Postcards From Beyond The Edge
Sun Herald
Sunday October 3, 1999
DESPITE the expense and perceived risks, ``living on the edge" is no longer enjoyed by a select group of adrenalin junkies.
In the past five to 10 years there has been a significant swing from conventional sports to the more extreme activities like whitewater rafting, abseiling and canyoning.
Remarkably, the numbers of participants are expected to escalate despite the tragedy at Interlaken in Switzerland where 13 young Australians were among the 21 drowned in a supervised canyoning expedition.
``In 1996 when a number of climbers died trying to climb Everest, the Australian School of Mountaineering was inundated with inquiries about mountaineering," operations director Glen Nash said.
The school, which operates canyoning tours in the Blue Mountains, opened in 1981 with only three instructors.
It now has 12 full-time instructors and the same number of part-time and casual staff. Group trips (6-8 people in each) operate daily throughout the season in Australia which runs from October to April.
Considering the daily numbers who swim, abseil and slide down the mountainside, the safety record remains high, with only four deaths in the last 17 years all occurring on unsupervised outings.
Ninety per cent of the business of Peregrine Adventures, which began operating 23 years ago, is adventure by destination where the focus is more on culture and environment. But eating into that is the demand for more high-risk activities like ballooning and rock climbing.
While soft adventure travel is worth around $30 million to Peregrine, the extreme end of sport, which generates between $1.5-$2 million, is growing.
With no official statistics available, company director Michael Roche guessed that figure is well above $40 million across Australia.
He said there are two reasons for the enormous growth in extreme adventure: ``We are more exposed to it. We see people climbing Mount Everest, walking to the South Pole. It's accessible.
``Second," he says, ``while it's not only a way of seeing the world, it's something that challenges your thinking and develops you as a person."
So what's happened to bungee jumping which was all the rage a decade ago? It's still as popular as ever, especially in the country where it was invented. Only now the thrill is slightly more hair-raising.
In Queenstown, New Zealand's adventure capital, you can spend the morning spinning out on the Shotover jet, enjoy a helicopter ride into Skippers Canyon and shoot the rapids of the Shotover River in a raft before tackling the sickening 134m bungee leap over a gorge from the new AJ Hackett Nevis high-wire jump.
If that's not enough, says Mark Quickfall from Queenstown Combos, which runs the tour known as the Awesome Foursome, you can parapente (parachute off a hillside), tandem skydive, or go heliskiing.
And just opened is Fly By Wire, the world's first adventure ride offering full pilot control of a high-speed tethered plane, suspended from 55m overhead, which allows high speed flight (up to 200km/h) anywhere within the half hemisphere below it.
But while the activities have become more challenging, safety has become much tighter, says Quickfall.
``About 15 years ago people used to raft in shorts, T-shirts and sandshoes. Now it's wetsuits, booties, lifejackets and helmets."
TOP FIVE ADVENTURE SPORTS AND BEST LOCATIONS
Whitewater rafting
NZ, Victoria, Tully (Queensland).
Zambesi River (Zambia/Zimbabwe)
Rock Climbing
NZ, Himalayas.
Bungy Jumping
NZ, Victoria Falls.
Abseiling
Blue Mountains.
Canyoning
Cairns, Blue Mountains, and throughout the US.
Mountain-bike riding
is also growing in populatiry.
© 1999 Sun Herald
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