This past weekend I took my best friend to Ramblewild Adventure Park in Lanesborough, MA to celebrate her birthday. It was definitely an experience. We booked the 12pm-3pm time slot which meant we had an early start to drive the 3 hours out to western Mass. A 7am wake-up call and a 3-hour drive are not really the best way to start out this adventure. Even though I was cramped and hot from the car ride I was extremely excited when we finally arrived. The park was easy enough to get to with Google Maps. The check in process was a bit confusing as none of the tablets worked correctly. After multiple attempts to check-in we were given paper waivers.

-Ramblewild’s website says to leave all valuables in the car because you can’t bring anything that can fall into the park with you. If you want pictures of your experience you need to bring someone who isn’t doing the course to stand down below and observe/take pictures. Come to find out, one of the guys that works there told us at the end that we could have brought our phones in to take pictures so I was really disappointed about that.

Anyway, after a short wait we were on our way up to the courses. We had a small group (8 of us) and were able to get right into our harnesses and helmets. There was a quick “ground school” tutorial where we learned how to use the equipment and the various types of obstacles we would encounter. Once the ground school was completed successfully, we could make our way to the real course without the rest of the group which was great!

There are two yellow course (beginner), two green courses (easy), two blue courses (moderate), one black diamond course (hard) and one double black diamond course (very hard). We breezed through the yellow course. It consisted of mostly walking over obstacles (wooden planks with nothing connecting them, rope nets, swinging logs, etc). After our success with the first yellow course, we decided to move on to a green course without completing the second yellow course. We were only able to use one green course as the second one was closed. The green course was definitely more challenging
and required a bit of upper body strength at certain points (suspended rock wall, trapeze zip line, rope swings). The obstacles you needed to walk across also gave more underfoot which made it harder to keep your balance. We were able to make our way through the green course quite easily also, although, since I am afraid of heights I had a few moments of hesitation! The blue course is MUCH more challenging than the green. Round logs hanging vertically with only foot holds on each side, a zip line over a 500ft ravine (which I got stuck in the middle of and needed to be rescued), hanging planks with ropes on only one side so they pitched to one side when stepped on, a suspended skateboard (multiple hand and arm injuries from this one) and a rope swing into a hanging rope net we then had to climb to the top of then climb all the way across (arms and legs were burning after this one). In my opinion it was brutal but still doable. We didn’t have time to try the black diamond or double black diamond (which I’m fairly sure is impossible for me and has a 90% failure rate) but I wasn’t complaining. We made a quick run through of the second yellow course before calling it a day. I was physically exhausted after climbing around for three hours and in desperate need of water and a shower.

Overall, it was a fun and exciting experience! I was stuck a few times and made some great comebacks! I would consider doing Ramblewild again but probably not for some time. I definitely recommend giving this course a try if you want to challenge yourself mentally and physically!

Some things to consider when visiting Ramblewild:

-There aren’t “escape ladders” from any of the platforms so it’s best to just suck it up and finish the course if you get anxious or scared. The staff can come rescue you but in some places that seemed impossible to me.

-Some of the courses have age restrictions. I believe the black diamond course is 16+ and the blue courses are 15+ but there were kids clearly under 13 on the blue course so I guess the age restrictions aren’t strictly upheld.

-BRING YOUR OWN GLOVES. For most of the 3 hours you will be holding yourself up or steady by grabbing onto wires and ropes and my hands were raw at the end. Ramblewild has buckets of gloves but they were so used they were waxy and wouldn’t allow for a proper grip on anything.