Pros:
Bearskin Creek has more going for it than some would lead you to believe. The course is for the most part an open layout, but manages to make use of large park trees to create holes with interesting lines to the basket. Each hole was designed with both long and short tee positions, which allows for players of various skill levels to enjoy the course.
Even though the course is fairly straight forward, some holes use the natural landscape/elevation to create interesting shots. Holes 6 and 10 are cool blind dogleg right shots that make use of the landscape to force you to play closer to the ground than you might want to, so that you can park the basket. Hole 7 is a fun uphill shot. Hole 12 is basically a death putt from the tee.
The fairways were well manicured, and the park in general looked a lot better than I was expecting. The holes that play alongside the creek can add a mental element to your round.
The park feels pretty secluded, which is nice. There is a gym in the center of the course, but I never made my way into it to check it out. I really enjoyed the park map at the start of the course. I took a picture of it before I started, which really helped with navigation.
Despite not really having any trash cans around the course, this may have been the cleanest course/park I have been to in a long time. Monroe's Park & Rec is doing a great job keeping this park clean.
Cons:
A new walkway throughout the course has caused a bit of disruption for the course. Maybe not all of these issues are because of the walkway, but I'd imagine some are. Four holes were missing baskets when I played: 1, 13, 16, & 17. A few holes were missing their tee signs: 2, 9, 11, & 14.
The teesigns that do exist are very uninformative and are facing in odd directions at times. I was only able to find all the locations of the white tees, using pictures from the DGCR database. This is a bit of an issue because the white tees have no indicator other than the tee signs. I tried to find the blue tees for each hole because they are concrete pads, but was unable to find all of them. There are also no tee signs for the blue tees.
The creek is pretty disgusting. I threw a second drive at Hole 14 and watched my disc sail into the drink. Since it was a disc I had slowly been falling in love with, I actually went into the creek after it. I would highly recommend nobody else follow in my footsteps. Not only did I not find the disc, but it was incredibly challenging to get back out of the creek. It also shortened my day, as I felt the need to come home and take a shower so I would hopefully not get an infection.
Others mentioned it is not in the best neighborhood, but I did not run into any problems. Other than the obvious vandalism of baskets and tees, I wouldn't have even realized this. It wasn't a major con for me (since I had no issues) but worth noting, just in case.
I never found any benches or water fountains, but wasn't really looking for any because the course played quickly due to the lack of people playing there.
Other Thoughts:
This is a weird course for me to rate, but I think I'll have to give it a 2.0 because of the current state it is in. Honestly, Bearskin Creek seems to be suffering from an identity crisis. The holes that are playable are great, are quite a bit of fun, and are set in an incredibly clean and pretty park. But with 4 holes being unplayable and a few others missing their tee signs (or any indicators of where the tees are) it falls off quite a bit.
I feel really bad rating this course so low, but I can't justify giving it a higher score with so many baskets & tees missing. With some TLC this course would warrant a much higher score from me. Hopefully it gets some work or even a small redesign soon, so that it can live up to its potential. If said redesign happens, I wouldn't be opposed to them changing it to only have one layout, that was somewhere between the two layouts in difficulty and length. This might even allow them to spend less money developing/maintaining the course.
This course could be used in conjunction with Dry Creek and Union Academy for a fun tournament in the Monroe area, if it is fixed up! I think with the right changes/fixes this course would easily stand alongside Dry Creek as a prime example of Monroe disc golf!
Favorite White Holes: 2, 6, 7, 10
Favorite Blue Holes: 4, 7, 11