VICTOR, W.Va. -- Remember the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie scene in which Capt. Jack Sparrow tosses a chain over one the Black Pearl's rigging lines and slides down it to safety?

Visitors to the New River Gorge area can recreate Sparrow's feat, times about 100, on a new adventure ride called Gravity.

In short, Gravity is a series of five "zip lines," sloping steel cables strung between high towers. Riders harnessed to trolley-like devices slide down the cables at speeds of up to 45 miles an hour.

"It's a real adrenaline rush," said Tony Moore, who traveled from Avilla, Ind., to try the ride after seeing a YouTube video about it.

Adventures on the Gorge, the company that operates Gravity, got into the zip-line business in May 2009 when they opened Treetops, a considerably tamer series of lines that weave through the forest canopy near Ames Heights.

"They're two different breeds of cat, really," said Bud Frantz, who manages both Treetops and Gravity. "The zips on Treetops run from 190 to 730 feet long; the zips on Gravity run from 400 to 1,800 feet long. The speeds on Treetops are fairly tame; the speeds on Gravity really get your attention.

"Think of Treetops as a leisurely trip through the forest canopy, with zip lines and sky bridges and a rappel at the end. Think of Gravity as a screaming-fast ride over the forest canopy."

Neal Redman, a Fayetteville-area entrepreneur, came up with the idea for a high-adventure zip-line ride several years ago while touring the ridgeline property where Gravity now exists.

"Neal saw the potential -- the altitude, the vistas that take in the Gauley and New river watersheds -- so he pursued it and got it built," Frantz said. "Construction on the towers and landing platforms began last fall. The builders started stringing cables back in the spring. After Neal got it built, he negotiated a deal with us to run it."

To ensure guests' safety, Redman called in a consultant, the Ohio-based Challenge Me Group, to handle the attraction's design and construction.

"The individual zips are so long, there was no way to use live trees for launching or landing platforms," Frantz said. "Towers had to be built, and the towers had to be reinforced to handle the weights of the cables and the stresses a high-tension cable would create."

The cables themselves had to be quite beefy -- 5/8 inch in diameter, with more than 21 tons' worth of tensile strength. And they had to be swaged and secured so they couldn't possibly slip.

"We spent weeks testing everything, tweaking it and testing it again," Frantz said.

Safety requirements prohibit anyone who weighs more than 250 or less than 100 pounds from riding Gravity. People heavier than the maximum tend to carry too much speed into the landing areas; people lighter than the minimum don't carry enough, and can stall out before they reach the platform.

Gravity officially opens this weekend, but has unofficially been open since early August. Frantz said about 90 Adventures on the Gorge guests have been allowed to experience it.

"We decided to go with a 'soft opening' so we could get used to doing the bus rides and handling the logistics," he explained. "Things have gone very smoothly."

Adrenaline-rush rides tend to be pricey, and Gravity is no exception. The current "introductory" price is $69, with a projected rise to $79 next year. Even so, Adventures on the Gorge officials expect as many as 10,000 people to give Gravity a whirl next year.

If the ride proves as popular as developers expect, a sixth zip line -- one that stretches nearly four-fifths of a mile, double the current longest -- might be added.

 "In terms of the adrenaline rush, the exposure to the elements and the vistas from the top of the mountain, we have something really unique here," Frantz said. "It's hard to imagine this being any wilder than it already is, but [a 4,000-foot cable] would up the ante quite a bit."

Reach John McCoy at johnmc...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1231.