Go climb a tree! Rope course set to open soon at heritage oak grove in West Sacramento
Your knees might buckle. Your abs might burn the next day. And it might be a little scary.
That all comes with the terrain at Tree Top Sacramento by Kletterwald, a rope-based obstacle course opening soon within a grove of valley oak trees in West Sacramento.
It’s part recreation, part exercise, part nature appreciation and perhaps part fear immersion for those who may be scared of heights. With most of the courses ranging from 25 to 45 feet off the ground, the park’s guides and owners offered the age-old advice: Don’t look down.
Tree Top Sacramento boasts 113 huge, healthy oak trees, nearly four dozen of which have been fitted to anchor seven courses of varying difficulty.
Visitors are led by guides through a brief “ground training” on a course just a few feet off the ground to learn the ropes — pun intended — and get a feel for the harnesses and safety equipment.
From there, climbers can proceed to the main courses. The “blue” courses are the easiest, “red” courses are a bit more challenging and the “black” course is the toughest.
“You can push yourself, or you can kind of take it easy,” co-owner Catherine Reon said as she offered The Bee a preview of the nearly completed adventure park in early January.
Each course proceeds linearly along a series of challenges that visitors tackle one at a time, and most start with a wood ladder climb of about 10 feet. Guests, grouped up, follow a trained guide as they go through the various obstacles that connect the trees. There are balance beams, hanging platforms, bridges made of spaced out wood planks and dozens of other hurdles to pass, all of which test climbers’ balance and core strength.
Each course begins with a hanging ladder and ends with guests coming back down to earth by zipline.
Reon says balance and getting comfortable with heights are key to succeeding on the courses.
“You’re not on a steady element, it’s in movement while you’re in movement ... all of those things coming together is just really thrilling.”
Adventurers are required to be at least 7 years old, with a minimum height of 51 inches, and a maximum weight of about 250 pounds, based on what the harnesses can safely accommodate.
Rooted in Europe
Tree Top Sacramento represents the first endeavor by the U.S. branch of Kletterwald, an Austrian company that specializes in what it calls parcour tree-canopy rope courses. “Kletterwald” is German for “climbing forest.”
The project was approved by the West Sacramento City Council in early 2018, and is now on track for an early 2020 opening.
Kletterwald USA co-owners Reon and her husband, Kale Wisnia, who together head a Sacramento-based architecture and interior design firm called CRKW, said the family was inspired after visiting a parcour rope course during a trip to Europe with their daughters, then 5 and 8 years old. All four of them “fell in love with it,” she said.
Reon said they wanted to bring something similar to the Sacramento area, taking advantage of the region’s impressive urban canopies.
“It’s an urban environment, but we’ve got this hidden gem of feeling like you’re in the middle of the woods or country,” she said. “It’s unexpected.”
The couple connected with West Sacramento’s parks and recreation department and looked at two possible sites for Tree Top Sacramento. The one they chose, nearing completion at Village Parkway and Lake Washington Boulevard just outside a quiet residential neighborhood, stuck out to them as an “absolutely magical oasis,” Reon said.
Johana Stranner, another co-owner and the director of operations for Kletterwald USA, says the grove is made up of sturdy heritage oak trees. Synonymous with valley oak trees, which are the largest kind of oak trees in California, the Sacramento Tree Foundation defines a heritage oak as “a living native oak tree, several hundred years old that is in good health.”
“We’ve had the blessing to be able to lease this property and work with the city (of West Sacramento) to build in as eco-friendly a way as possible,” Stranner said. “And these trees are up to a couple of hundred years old, and they’re just beautiful ... they’re really stable, which makes it really good to build a course like this, because it’s safe.”
The park is expected to open to the public soon, possibly this month or in February, Reon said. Tree Top Sacramento has hired and trained four guides so far and will likely be open three days a week initially, with Reon saying she hopes to bring on more staff and expand to six days a week by the spring or summer months — peak climbing season as the weather improves.
Stranner says Tree Top Sacramento is intended for groups and could cater to a variety of audiences, from team-building exercises to school field trips to bachelor and bachelorette parties.
Once the park is open to the public, it’ll use an appointment system to ensure the groups can start getting ready to climb as soon as they show up, according to Reon.
The group excursions will last about two hours. Pricing has not yet been finalized, but Reon says that information will be on its website, www.kletterwaldusa.com, when available.
This story was originally published January 16, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
