Pros:
- Great fairway design with technical lines and interesting putting greens
- Substantial elevation change from pad to basket on many holes
- With the exception of a few tee pads the course equipment is in good shape and serves it's purpose well.
Cons:
- Thick undergrowth in several areas can make finding errant shots difficult
- Hole 2 is a too-short and uninteresting filler hole on a course otherwise filled with fun and interesting shots
- A few holes have these odd, small, square tee pads that would be more of an issue on a longer course
Other Thoughts:
Campton Hills is a great, unique little 9-hole course that almost perfectly executes its vision. If you like bombing drivers this is not the course for you. However, if you enjoy hunting birdies up and down hills through tight, wooded fairways, you will have a ton of fun here.
With one or two exceptions every hole either has significant elevation change over the length of the fairway, or a basket placed near enough to the edge of a hill to really punish drives that miss the mark, a real possibility even with the short length of the holes.
Having good command of your discs is essential here. Proficiency with either forehand and backhand shots, or the ability to throw both hyzer and anhyzer lines, is necessary to shoot well here. The lines required are varied and both accuracy and distance control are important.
Tee signs are informative, baskets catch well (though #8 is missing about a third of its chains), and there are buckets for trash by most tee pads. Most tee pads are adequate, but a few (including 1 & 2) have these odd, square pads that are on the small side and don't really allow for any kind of run-up. Of course, you don't really need much of a run-up on any of the holes on this course, so not a big deal.
Navigation is usually straight forward, though my wife and I did take a little longer to find #8's pad from #7's basket (back and to the right down the hill from the basket). Errant drives can definitely result in extended searching for discs, particularly on holes 8 and 9, which are longer and have some of the thicker rough. 9 in particular is a blind, downhill shot, so try and keep an eye on the flight of your disc.
My wife and I had a great time playing this course, and eagerly went through a second time right after finishing. Both rounds took a little over an hour total at a relaxed pace. This is a unique course in the area, and definitely worth checking out. Playing this course and The Links at Wheeler Park to the south east would make for a great afternoon of disc golf.
***Update 6/1/2021***
I recently played this course for the first time in about 3 years. There have been some improvements I thought worth mentioning. There are new, very nice tee signs that not only show hole number, par, distance, and top down depiction of the fairway, but also the elevation gain or loss from the tee to basket. This is a great feature on almost any course, but is much appreciated here with the amount and magnitude of elevation change. A new course map at the parking lot summarizes all of the fairway information as well as explaining the rules of disc golf and park hours of operation (9am to dusk, March to November). Like the tee signs, this is one of the nicer course maps I have seen.
There are also new steps installed on a few of the steep hillsides making course navigation much easier. This was apparently the effort of a local Eagle Scout, so many thanks!
Unfortunately, the baskets have continued to age, and many have missing chains, or chains that have come detached from the lower ring. My hope is that the money clearly spent on the new signage is an indicator that the aging baskets and substandard tee pads will be replaced in the near future. This is still a great course, and I had as much fun playing my most recent round as I did 3-4 years ago.