Zip through the summer at Echo Bluff Park in Spring Valley

Up for some high-flying adventure and team building this summer?

Echo Bluff Park, set in the woods in rural Spring Valley, offers a zip line and challenge course.

“It’s in the woods. You just see trees,” Echo Bluff Camp Director Samantha Brown said of the zip line. “It’s a little park out in the middle of nowhere. It’s 87 acres of hiking trails, and the challenge course and zip line are right in the middle of the woods, so that’s kind of cool.”

To use the 250-foot-drop zip line, participants sit on the end of a platform and jump off, so it’s more of a pendulum swing.

“They go down and they come back,” she said, noting it’s different from a skyline zip line in which a person travels tree to tree.

Echo Bluff’s zip line is intended for groups, Brown said, as it’s attached to a 10-obstacle challenge course completed in the air. Echo Bluff has hosted companies and organizations for team-building exercises. It’s also popular with their campers.

“Campers love it. It gives them confidence, teamwork and camaraderie,” she said.

Echo Bluff’s website says the zip line and challenge course provide an emotionally and physically sound environment that allows for informed and supportive risk-taking opportunities that help participants develop a higher level of self-worth, increased confidence and the willingness to take appropriate risks and to grow from new experiences.

Zip liners should dress for the weather, Brown said, and wear closed-toed, comfortable shoes.

Zip lining is by appointment only. To register, visit www.echobluff.org. Echo Bluff also offers hiking, paintball, nine-hole disc golf, archery and an ice skating rink.

Echo Bluff Park is in Hall Township, off Route 29 between Spring Valley and DePue. The park lies on the land of a once-booming mining town named Loceyville (founded in 1877) and later renamed Marquette, according to its website. Loceyville/Marquette was a “mine camp,” and the owners of the mining companies built stores, taverns and a school for the exclusive use of their employees. Row houses were built, and the population reached 2,000 during the town’s peak.

Echo Bluff Park

12641 3065 E. St., Spring Valley

815-447-2115 | www.echobluff.org