The sole purpose of our trip to Alaska was to do the zipline tour in Ketchikan after reading about it on CNN.com.

The Alaska Rainforest Sanctuary zipline caters to the cruise ships and is actually owned by one of the cruise lines, so if you are not on a cruise and want to do this, call a few days ahead of time as they will need to check their schedule to try and fit you in. I called the day before to let them know my intentions and then had to call the next morning to see if they had room for us.

It is expensive ($150 per person) and lasts about 1.5 hours if your group is good and your guides don't need to help anybody. For those that may not be very strong, they can attach a different harness which provides more body support.

It starts w/ your guides (ours were Charles & Chelsea) making you sign the waiver forms and then outfitting you with raingear, harnesses, helmets, and gloves. After a brief background of the equipment, you are driven to the "ground school" platform. A small zipline to provide training, then it's on to the real stuff.

The lead guide always goes first to "catch" you on the other end, basically to inform you if you need to speed up or slow down. Then they attach you to the platform and remove you from the zipline. Once everyone in your group is on the platform, the trail guide comes down. They also radio each other to inform them when they are ready for the next person.

There are 3 rope bridges, with the highest about 120 feet off the ground and 7 ziplines. The longest is about 680 feet long and lasts approximately 22 seconds. We did see a black bear while walking on one of the rope bridges that was searching for salmon in the creek below us.

There was a steady light rain during our tour which added to the alure of the "rainforest" so the pictures are not the best, but you can get an idea of the height of the platofrms and length of the ziplines.

Don't worry about falling as you are attached to the platforms and ziplines at all times by two safety lines.

We had a great time and our guides were informative, interesting, and very nice.

If you are going to be in Ketchikan for a few hours, I highly recommend the 20 minute drive to do this.