When Mr. Mustang and I first created this website, I started compiling activities that our guest can do while staying on the island. On my list was the classics like kayaking and hiking however after a quick google search of ‘things to do at San Juan Island’, I didn’t realize ziplining was one of them.
Zipline San Juan started in 2012 and they only operate from Spring to early Autumn. Mr. Mustang and I never did a zipline before and I felt that one of these days when traveling to Roche Harbor we’ll need to give it a go. One of these days arrived and when we came up to Roche Harbor in late September, we decided to do a sunset zipline tour.
You first book your tour through their website where they typically have 3 or 4 times to choose from - we booked the 5pm slot. You can’t drive directly to the zipline tour but first park off of 1st Avenue in downtown Friday Harbor and get picked up by their shuttle. From the shuttle we are transported through the interior of the island and over a gravel path that shouldn’t even be defined as a road. After a bumpy drive, we arrive at their camp with a dense forest behind it. We had two tour guides for our group and their charisma alone made me feel the zipline was worth it. They give a quick and quippy safety talk and proceed to suit us up in our harnesses.
After two practice runs, a quick walk through the forest and a landslide of south park jokes later, we arrived at our first real zipline. Our tour was a medium size group of 10 people and being the eager beaver, I volunteered to go first nearly every time. The first zip was modest where we were about 25-30ft in the air. I tried to take pictures while on the zipline but I couldn’t control my direction so a good chunk of photos were of blurry branches:
However since I was first most of the time I did get a lot of photos of Mr. Mustang ziplining.
Around the 3rd zipline, we were required to climb a 30ft tall ladder to a tree platform and that’s when a slight fear of heights creeped in. A way I found to remove the fear and trust our gear was to dangle over the edge of the platform instead of clinging to the tree. I got so comfortable leaning over the edge that I took multiple photos of my shoes barely touching the platform with a 30ft drop below us (though it’s hard to tell from the photos).
There were a couple of tricks the guides told us we could try like the ‘trust fall’ where we stand on the edge backwards and lean back off the platform to fall. When I tried it, I felt disappointed because it wasn’t as thrilling as I thought it would be since the harness catches you before you feel any real drop. Another trick was a ‘cannonball’ where you just curl up to spin faster when ziplining. We weren’t allowed to hang upside down for any of these ziplines because the harnesses weren’t built to catch you at that particular angle.
Overall I enjoyed the sensation of ziplining and felt the San Juan Zipline course one is a perfect beginner course. The tour guides were an absolutely thrill to be with making light hearted jokes and quips but the actual zipline experience, we felt the course was a tad overpriced. We paid $86/person for this track and honestly I feel it should've only cost $45 - 50/person. The course was a tad small for the price with only 8 ziplines to do and wasn’t as thrilling as I originally thought it would be. Mr. Mustang and I were expecting to be 100 or 150ft in the air but instead we barely broke 60ft and most of the ziplines we were only 30ft in the air.
Would I recommend our guest to go to this course? Maaayyyybbbeee? If you never been ziplining before and are ok with the $90 price tag then do it. It was certainly something Mr. Mustang and I can cross off our ‘things to do in the San Juan Islands’ list but once was enough - we won’t be back to do it again...at least, not this zipline course.
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