Wild Center expands life-sized ball run attraction

The Raquette River Roll includes a variety of sculptures and interactive elements for visitors to enjoy

By Tom French

When my son was four, he asked Santa for a 1000-piece marble run. I spent all night on Christmas Eve assembling it to match the picture on the box. Today, I could just take him to the Raquette River Roll, a life-sized ball run through the forests around the Wild Center in Tupper Lake.

Established in 2024, the one-mile accessible path through the woods features more than a dozen runs with a loop-to-loops, staircases, rope and pulley elevators, xylophones, a sky bridge, skee-ball, and a Rube Goldberg contraption based on the game Mouse Trap.

The project began as an initiative to add a trail to a fen. While scoping a path through the woods, someone mentioned a ball run attraction seen in Switzerland. When Executive Director Stephanie Ratcliffe heard the idea, she thought, “Oh my gosh, that is so Wild Center.”

The idea also connected to the Wild Center’s partnership with The Caretakers of Wonder, a network of children’s museums working to enhance climate change education. With help from Steve Langdon, Director of Shingle Shanty Preserve and ecologist with Borealis Consulting, interpretive panels along the new trail integrate the forest’s ecology with aspects of the carbon cycle in ways that children can understand. 

“Children aren’t ready to hear about the impacts or the science at a deeper level,” Ratcliffe said. “But research shows the most important thing we can do is help kids have a relationship with nature. That’s what we do every day. We connect people with nature.”

After the idea for a ball run was floated amongst staff and others, Charlie Smith, a facility technician at the Wild Center known for his carpentry skills, was approached to spearhead the design and construction. 

“We knew he could build anything. He’s got a good mind for MacGyvering. He just started creating his own Tinker Toy set and putting things together,” Ratcliffe said.

One of Smith’s first tasks was figuring out the simplest way to make a channel for the wooden balls to roll.

“We wanted to take classic Adirondack rustic to the next level so it looked like it actually belonged in the woods,” Smith said.

Smith experimented with a chainsaw to create grooves in cedar logs. After some trial, error and a Russian YouTube video, Smith discovered the most important skill was to simply “trust that you’re holding the saw right.” At the same time, the best size for the wooden balls was determined.

“We tried a few sizes and landed on one that’s about the size of a tennis ball,” he said.

A company in Maine reconfigured a machine because so many were ordered. While Smith was perfecting gutter fabrication, he was also brainstorming components for each run.

“I wrote down as many interesting ideas as I could, but I opened it up to the staff too,” Smith said. “I had hundreds of conversations.”

Director of Marketing Nick Gunn’s first thought was Hot Wheels, which inspired the loop to loop. A lot of people thought a race would be fun, so the second run involves two gutters, side by side that weave through the woods for more than 100 feet. Smith designed it so the choice for the faster run was deceptive. 

“One looks like it’s going to go fast because it starts steep, but if you’re not looking, it stops and restarts,” Smith said, pointing to where the ball hits the end of a log before dropping to another gutter. “So it’s kind of a ‘tortoise-and-the-hare’ situation.”

Smith was also interested in sound. Metal tube bed parts were cut into short lengths along with wooden parts to create xylophones. 

“We wanted things to be as natural as possible,” Smith said. “Any non-natural material was probably something we found on the property.” One run ends through a series of metal hoops from the remains of four wagon wheels and their hubs. The thick, nearly four-foot wide steel bands that wrapped the wheels were converted into swings along the path.

The Cookie Tree contains four lifts and a run of 100 feet. Visitors enjoy a series of drops from one trunk slice (a wood cookie) to the next, down 12 feet.

Samuel Webster, a student at the Rhode Island School of Design, created two pages of drawings with multiple ideas including the tree. He and his father built the prototype. 

The team also enlisted Keene Valley artist Matt Horner. Known for his stone and metal sculptures, Horner began Run Seven through a polished hole in a sculptured rock. After passing through two more sculptures, the run ends in a custom stone bowl that collects rain.

Smith tested each run multiple times with dozens of balls hoping for an 80% success rate, but on the day of a press and board member event, he realized the runs were “going to do what they want.”

“I’ve done them so many times, I don’t even need to look. I can just hear it – roll plunk, roll plunk, roll plunk. But that day, the sound stopped. I looked over, and the ball was just sitting on the lip of a cookie, perfectly perched,” Smith said. “That was the moment I knew I have no control. (Ratcliffe) said, ‘If something doesn’t work right, you’re giving someone the opportunity to use their brain and troubleshoot.’ So it became okay to make something that wasn’t perfect.”

When the trail opened last year, it was an out and back, but for 2025, it’s been expanded into a loop with new elements. The bottom of the trail includes a Build Your Own section.

“I took some of my failed experiments, prototypes of small size, and a lot of leftover log pieces and cut them down to a manageable size,” Smith said.

Further up the hill, Smith constructed a skee-ball with three chutes to the side that return to the shooter. Early users asked Smith about scoring.

“I’m not making the rules,” Smith said. “Let the kids decide. Let them use their brains to make their own game.”

The new Mouse Trap features a boot, bucket and other elements just like the game. The “fantastical and elaborate idea” was designed by AmeriCorp intern, Zac Busch. When the AmeriCorp program was cut by the Trump administration in April, the Wild Center raised the $72,000 necessary to hire the AmeriCorps members for the rest of their term into August.

The last new run, a pseudo-perpetual motion machine, was informed by Smith’s creative experience designing the runs.

“I call it the Roundabout. I was playing with these gutters, and I had like 20 balls. I dropped one in. I dropped another one in, and eventually I had a bunch just going on a loop. All of a sudden, it’s fifteen minutes later,” Smith said. “If you get lost in play, that’s a good sign to me.”

Smith’s Roundabout features four loops that emanate from a central hub. Four visitors can all put one ball in at the same time, and when their balls return, they can pick them up and do it again.

Smith also envisions adding smaller runs around the Wild Center Campus.

“If I’m a kid, and I’m not interested in reading all the signs like my parents, but I’ve got this ball, it might be nice to have other small elements in places to play with the ball,” he said.

Visitors to the Wild Center can either borrow balls or purchase them. A decorating station with markers is available in the Great Hall for those who wish to personalize their maple balls. The anticipated opening for the new trail section with additional ball runs is mid-June.

“It’s a perfect way to get kids in nature,” Ratcliffe said. “They have no idea they’ve walked a mile because they’re having fun. We have stories of kids going home and trying to make one in their own backyards out of sticks and things.”