The Rope Swing

Dan and family were up the other week and he helped me put up a rope swing. I initially planned to use the boulders next to the lake for the take-off but we found, if you jumped from the upper boulder, the rope would swing downwards and would crash you into the lower boulder. So to fix that I built a platform off the upper boulder that gave you enough height to miss the lower one.

To do that I had to attach a 2x10 to two trees.

The 12 foot long beam was too heavy for me to hold in place so I rigged a rope to hold it.

I clamped it while I drilled and lag bolted it to the trees. Broke two bolts trying to get the 7" long lag bolts in - no problem except I had to run to Home depot each time to buy another.

But here it is all done. Nice view and it is high.

I also built a chicken plank and handrail to make getting out of the water a little easier.

I rigged up an old crab net to make a hook to catch the rope and pull it up to the platform.

I tried it and found that you had to hold your feet up so they didn't hit the water on the out swing and slow you down. I thought I was doing pretty good until Kylie and Bowen came up to use it - boy did they get some distance.

Kylie used it so much she got blisters on her hands.

Bowen got good distance too.

And had some great water entries. He got a 9.5 for this one.