was not the first island to offer these but Kauai was the island that jumped on both of these industries and really made them popular in the state. Ziplining on Kauai was the most notable example. The first island to offer one was a small course in upcountry Maui but almost immediately afterward a bunch of new courses blossomed on Kauai. This was really the genesis of the zipline frenzy that took Hawaii by storm.

The vast majority of zipline courses offered on Kauai are of super quality and offer visitors the very best in zipline adventures. Any one of these courses could be held up with regards to quality to any other location in the world. Most of these course are ones that traverse, in many cases hundreds of feet over valleys, canyons, gorges and streams. A much lesser percentage of these zipline courses take to the ‘tree-tops’ and zip through the high forests. One of the companies that exclusively specializes in ziplines that zoom through the forest is a company called ‘Just Live’ and is located perhaps 20 minutes away from Lihue near the Koloa area.

The individual zips on this course are not as long as the canyon or valley crossing zips but they are definitely way up in the air (probably about 80′ on most zips). These are a unique experience in comparison to most of the Kauai zipline tours and they are handled in a very different sort of way. Platforms are built high up in the trees and the idea is to zip from one platform to the other. Since you will be traversing these zips with other fellow zipliners a number of you will end up on the same platform together on a single tree awaiting your turn for the next zip. During these times your guides will be clipping you into a safety line on the tree itself so there will be no possibility of falling. You won’t be obtaining the speeds you might reach on the valley crossings but as you zip by stands of pines within 10 feet or so of your flight path it may feel like you are going much faster. These trips are quite fun and I must say that I was quite impressed by the two gals who run this operation who donate a lot of their time to providing free zipline adventures for the grade school children of Kauai. Their intention is to instill confidence in these youngsters and also a sense of team building and cooperation with others in their class.

This of course is just one of the marvelous courses that are found in the zipline community of Kauai and because of their extreme popularity of all of Kauai’s courses we advise that you make your booking early.