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Alberta Golf: To Every Swing, There Is A Season
Copyright (c) 2006-2023 Travel Alberta, All Rights Reserved
Written by: Travel Alberta
There's a peculiar ritual performed each spring and fall on Alberta golf courses. It's a striptease of sorts; one I've witnessed and also performed dozens of times in the Canadian Rockies.
As warm mid-day temperatures overtake frosty mornings, players strip down to slacks and golf shirts in a burlesque fashion. With each hole played, outer shells, sweaters, gloves and even toques (that's Canadian for wool hats, eh?) are discarded.
Later, with the sun waning over the craggy peaks of the Rocky Mountains, sweaters, shells and sometimes even woolly gloves are quickly tugged back on as foursomes finish their final holes.
It's amusing to watch, but well worth the effort because in Alberta, golfers sometimes face chilly early morning tee times during the so-called shoulder seasons.
Those in the know, however, say May and September/October are splendid months for Alberta golf. Green fee rates are often reduced, courses in the autumn are hard and fast, summer crowds have disappeared and the chance to see wildlife in a serene, ever-changing natural environment is breathtaking.
"In September when you get those clear blue skies, white snow on the mountains, the green grass and evergreens mixed with the splash of orange and yellow leaves on the larch and poplars, it's pretty spectacular," says Darren Robinson, general manager of the Kananaskis Country Golf Resort, one hour's drive west of downtown Calgary.
The 36-hole resort designed by American architect Robert Trent Jones Sr. is fully booked in summer. But in May and later during the waning days of September, it's Alberta golf at its best.
Experience Mountain Air Golfing
Particularly satisfying, and something I've never experienced anywhere else, is the sound a golf ball makes in the thinner mountain air. A well-struck shot cuts through the crispness like the sound of fast-tearing Velcro.
Kananaskis is annually rated one of the best values, and best-conditioned facilities in Canadian golf by magazines such as Golf Digest and SCOREGolf.
And while the Rocky mountain course remains a bit of a local secret (Alberta golfers prefer to keep it that way), the same can't be said for the Banff Springs Golf Course and Jasper Park Lodge Golf Club. Designed by Canada's leading architect Stanley Thompson in the 1920s, both have established lofty standards for Alberta golf.
Doug Wood, Banff's executive professional, actually spends most of his free time documenting the seasons through the lens of a camera.
"The neatest thing in the shoulder seasons in the Rockies is the chance to see the white snow-covered mountains and the change in the environment every day," says Wood. "No two days are ever going to be the same."
Indeed, in late May, brave golfers can play the Banff Springs in short sleeves and shorts; then follow up with an eight-minute gondola ride to the 7,500-ft. summit of Sulphur Mountain to enjoy a blanket of snow that is often knee-high to shoulder-deep.
Because Alberta golf conditions are not up to peak season standards by May, rates at the Banff Springs are generally $50 less than prime time. This May, when the weather was perfect (about 20 C or 68 F), rates were $125 (Cdn) at the Banff Springs later rising to the peak rate of $180.
A three-hour drive north of Banff, Jasper Park Lodge was Alberta golf's first premiere course, gaining instant fame when it opened 80 years ago. It annually rates as the country's top resort, if not the top golf course, in a number of reader's choice polls.
Like most Canadian Rockies golf courses, Jasper opens near the end of April, and closes on the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, the second Monday in October.
Try Sweater Weather
Those "sweater weather" months, says executive professional Alan Carter, are one of the best things about Alberta golf.
"Nature is evolving," Carter says. "The (Icefields Parkway) drive from Lake Louise to Jasper is world renowned. To see the wildflowers in the spring, that in itself is something."
And there's another bonus in the shoulder seasons – the chance to see BIG wildlife. Jasper, whose rates are about $95 (Cdn)in May and increase during the season, is nestled at the bottom of a valley inhabited by moose, cougar, bears and even wolves.
"It's just another neat thing we have," Carter says. "In the spring you are more likely to see bears coming out of hibernation. In the fall, they're down here foraging, trying to fatten up."
It's the same story in the Rocky Mountains' newest golf courses – SilverTip Golf Resort and Stewart Creek Golf Resort. One hour's drive west of Calgary in Canmore, the stunning SilverTip features dramatic elevation changes (the 9th tee is more than 5,000 feet above sea level), and emerald-like Stewart Creek seamlessly winds along tiers, or benches, through ruggedly treed landscape.
Like their counterparts in the Canadian Rockies, they provide postcard views and abundant wildlife – not to mention those 'striptease' artists who migrate there every spring and fall.
Copyright (c) 2006 Travel Alberta, All Rights Reserved
Travel Alberta is the destination marketing organization for the Province of Alberta. Guided by the Strategic Tourism Marketing Council, Travel Alberta is the steward for the effective delivery of tourism marketing programs. For information about our organization, please visit our Travel Alberta industry web site at http://www.travelalberta.com
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