Zip It

September 15, 2025

About 80 miles due south of Glacier Bay is Chichagof Island where, at the opening to a large bay called Port Frederick, you will find the tiny village of Hoonah. Hoonah has a population of about 800 people which, as annual headcounts confirm, are outnumbered by grizzly bears on the island by two to one. 

For every man, woman and child on the island there are two large brown bears. Word is the dog and cat population is quite small. Exactly why remains a mystery.

In 2004 a group of 1350 shareholders with ancestral ties to Hoonah formed the Huna Totem Corporation or HTC. These enterprising tribal elders conceived and developed a cruise ship destination near the site of an old Salmon Cannery. We’re talking some big coin. They built two floating docks to accommodate cruise ships, covered gangways, two sets of gondolas, nature trails, gift shops, and restaurants and called it Icy Strait Point.

The whole operation has the look and feel of a very high-end ski resort without skiing or a Native Alaskan Disneyland  in its infancy. Everything about this HTC biz is first rate.

The employees, for example, are pleasant and polite. Most appear Native Alaskan, African American or from some other Ethnic minority. They work seasonally. We spoke with one young man from Brazil who has lived in 5 countries, including Italy, France, Ukraine and Germany and traveled to more than 35. A brother and sister from Michigan, guides on a whale watching boat, seemed to know as much about humpback whales and Orcas as seasoned marine biologists.

So many adventurous young people.

When you arrive on the island, you are cautioned that it is not uncommon to encounter bears. We’re not talking little California black bears; we’re talking large Alaskan brown bears, aka Grizzlies. Should you do so, you are told to yell as loud as you can and to “get large.”

You might think that with so many bears, those big boys would be the scariest thing on the island. Understandable assumption and a good guess, but not so.

No, the scariest thing on the island is the Icy Strait Point Zip Ride. This is “the launch platform where Cathy and I are standing. See the boat? That’s about where it ends. 

Look at us. So naive. So innocent. So carefree. Seems so long ago.

You see, the Icy Strait Zip Line is the world’s largest zip ride. It is 5,495 long, falls 1,330 feet and is higher than the Empire State Building. Six test subjects, I mean tourists, on parallel wires reach speeds of 65 mph on a 25% grade. 

Follow along. I’ll explain how it works. 

First ,you arrive at the Adventure Center. There you board the green Transporter Gondola which does a low-level flyover of an elevated kids’ obstacle course and then winds its way through a dense forest. 

My guess is that bears, standing in the shadows, view the gondolas as not so much as transportation, but an automated  snack vending machine. “That fat nervous one with white hair in car 255 looks good.”

The Tranporter Gondolas take you to Wilderness Landing where you report to the Departure Area, sign several disclaimers and waivers of liability, get weighed, and receive the wrist band by which they can later identify your remains. As I will explain in a moment, the weighing part is critical. Once weighed and tagged, you board the red Sky Rider Gondola to Sky Peak.

I’ve been at some premier ski resorts and never seen a chairlift or gondola suspended so high on a cable so steep as this one. Remember, though the weather when we visited was warm without a breath of wind, normally at this latitude and altitude you can expect winds in excess of 35 mph, gusting to 50. That these gondolas withstand an Alaskan winter is a testament to incredible engineering.

Upon arrival at Sky Peak, you descend down a steep trail to the Launch Platform. The guide, who interestingly does not accompany you, repeats the speech about “yelling and getting large” should you encounter a Grizzly bear on your walk to the launch site. I trailed our team, but Cathy kindly kept back with me. It was a little unsettling to hear a shout from somewhere behind us.

Upon arrival at the launch platform, the friendly guide explains the procedure and issues to those who wish to record their final moments a nifty Go Pro attached to a stick with a wrist band. He tells you to push the black button just before launch and look for the red light which will tell you your Go Pro is activated.

Curiously, I was the only one in our team that opted for the Go Pro. The launch assistants seemed impressed by my decision. I get that a lot.

Once outfitted with the nifty Go Pro, you are invited to make use of the tactically deployed port-a-potties. I opted to forego this which later proved to be a mistake.

Arriving at the platform, you are assigned a launch chute between 1 and 6. Cathy was placed in the inside pole position No. 1 which struck me as an undue advantage. I was assigned Chute No. 2. 

“Out of chute number two on a bull named Mariah”

We then made our first mistake. We watched as the folks in front of us…hmmm…deployed. They shot out of the launch platform like a bat out of hell.

This proved my last use of my smartphone camera. The launch assistants told us that it would not be possible to return to the bear infested woods to retrieve it should we drop it and that most folks found it impossible to reliably hold onto the little sucker, let alone take a selfie, in 65 mph winds.

Sound advice I thougtht, so I carefully zipped mine into my jacket pocket. 

Cathy is not a fan of the cold and took the precaution of buying a stylish ski cap at the gift shop in the Adventure Center This was unfortunate as the launch crew instructed her to remove the cap as it would be ripped off her head by the wind. They did allow her to keep her sunglasses, provided she tighten the grip on the croakies she bought, also in the gift shop, for the occasion.

WHAM!

The team before us disappeared into the forest below and the crew quietly pushed a button to recall our…I guess you would call them slings. Cathy said they more resembled diapers. It was a bit unsettling to see six empty slings race back toward us flapping in the breeze. It seemed much too fast for them to have reached the bottom so I made a mental note to carefully watch that my handler properly cinched me in.

Once the slings returned, we were told to “hop” up into them and sit back. Cathy, the former gymnast, and the other members of our team, had no problem with this hopping assignment. Me? Well…let’s just say it’s likely that my Standing High Jump record of 4” on the President’s Physical Fitness Test at Rincon Valley Junior High has probably held up, despite the years, as the worst ever.

We Jacksons have no hop.

Noting this, my launch assistant tried, but failed, to discretely fit me with a more low slung diaper. This proved problematic later when we were instructed it was critical at both launch and splash down that we raise our legs.

Here’s Cathy awaiting launch.

I should note this and all further photographs are derived from the Go Pro video. The fisheye lens on the Go Pro distorts and can be misleading. This will prove critical later.

Note, Cathy’s careful preparation. The proper form. Legs lifted. Knees flexed. Solid core. Both hands gripping the support straps.

Here’s another look a moment before launch.

Note the hands raised higher on the straps for proper control. You can feel the anticipation, the focus, the concentration, can’t you.

Meanwhile, back in Chair 2, preparation was perhaps a bit too casual. I had activated the Go Pro prematurely and was experimenting with what might be the most flattering camera angles. This might have been a mistake. I don’t know.

It is important to note several things at this point. One, you can see in the lower left corner of each still photo the exact time in the flight sequence it was taken. The photo above was taken at 11:33:18

This one was taken at 11:33:19.

This one at 11:34:00

Look at Cathy. Steely eyed determination. Grim. On task. Pointing to where she intended to land.

Me? Not so much. 

At 11:34:01 Cathy was tightening the grip on her croakies so as not to lose her sunglasses. I was…well…. let’s be honest…maybe not as focused as I should have been.

Here is the moment of launch.

Now, in fairness, remember how I said the Go Pro fisheye lens can be distorting. It’s important to keep this in mind.

A couple of other things bear noting.

First, I had assumed that Cathy and I, being launched simultaneously, would descend simultaneously so that by aiming my handy Go Pro to my left I could capture her excitement at my side. What I neglected to take into consideration was…well…gravity.

While Newton was correct in postulating that two objects dropped simultaneously in a vacuum, where resistance is not a factor, will both fall, regardless of their weight, at the same rate of descent, that is not true outside a vacuum where resistance, in this case, the cradle on the wire, is different. In those circumstances, the heavier object will accelerate faster. And if the heavier object is…oh, I don’t know…let’s say 100 lbs heavier than the other… it will accelerate much faster.

This might explain this photograph taken at 11:35:32, just 3 seconds after launch.

Three things bear noting. First, Cathy’s expression. Second, how well her croakies are holding her sunglasses in place. And three, how just three seconds into the flight I am pulling away from her so fast that I cannot keep her in the frame of the camera.

Here is a shot taken at 11:35:35

And here is a shot taken at 11:35:38.

At this point, it might be good to mention the other thing that I neglected to note in the pre-flight briefing. Your cradle is not, like at the launch platform, fixed in place pointing downhill. It can spin in place so that, let’s say …an unskilled pilot…can, like Maverick in Top Gun, find himself in a flat spin.

Picture this…five people shoot out of their chutes together. Four are in line, each facing downhill. One, the fat guy in Lane No. 2, is sixty yards in front of the rest, spinning wildly out of control.

Look at this Go Pro glimpse. See me? See the ship? I’m going down the damn ride backwards.

Luckily, it occurred to me that I could slow, maybe even bring to a halt, my counterclockwise spin if I whipped my legs in the opposite direction. Kinda like a left handed golf swing.

Release your hips, Rob. Release your hips.

It worked. 

I was able to arrest my spin and fly straight just as the landing zone came into view.

Mind you, at this moment I was still going 60 mph. I thought the guy in black in the lower right hand corner was, like those guys on an aircraft carrier, waving me off for a fly-by and another come around.

The people below the sign looked concerned. They kept frantically pointing up at the sign.

‘LEAN BACK?”

“FEET UP?”

In this low sling?

No way. My ass is never going to clear the flight deck.

Kip, Rob. Kip up, god damn it.

That’s when the brakes took hold. From 65 to zero in 2 seconds.I screeched to a halt, my ass two butt saving inches above the floor.

I made it. My ass intact. 

Seconds passed. It seemed like minutes. I checked my watch.

Then Cathy eased onto the tarmac in perfect form laughing her well suspended ass off. 

She took her new hat from her pocket, put it on, took the Go Pro stick from me, still laughing.

I have that effect on her. It’s a gift.