Just when you thought it was safe to strap yourself into a big, double-chambered plastic ball and roll down a ski slope with no means of controlling your descent, the dangerous side of Zorbing rears its nefarious head. Sun Journal reporter Rebekah Metzler was enjoying one of the perks of her job by previewing the Lost Valley Ski Area's soon-to-open 240-acre Zorbing park.
All was going well as she and a photographer were rolling down a grassy ski run--until their Zorb "bounced off a hay-encased post, went airborne and landed hard several seconds later," fracturing Metzler's back.
There are several measures designed to keep Zorbs from going off-course, and proper air pressure is the key to avoiding the pachinko-style caroms, but the mishap is pretty scary nonetheless. It's easy to feel invincible when you're strapped into a cushioned, womb-like bubble, but apparently that's still not enough to protect Zorbers from rare cases of extremely bad luck. There's probably just a millimeter's difference between "broken back" and "most awesome Zorbing run ever." Still, we'd do it in a heartbeat.
We love the outdoors and that makes it easy to love zorbing. And while the standard issue experience of rolling down a hill at 30 miles per hour in a massive plastic sphere is pretty extreme, the folks at Sphere Mania have taken the sport to a whole new level.
The UK zorbing company offers the traditional harness sphereing, where two people are strapped into the ball before being rolled down a hill, as well as a more unique way to zorb: Aqua sphereing. The wet and wild roll puts up to three people in a water-filled zorb where they'll slide and splash as the ball travels down the hill.
Zorbing involves hurling oneself down a hill in a plastic bubble. The extreme sport invented by those death-mocking New Zealanders makes its way to the United States with the newly opened Zorb Smokey Mountains. The site is about 30 miles southeast of Knoxville, Tennessee.
The resort has curvy and straight alleys carved into the hillside for visitors to bounce down, safely encased in a sphere of air (or water). It sort of reminds us of the times we dreamt about getting trapped inside a pinball machine. And loving it.
