Six-year-old Ben Klish of Sugar Grove probably isn’t old enough to truly appreciate the level of love his grandmother, Sharon Elias, showed him Wednesday when she went along for the ride as Ben made his way through the Treetop Junior experience of the Go Ape zip line adventure course at Bemis Woods near Western Springs.
“I was shaking, but the old heart made it through,” said Elias, 72. “It got a little more difficult in parts of it, but I wanted to be with my grandson.”
Ben gave his grandmother a passing grade.
“She did OK,” he said. “I kept an eye on her.”
Ben said it was his third time on the junior course. He’s already counting the time and inches until he is able to move on to the larger treetop adventure course.
“You have to be 10 years old and 55 inches tall,” he said. “I’m 6 now and 50 inches.”
While Elias was enjoying her time with her grandson, her husband, Rod, 72, and other members of the family, were taking their turns on the treetop adventure on the Elias’ 52nd wedding anniversary.
The larger course is in its third year of operation, while the junior experience is new this year, said Trillia Whitney, site manager for Go Ape, which started in the UK and now has 16 locations in the United States.
Go Ape operates the treetop adventures in a partnership with the Forest Preserve of Cook County and has a 10-year lease to do so, Whitney said.
The treetop adventure usually takes 2.5 to 3 hours to complete, and the junior experience allows for as many course runs as possible in one hour, Whitney said.
“We get people of just about all ages who come to do this, including a man who was 83,” Whitney said. “We get people from all ranges of fitness. It is a physical activity, but it works for most anyone.”
Whitney said people experiencing difficulty with the physical strength requirements of the course have a way out.
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“You can always sit in in the harness and zip across,” she said.
Whitney said the zip line season runs from March into mid-December.
“It’s somewhat weather dependent,” she said. “We continue operating if it’s raining. If there is lightning, we stop until there is no lightning for 30 minutes.”
Whitney said there are 35 employees at the Bemis Woods zip line site, including instructors around the course, who always are watching participants.
“People don’t even really notice the instructors because they are so focused and involved while they’re up there,” she said. ‘It’s just a great way for people to test their limits while trying something new. And you also get to see the forest preserve from a different perspective while you’re up in the trees.”
Justin Park, a 27-year-old Chicago resident who experienced the treetop adventure Wednesday with a group of residents from a Chicago hospital, said he didn’t know what to expect, but enjoyed the experience.
“It was great; it was time to be kids again, forget about everything else and get lost in it,” he said.
While the experience might have been a bit more physically taxing than what he anticipated, Park said he would be up for returning for another zip line trip through the trees.
“Yeah, it was tough at times, but it was really a lot of fun, a great experience,” he said.
Alkeem Savage, 28, who was in the same group as Park, seemed pleasantly surprised when he finished the treetop adventure.
“It took a lot of energy, but it was OK,” he said. “I could never have seen myself doing something like this because I’m not really an outside person. It was something very different for me, and it turned out to be a lot of fun.”
Kate Greco of Lemont hopes to try to treetop adventure in the future, but was happy to do the junior experience Wednesday with her son, Ben, 7.
“It’s nice because it is a unique experience,” Greco said.
The zip line
Address: 1100 Odgen Ave., Western Springs
Phone number: (800) 971-8271
Website: fpdcc.com/recreation/zip-line
Cost: $28 for one hour on junior course; treetop adventure, $58 for ages 16 and older, $38 for ages 10 to 15