ZipRider
Photos: Scott Sine and courtesy of Park City Mountain Resort
There’s some seriously fun business cooking on Wanship’s Funny Avenue. Across the street from the Rail Trail, yes — on Funny Avenue — Eric Cylvick’s family business is taking off. Yet even as sales are rising, his business is dropping.
The longtime Park City Mountain Resort ski patroller, snow safety director and river guide is also the inventor of ZipRider® which can be found anywhere from Park City to Switzerland to Siberia. Strap yourself into a ZipRider® harness suspended from a cable, and you’re on a screaming-fast ride, dropping down a mountainside. You might have seen the Ziprider® at Park City Mountain Resort — or the two at Utah Olympic Park. “My wife Sarah calls it ‘No Sweat Adrenalin’ and now we’ve trademarked the phrase,” Cylvick says.
Ziplines have been fixtures in backyards for generations. Dads the world over have for generations. Dads the world over have stuck an eyebolt into the side of a garage and another into a tree, and rigged up a wheel and handle to ride on a cable strung between the two points. Kids have grabbed the handle on the wheel and zipped along the cable, letting go just before slamming into the tree or garage.
Eight years ago, Sarah and Eric rode a zipline suspended over the Monte Verde Rainforest in Costa Rica. As they glided over treetops, an idea was born. “It didn’t take long to see we could bring that kind of product back to the states,” Cylvick explains. “I was already on the hunt to find something new for ski resorts in the summertime.”
Although he made his living making sure ski slopes and river rafting guests were safe, Cylvick’s background was in engineering. He went to work in his backyard, stringing cable between two trees and trying out various trolley designs. The key was to come up with a foolproof automatic braking system to slow the rider as he approached the bottom terminal. “I was the crash test dummy,” Cylvick laughs. All through the summer of 2001, Cylvick tinkered with his designs, coming up with a braking system and other devices that he had patented and which now lie at the heart of ZipRider®.
And how fast is business “dropping?” The Extreme ZipRider® at Utah Olympic Park is the steepest of the ten ziplines now in place, dropping 34 degrees, with riders reaching speeds of 50 miles an hour. The gnarliest? Cylvick says it’s the 5,400-foot line at Icy Strait Point in Alaska, which drops 1,300 feet.
Closer to home on Funny Lane, the Cylvicks are now at work on what may be as many as seven more rides for European resorts, others in Asia, and still more in North America. This family business is zipping right along.
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