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Permalink Reply by David Barish on August 17, 2012 at 9:00am

I cannot imagine a safety net being any use as there are potential areas of risk over almost the entire course. Also, there are times when the flight path is over the path. Further, the course only runs one way. It goes south. Nobobdy walks 1/2 mile back and does nothing. I play the course backwards, and its actually more challenging than the actual course. This makes for more areas of potential conflict.

 

I never felt this stretch was much use for commuting. I always take Kedzie and do not use the path until I am north of Howard Street.  The unpaved portion at the far north end where James rides is not the greatest place to ride. At Golf  Rd. you can go west a block to pick up McDaniel.  Go north to the first street past Central(Hartzell) and right to  Walnut.  Take Walnut to Park and then the alley behind the pancake house until it dumps into Green Bay. You can either ride Green Bay up to the trail or cross Green Bay at Oakwood to Poplar and pick up the path to the Green Bay Trail  by the Wilmette Train Station.  Still, the channel trail is intended to be a biking/walking path and there will be potential conflict between discs and path users.  Yes, the discs are not frisbees and are harder.  A driver has a beveled edge and really hurts if you get hit.  A friend who is a careful person and an accurate thrower, hit a guy in the head with a drive during a recent tournament in Joliet. The guy had to be taken to the emergency room and had to withdraw from the tournament. Fortunately, many of the holes are shorter and putters or approach discs which have a more traditional edge are used. 

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Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on August 17, 2012 at 9:21am

I take the path to almost the end and turn a block before Green Bay on Prarie, then go around that big school and turn on Lincoln to cross Green Bay and then turn again on Poplar.  You can pretty much follow Poplar all the way into the Green Bay Trail.  I stay on it, and the trackside parking lots even further than the start of the Green Bay as those ridiculous sidewalk-type paths are no good for riding if there are any peds on it -especially past that fire station with those dangerous chains on bollards.  Screw that.

Here is the route past that from my Endomondo app in case anyone cares.

The end of the channel trail does suck majorly and I slow way down to about 10mph going through there -and even slower to a walking speed in some of the danger spots or if I spot a ped up ahead.  It's just not safe to go any faster through there IMHO.   I can make time back up once I get onto the main part of the trail and cruise at 18-20 to get my average back up. 

I think with the disc golf section I'll just continue to use the bypass unless it turns out nobody ever uses it. 

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Permalink Reply by JeffB on August 17, 2012 at 10:10am

I didn't know this.  Now I'm really worried.  That section of the trail is the one I use the most.  From the one look I got, it seems like the course is designed to require throwing the discs across the trail; there are "holes" on both sides of it.  It seems poorly designed from the golfers standpoint too; one "hole" is right up against the bushes at the top of the river embankment.  If you miss, I'd think you'd lose your disc, or make it hard to recover.

James BlackHeron said:

  I don't like to call it "frisbie golf" because they aren't really frisbies  -they are heavy discs and can really hurt and even knock over someone who gets hit with one.  I think I'd almost rather get hit by a golf ball because they are much lighter.

Perhaps a net would work but depending on how the course is laid out it might have to be HUGE -and it would be ugly.  

 

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