The focus is on the terrain park, a designated section of a ski trail that is sculptured and groomed with features like flat-crowned tabletop jumps, metal rails and plastic-coated rectangular boxes for sliding on and halfpipes scooped out of the snow.
I was hiking with a friend, exploring sections of the trail over a long weekend.
Andy Gattiker, the South Downs Way ranger who has covered a few sections of the trail, said: "I feel like a cyborg when I'm walking along with this thing on my back, and there are two extremes when people see me.
This year sees the official opening of almost all remaining sections of a new long-distance trail, the Shipwrights Way.
Several blocks of another protected bike lane, to be built on Jackson Avenue west of the city's Loop, and sections of the Bloomingdale Trail, a two-and-a-half-long park to be built on an abandoned rail line from Wicker Park to Humboldt Park, will also be in low-income areas.
Off-roading can present very difficult sections of trail and a back seat driver rarely helps.
A stopgap measure of an on-road route to link completed sections of the trail in Farmington to the north and Southington to the south is under consideration.
They provide a pristine link to two long-disconnected sections of the trail and take hikers away from whizzing cars and into a world of rustling cattails, songbirds, a swiftly flowing creek and serene acres of field.
These two information sources have a synergistic effect on straight sections of the trail network, causing increased walking speed when the two information sources complement one another (Czaczkes et al. 2011).
Hiking the entire Via Alpina would take years, so after leaving Triglav National Park I got into a car and drove to other sections of the trail.
