MONTPELIER, Vt. - Never mind the double-black diamond slopes. How about whizzing through the trees on a zipline or careening down the hill on a roller coaster?
Appealing to the adventurous crowd, a number of New England ski resorts have added year-round ziplines and Mountain Coasters.
"It's a matter of being harnessed by one of our guides and letting gravity do the rest," said Sunday River spokeswoman Darcy Morse, of the Newry, Maine-resort's zipline tour, in which users are suspended from a cable on a pulley.
Vermont's Smugglers' Notch is building a "canopy tour" - 4,000 feet of ziplines where riders will cross sky bridges and rappel from trees - to open by the end of December, with a mini course ready by the end of this month. New Hampshire's Bretton Woods and Loon Mountain, along with Maine's Sugarloaf, all plan to have their ziplines - popular in the summer - open this winter.
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"It's kind of a unique way to experience the White Mountains," said Craig Clemmer, marketing director for Omni Mount Washington Resort, which includes Bretton Woods.
The ziplines range in length and cost, from around $25 for a short trip at one resort to $110 for a guided tour lasting more than three hours.
If you prefer to be closer to the ground, several resorts are offering another thrilling way down the mountain - on a roller coaster. At Okemo in Ludlow, Vt., riders in sledlike cars carrying two passengers will zip down and around steel tubular rails, controlling their speed. The "Timber Ripper," which is expected to open in mid-December, first climbs 1,600 feet and then drops 375 feet on a track with added features like waves, camel backs and banking loops.
Mountain Coaster rides are an option, too, at Cranmore Mountain Resort in North Conway, N.H., and Attitash Ski Resort in Bartlett, N.H., which this year was bought by Missouri-based Peak Resorts. The company will offer season passes and tickets good at both Wildcat Mountain Ski Area and Attitash.
To make themselves attractive destinations year-round and to get vacationers to return, resorts are giving visitors more options for fun.
Jay Peak Resort in northern Vermont is in the midst of a $140 million development that includes a new indoor ice arena and next year an indoor water park. Vermont's Stowe Mountain Resort is turning to the arts, with a new 420-seat performing-arts center for theater, music, dance, film and lectures.
Meanwhile, Bretton Woods has seen its zipline, added in 2008, grow in popularity, spread by word of mouth.
"We get all these little letters from people saying it should be on everybody's bucket list of things to do," said Clemmer. "It's such a wonderful experience."
