4/17/2002: River swing

[Joe]

Originally posted by Undertoad
In my day, we would go swim in the creek which ran next to my neighborhood, and there were swings LIKE this, but none so long. What did y'all have? [/b]

Never had a rope swing over water that I could call my own.

BUT

In 1996 I took a summer job in an unnamed National Recreation Area. Some of the employees would somtimes "have a few" then sneak down to a nearby erector-set style bridge over a deep sandstone canyon. We'd rappel off the safety railing down to one of the concrete footings, then send a guy out on belay to secure a rope maybe forty feet out or so to the steel under the structure. He'd return with the rope, then we'd take turns clipping in and cutting loose over the canyon below. Whoever was swinging would trail a slack rope, and we had a jumar haul system to get him back to the start point when he was done.

Doing this in the dark, lit only by dim headlamps with red filters, would give me vertigo and I'd usually only swing 3 or 4 times before I'd want to stop.