Natural Wonders
The economic downturn doesn’t seem to have hurt a pair of new courses, tucked into the mountainous terrain of the golf-rich East Kootenays.
The economy has taken its toll on a number of BC golf projects, but a couple of them have managed to weather the storm and will open for play this season. Shadow Mountain, located just a few minutes north of Cranbrook, has set July 1 as its opening date. Black Mountain near Kelowna will welcome its first players sometime in May.
Wayne Carleton is intimately familiar with both of the newest additions to the BC golf landscape. Carleton, the Delta resident who is part of the prolific Cooke Carleton International design team, was the lead architect on both projects.
Shadow Mountain is split in two by Highway 95A, which runs between Cranbrook and Kimberley.
“The site is quite dynamic,” says Carleton, whose most recent work in BC was the impressive Talking Rock layout near Chase.
“The west half is more mountainous terrain and the east half is more of a rolly, sandy, pine-forest type of setting.
“We tried to give it a very natural character. With the abundance of sand on the site we did a lot of waste bunkering and there are some fescue areas. ‘We tried not to move a lot of dirt. All in all, it’s more of your natural, rustic and rugged type of golf course. It turned out well.”
The course, which will stretch to about 7,400 yards, includes 19 holes. There’s a bonus par 3 located between the 17ul green and 18th tee. It serves two purposes. It gives players a bonus hole to play and it provides the course with an extra hole to use in the future when any renovation work requires a hole on the course to be closed.
The back nine at Shadow Mountain features a couple of dramatic elevation changes.
“The 15th hole, a par 4, drops about 120 feet, and the 17th hole, a par 5, drops about 150 feet,” says Carleton. “That’s from tee down to fairway and the it climbs back up.”
Shadow Mountain recently hired Rob Anderson, the Canadian Professional Golfers Association teacher of the year in 2008, as its general manager and director of golf.
Anderson, who most recently was head professional at The Harvest in Kelowna, didn’t fully realize how golf rich the East Kootenays had become until he accepted his new job.
“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “The last time I ever played golf out here was way back in about 1985 when we had the B.C. Amateur split between Cranbrook and Kimberley. You can start up in Golden and work your way all the way down and it’s like ‘holy cow! look al all this golf.’ It’s amazing.
“Coming from the Okanagan, I would have to say the quantity of golf courses is similar, but I think a lot of the courses here are a little bit higher-end. You’ve got four or five that are high·end in the Okanagan and darn near every one is here.”
The Shadow Mountain project includes 600 housing lots, about 200 of which have been pre-sold. Anderson hopes his course, which is located just five minutes from the Canadian Rockies International Airport, can capture its share of the growing golf tourism market in the area.
“Once the housing is fully under way and we a have a population of people living here, it will definitely lean more toward member play,” Anderson says. “But certainly in the short term, this season and next season at the least, we will be be targeting groups from Alberta, Saskatchewan, the BC Interior and the Spokane area.”
The course’s local owners have already established a relationship with the nearby St. Eugene Mission course. Future plans call for cart paths to connect the two facilities.
Peak-season green fees at Shadow Mountain will be $99 on weekdays and $115 on weekends. That fee includes golf, power cart, driving range and all taxes.
Black Mountain, located in the Rutland area on the way to the Big White Ski Resort outside Kelowna, is a mountainside layout that measures about 6.300 yards from the back tees. The par-71 track features six par 3s, seven par 4s and five par 5s.
“It’s unique in the fact that most of us are now doing golf courses lhat are 7,000 yards·plus,” Carleton says. “There’s rock outcrop· pings and some tightness to it, so it is the kind of a course that you plot your way around. You won’t be using driver on every tee. It’s kind of like your old·style country club golf course developed on a small piece of property.”
Green fees this year at Black Mountain, which has been developed by Edmonton based Meleor Developments, will be $58 Monday to Thursday and $64 Friday, weekends and holidays.
Brad Ziemer | Vancouver Sun
