Gatlinburg SkyBridge

The SkyBridge at Gatlinburg SkyPark was designed and built by Experiential Resources. With about 1.5 million visitors annually, it is ERi’s most trafficked project to date.  The bridge was commissioned in April of 2019 and was opened to the public in May 2019..The SkyBridge is 680 feet /207 meters long from portal to portal.  We only included the walking surface in that measurement, so the actual total construction length is even longer. The bridge is 5 feet/1.52 meters wide, and is about 150 feet/45.5 meters high…depending on how many people are on the bridge.  The SkyBridge sits up high on the side of the mountain, about 500’ above downtown Gatlinburg. It has awesome panoramic views of the Smoky Mountains, including stunning sunrise and sunset views. 

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The SkyBridge can hold 500 people who each weigh up to 400 pounds/181 kilograms.  Technically its working load limit is higher than that, but operationally the capacity needs to be limited in case the bridge needs to be evacuated. The SkyBridge has deep foundations that go as far as 94 feet/25.5 meters into the mountainside.  The micropiles were designed and installed by Hayward Baker (now Keller North America).  We installed one “sacrificial micropile” whose sole purpose was to be installed then load tested to the tune of over 750,000 pounds/340,194 kilograms.  After the micropile design was tested and proved to be doing its job, sixteen (16) micropiles were installed for the main bridge foundations, eight (8) on the east side and eight(8) on the west side.  Four (4) additional micropiles were also installed, one (1) per wind guy anchor.