The Gatlinburg SkyBridge was shut down after a tourist cracked the glass doing a baseball slide
A tourist managed to crack the clear glass floor of the largest pedestrian suspension bridge in the United States, forcing the Gatlinburg, Tennessee, landmark to close Monday night for repairs.
Gatlinburg’s SkyBridge stretches 680 feet across a valley in the Great Smokey Mountains and has three glass panels in the middle that allow visitors to see the ground 140 feet below.
The guest ignored the bridge’s “no running, jumping, or bouncing” rule and attempted to do a “baseball-style slide” across glass panels, according to a news release from Gatlinburg SkyLift Park.
“Upon impact, a metal object on the guest’s clothing chipped the glass, resulting in noticeable cracks in the protective top layer of one glass panel,” the release said.
The incident happened at about 8:30 p.m. on Monday, and the bridge reopened on Tuesday morning.
Christy Grimes, an employee at CNN affiliate WAFF, was vacationing in Gatlinburg and was turned away from the attraction.
“An employee told us that someone managed to break the top layer of glass,” Grimes told affiliate WVLT.
According to the park, the top layer of glass is designed to protect the other two layers of the material and the damage did not affect the structural integrity of the bridge.
No one was injured in the incident, and park officials said no one was ever in danger.
Developers used more than a million pounds of concrete for its foundation, 3 miles of cable and 1,400 cedar planks to build the bridge, which opened in May 2019.
