Asheville Adventure: Navitat Zip Lining

Tuesday’s Asheville vacation adventure took us into the mountains for a day of zip lining!

When Ryan reserved a mountain home for us just outside of Asheville, we asked my family for activity suggestions and when my dad brought up zip lining, we all loved the idea and began researching. It quickly became clear that Navitat Canopy Adventures was the way to go for a zip lining experience in the Blue Ridge Mountains and we couldn’t wait to head out for a day of fast zips and fun outside in the cool fall weather.

Navitat is located just north of Asheville and when we arrived, we were greeted by the friendliest people who took us through important safety protocol before we spent 10 minutes or so waiting outside. We took advantage of the outdoor activity area and passed the time with ring toss, giant Jenga and cornhole before our canopy tour began at 11:30 a.m.

We could tell we were in for a treat right away when we met our guides for the day. Summer and Rachel were enthusiastic and charismatic and filled our tour with humor while educating us about the trees, plants and mountains around us. They kept the 2.5 hour tour incredibly entertaining and informative.

Ryan always says I’m like a kid at summer camp during any kind of tour because I have a million questions and love learning as much as I can, so the unexpected perk of learning about our surroundings was wonderful to me! (I also loved the mnemonic devices Rachel shared for identifying poison ivy: “Leaves of three, let it be. If you see a red spot, be careful, it’s hot!”)

The zip lining adventure began with an 1,100 foot zip and it was the perfect way to start our day. I felt my nerves bubble up as Summer clipped us in and set us up.

The platforms and zips at Navitat were easily the nicest I’ve ever seen and felt incredibly secure. Even still, it’s hard not to feel a little rush of nerves before you fly through the air more than 350 feet above the ground!

As you may have noticed in the above picture, there are two side-by-side “racing style” zip lines at Navitat which allowed us to go down the zips at the same time as another person. (FYI for those interested, we did the Blue Ridge Experience at Navitat.)

All zip lining I’ve done in the past was always solo, so it was really neat to be able to zip at the same time as someone else! The side-by-side zips definitely added to our enjoyment, especially when Ryan and Ross decided to race down the final zip of the day. Rachel and Summer were very safety conscious but were also super cool about allowing us to make the most of our experience and provided the group with zips for going faster down the zip lines (not that you needed to since we reached speeds of up to 65 mph)!

As you can see, Ryan kicked my butt when we went down the second 3,600 foot zip together! I tried my best to follow Rachel’s tips to catch him, but the laws of physics cannot be denied and he smoked me! Ryan and Ross were much more evenly matched in bodyweight and flew down the final 2,300 foot zip neck-in-neck almost the entire time!

Once our tour was done, we were all on a serious high for the rest of the day and could not stop talking about the amazing time we had at Navitat! It is absolutely worth a visit if you are ever in the Asheville area and on the lookout for some adventurous fun!