Dave Thompson and Mark Campbell from the Wolverine Nordic and Mountain Society (WNMS) were before council to discuss the idea of a permanent disc golf course in town.
Thompson says he watches all the council meetings, and hears the questions council has been asking. “There might have been a change of direction in September when we got a call from Jason [Bradley] from Public Works. He said ‘hey, can you guys meet us down at the proposed disc golf course’, and it sounded to us like you wanted to know if the town was going to build the disc golf course and whether the town was going to pay for it and it came as a surprise to us.”
He says the club never expected the town to build the course. “I’ll go back to where we started in July which is: we’re not here to ask for money. Let’s lay that to rest.”
He says they were asked to provide the ‘ultimate budget’ for a disc golf course, so the club created a proposal that would feature professional designers, paid labour to clear the course, concrete pads and professional baskets. “It was a little bit more than what we were prepared to do.”
The quote came in at $70,000, which the town was reluctant to do. But they were never expected to be footing the bill, says Thompson.
Next, he says, the Saddle Club is looking for use of the land between the two parcels of forest by the saddle club. “We thought that area would make a couple of good holes for disc golf, but then we heard that the Saddle Club was interested in it for grazing land. We’ve had a couple discussions with the Saddle Club over the last couple of months, and they told us they’re in desperate need of grass for their horses right now because it’s really difficult to get hay from other places because it’s just not growing this year. So here’s an opportunity for their horses to have prime grassland and there was a potential conflict with us, because we’d put in an application for that same piece of land and after talking to them they said we could use the land between the highway and the Saddle Club. Mark and I walked through the woods there along with Phil [Duffy], who designed all the courses in Grand Prairie. We all looked at each other thinking ‘wow this actually would make really good land to make a disc golf course on.’ Dustin [Curry, Fire Chief] said we could clear out some of the deadfall and the brush in there and remove some of the wildfire fuel. And it’s already designated as parkland so what a great use for the land. It’s win-win for everyone if we can use that as the disc golf course.”
He says WNMS has a signed agreement with the Saddle Club that, if council agrees to lease the other parcel of land to the Saddle Club, the WNMS is okay with that as long as the club can use the other area.
“We think it’s a really good idea. It serves a lot of purposes. It gives the Saddle Club the grass land that they need, it gives us an area that we can also design nine holes of our golf course on, it’s going to remove a lot of the ground fuel for wildfires and that enhances the safety of the Parkland and it’s going to increase the access to public recreation,” he says. “Disc golf is a game that can be played by anybody, at any age level with very little equipment. A couple of discs is all you really need.”
Campbell says the goal is to create a course that will appeal to the community. “We want a novice course,” he says. “We want to get the community involved have kids out there playing. That’s our goal for this and we’ve been redesigning the course with that in mind that we how we can get the kids involved.”
One potential issue, says Mayor Krakowka, is the town might not own all the land, but he says the district will work with the club to help overcome these issues.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
