Fontenelle Forest gives visitors a “rush”

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Olouwatobi Noukpozounkou

Climbing on one of the bridges that are on the rope course, junior Jose Hernandez couldn’t stop himself from looking down. “I felt really nervous,” Hernandez said. “All I was thinking about was falling off.”Climbing on one of the bridges that are on the rope course, junior Jose Hernandez couldn’t stop himself from looking down. “I felt really nervous,” Hernandez said. “All I was thinking about was falling off.”

Olouwatobi Noukpozounkou, Section editor
October 30, 2020

By walking across bridges or climbing across rock platforms, visitors are able to enjoy up to 2 hours and 40 minutes of fun at TreeRush Adventures at Fontenelle Forest.

TreeRush is a ropes course that was brought to Fontenelle Forest in 2019. It opened on May 29, and is located at 1111 Bellevue Blvd N, Bellevue, NE 68005. Tree Rush has seven different courses at four different difficulty levels, yellow being the easiest and black being the hardest. They plan on closing on November 29, 2020, due to it not being safe to climb during the winter season.

“It was a new experience, I’ve never been on a ropes course before,” junior Jose Hernandez said. “I’m glad I did go because it was pretty fun.”

They have two parks: TreeRush and KidRush. For the TreeRush Park, it costs $46 a person for ages 12 and up, and $39 a person for ages 7-11. For the KidRush Park, it costs $12 a person from ages four to six.

“At first I thought it was a little pricey but after I did the courses, I saw that it was reasonable for what you got to do,” visitor Georgianna Cimatoribus said. “It was amazing and challenging, I was surprised to see old people and kids there, I had no idea that it was a full course.”

TreeRush has set up some guidelines to follow to prevent the spread of COVID-19, visitors will have to stay six feet apart from other groups. They require visitors to wear masks throughout the site, but if  people do not have a mask, they will provide one for them.

They have reduced the number of people who can make a reservation during each check in time, and they have sanitation stations at the area where you would first start each course. There are waivers each person must sign before they are allowed to climb that relate to COVID-19.

“We shut down for a month to get ready for COVID-19,” course manager Joseph Henry said. “We did research and came up with a plan and we’ve had good success with it.”

Some of the things visitors will be able to do on the courses are zip-lines, walking on bars of wood suspended from ropes, crawling through a tunnel made of wood, jumping from a high platform to the floor and much more. After a tutorial of how to use the equipment, visitors will have all this accessible to them.

“I was surprised by how smoothly everything went,” Hernandez said. “At first, I expected the staff to be by your side the whole time you were on the courses, almost like they would be holding your hand and walking you through each step.”

They are open Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. On Saturday they are open at 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. They’re closed Monday-Wednesday.