RIEGELWOOD—Just outside of Wilmington, an adventure land in the trees awaits.
With a Tarzan swing, a suspended surfboard and zip lines that reach as high as 60 feet above ground, Cape Fearless Extreme sits on 25-acres of land in Reigelwood.
There is no shortage of variety at this tree-bound park. The facility features five courses that span 1.5-miles above ground.
“We have a Tarzan swing, we have suspended barrels, we have a number of suspended bridges and all of the bridges move,” Ronald England, Cape Fearless Extreme’s managing partner said. “We have cargo nets, we have cable bridges and we have a surfboard in the sky.”
England helped bring a similar adventure park to the trees in Pennsylvania in 2011. The only problem? Pennsylvania’s long winters. “We used to joke all the time to be able to pick up that whole thing and move it south,” England said.
Then the joke turned into reality and he picked up his life to begin the project. Though it’s a 30-minute drive from the city, England said people probably spend 30-minutes on College or Military Cutoff just trying to get across town.
“We happened to be really lucky to find a piece of property that had good old growth trees in it,” England said. “One of thing that differentiates us from most of the parks is we’re built entirely in the trees and we didn’t have to put any telephone poles in the ground.”
Using non-chemically treated logs and no telephone phones, Cape Fearless Extreme aims to give adventurers a realistic experience of being in the trees.
“We want people to get that lost in the woods kind of feeling,” England said.
CLiC-iT courses
In the aerial adventure park world, England said the industry standard is a double clipping system that leaves room for error.
Cape Fearless Extreme uses CLiC-iT, a “state of the art safety system” that connects mechanically. “You’re always clipped into a lifeline,” England said. “It has to click back on the steel lifeline to open up.”
This prevents people from accidentally unclipping both carabiners from their line.
“Its a much more expensive system but it helps us to sleep more peacefully at night,” he said. “We worked for a long time to try to fool it, we’ve tried really hard to break it.”
Over 1.1-miles of the course are equipped with this safety feature. In total, Cape Fearless Extreme offers five courses, with one designed for children ages 10 and under.
Cape Fearless Extreme suggests reservations before visiting the park, open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Children 10 and under can enjoy a two-hour session for $25 and adults can book a four-hour course for $50.
Cape Fearless Extreme is hosting a ribbon cutting ceremony on park grounds Saturday, June 16. England said the event is being catered with homestyle cooking from Heart’N’Soul and begins at 11 a.m.
For more information on the aerial adventure park, Cape Fearless Extreme’s website.
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