While driving in our camper van, my mom said that we were going to a place called Tree Top Challenge in the Tamborine Mountains. I thought it sounded fun, until my mom explained what it was. She said that it was a ropes course in the trees, and it had many other obstacles. I have only done one other course in my life, so this was going to be the second. I was very nervous but excited too. I have never zip lined before and this course had zip lines in it.

We drove to Tree Top Challenge and booked a spot for after lunch. We finished eating and walked to the challenge course. We put on our harnesses and gloves, and we were shown how to use the safety gear. I was already pretty nervous!

After that, we walked onto a bridge and walked all the way to the start of the course. The first challenge was to walk along a cable (like a tight rope) with another cable over our heads to hold on to. The cable that I crossed was about 10 feet above the ground and the next challenges got harder and higher – up to 30 feet above the ground. I was actually quite scared at first because I am afraid of heights! Once I got the hang of it though, it was fun!

I seemed to be good at the challenges, probably because I really persevered and I was enjoying it. That was until we had to pull ourselves backwards. You had to sit in your harness, putting your head in the direction you were going and pull yourself across. I found this difficult because you had to pull your own body weight across the cable. It can hurt your back if you don’t hold your legs up high.

Then there were the zip lines; you have to sit down in your harness, feet first and fly! The first one I did was very scary! You really fly across but I didn’t quite make it to the other side, so I had to pull myself the rest of the way. Once you get the hang of it though, the zip line are much more relaxing than the other challenges!

One of the harder challenges for me were the free-hanging rope ladders. First you had to pull down a 5 kg weight that was attached to the safety line and then attach your harness to it. Since I’m quite small this took my full body weight to pull it! Your carabineer gets attached to a ring and you climb up or down to the next platform. The rope ladder is not attached at the bottom so it swings around every time you take a step. This made it very difficult for me but I made it through slowly but surely.

After this experience, I would like to try other rope and treetop course to compare them. I felt this helped my fear of heights and it turned out to be a very fun day!