I know there will be some gripes about undergrowth and low hanging branches on some of the wooded holes. But I just wanted to show you examples of how simple traffic and a little work here and there will open up and improve a wooded hole. All of these holes started out looking pretty similar as far as branches, growth, and general openness of the fairways.

Here is a brand new wooded hole...
http://webpages.charter.net/berrybunch/Tee%20Pictures_files/image077.jpg

Here is one we put in last fall, and did a bunch of rough clearing but not much fine tuning...
http://webpages.charter.net/berrybunch/Tee%20Pictures_files/image039.jpg

Here is one that has been in for 2 years, has been used, pruned, sprayed for weeds, refined, etc. Weeds on the left and right were killed. And the hole is even more open when standing on the tee.
http://webpages.charter.net/berrybunch/Tee%20Pictures_files/image015.jpg

As time goes by, trees will be thinned, low branches removed, undergrowth cleared, etc. Think about this when visiting your newer courses. I admit that I rushed to get baskets in as soon as I was given the final approval. The fairways are all definitely playable now as we did rough clearing last year in preparation for course expansion, but I will continue to fine tune things here are there, and thin out much more of the smaller trees. (Weeds need to be sprayed almosy every year)

Can you shrink the pictures a bit? Scrolling around on my screen to see them loses a lot of the beauty of them.

Sorry, I know they're large. They're just links of the actual image that's hosted on my website. I can't link to the smaller image on the page because it has no address, but let me try and change the file names once - just wait, you'll lose clarity when I shrink them to 33%.

Fly pads would be nice ;)They are more important than the basket....SAFETY.A nice tee pad will allow you to reach the basket.I drove to the high planes challenge last weekend from callie I left at 3:30 from huntington beach.This was an A tier.After a 14 hr drive and 3 fill ups we made the event by 4 min.The event td was awsome he had a cart ready for us when we arrived and took us to our holes to make the two min warning.I had high expecations for colorado I did have a meeting with the city of leadville on monday.We played a temp course with gravel boxes these were the worst tee areas I have ever played on and this was an A tier.I watched players slip all day long....This is not what I expected...The course we played on sunday was awsome with the best tee pads I have seen. They must have been 20 ft long I felt like a plane taking off.And the surface was texured perfect.There must be a requirement of tees at all A tiers to be up to par.We should not be punished on the tee like golf.The PDGA needs standards for the players.We are not back in the 80s when it was volunteers.These are paid officals. :confused:

So, what are you saying? I don't know if you're knocking down the tees here that you have not played, or just complaining in general about tee quality at other places. There is nothing dangerously wrong with these tees. (Some trees are too close for some follow-throughs, and as soon as I get my chainsaw working, we'll take care of that.)

Safety - always a good idea to implement, but I'd rather play than hold up a course from being built due to yet another PDGA standard. Keep it for the A -tiers and above. But then what, do you require profits from the events be used for tees, or else who is going to pay for them and install them? Remember lot's of new and upcoming courses in small towns and remote areas lack the hundreds if not thousands of good sponsors from elsewhere. Most everyone working on the courses ARE volunteers too, so who will be there for construction to upgrade to concrete or rubber pads just to host an event?

We all do not live in uni-climate states either. Seasons change here, and I definitely cannot be picking up 36 seperate 6' x 12' tee pads every fall and putting them back in during the spring. They'll slide away or be destroyed by the snow, ice, groomers, tractors, and other machines on the hill, etc. Even if ytou donated 36 flypads to me, I wouldn't be able to use them because of the terrain, seasons, and limited amount of volunteer labor available.

I'm all for safety, but there is nothing wrong with these tees, I have not slipped once, nor have I seen anyone else slip. I've played over 200 courses and these are lightyears better and safer than woodchips, gravel, or natural tees that get muddy. As a matter of fact, we play in rainstorms all the time and have never slipped on these like we do ALL THE TIME on concrete or rubber pads. They are basically composed of crushed limestone and other rocks (even refuse concrete from old roads), and we just don't add don't add water during installation, we let mother nature take care of that naturally. Lugging around thousands of gallons of water isn't something a handful of volunteers is gonna do when we just have to wait for rain or snow to settle out the tees. They look lumpy, but we just laid them down a week before the pictures, they have already flattened out from some rain, and after the snow, they settle as flat as any country non-paved road.

Cost is also a huge factor, most people would never consider flypads given cost, nor would they do concrete when this crusher dust (NOT gravel) costs about $2.40 per yard. (6' x 12' x 6" = 1.33 yards = $3.20 per tee!)

There's a difference between big city/county/state funded parks and available resources, and small town, low budget installation made with many limitations in an effort to introduce the sport to many more people. You want a list of who built this course? Six people - TOTAL. Over the past 4 years, 6 people other than my wife and I have done all the work. Those other six people showed up on just 4 different days. One of the six is my mom who simply helped watch my kids (thank you so much) so I could bust my butt doing construction at the course for 12 hours a day. We had volunteers once during the 11 hole install, once for the 18 hole install, and two other times I had a friend help to pull or install baskets.

I have to send a extremely grateful thank you to all my volunteers! Since I know all six, and only one reads this forum, it's more just to prove a point. Thank you also to Kewaunee County for doing whatever you can to help support bringing disc golf to the community.

Sorry, I think I got on a rant.

i'll apologize for flyboy, it seems he took a tumble down one of the black-diamond runs on aspen mountain after he overshot a basket with his old trusty san marino roc. he must have bonked his noggin' on a few choice boulders on the way down.

serious question: in the pictures the pads look like loose sand, do you lose a little power throwing off them versus cement or is the foundation solid?

Absolutely, they are like sand when we first lay them, and they suck. You can't get your footwork right, you can't plant well, etc. But once the rain/snow helps them settle out, they become just like any gravel/dirt parking lot or walking trail. They feel as hard as concrete at first, but they have a little cushion to them so they will give a little before you slip on them. The ones that were installed last year are now very nice to throw off. The ones this year will have to settle with 2 feet of snow on top of them. Then we'll continue to touch them up throughout the years.

Fly pads would be nice ;)They are more important than the basket....SAFETY.A nice tee pad will allow you to reach the basket.I drove to the high planes challenge last weekend from callie I left at 3:30 from huntington beach.This was an A tier.After a 14 hr drive and 3 fill ups we made the event by 4 min.The event td was awsome he had a cart ready for us when we arrived and took us to our holes to make the two min warning.I had high expecations for colorado I did have a meeting with the city of leadville on monday.We played a temp course with gravel boxes these were the worst tee areas I have ever played on and this was an A tier.I watched players slip all day long....This is not what I expected...The course we played on sunday was awsome with the best tee pads I have seen. They must have been 20 ft long I felt like a plane taking off.And the surface was texured perfect.There must be a requirement of tees at all A tiers to be up to par.We should not be punished on the tee like golf.The PDGA needs standards for the players.We are not back in the 80s when it was volunteers.These are paid officals. :confused:

I do live in Colorado (Denver-Metro area) so I might be a little biased. But let's get a bit of perspective here. Fort Morgan isn't really a thriving metropolis, it's a resonably small town out on the plains. The Optimist course, the one you liked with great teepads, is a pretty nice facility for that size town. Plus, consider the fact that the town and it's chamber of commerce kicked in somwhere in the vicinity of $2500 towards the purse. And they have recently purchased more land to possibly put in more DG courses and to make the Pessimist course (the one with natural tee pads) a permanent fixture. This is a community that has dedicated a lot of time effort and $$$ toward disc golf. Holding an A-tier event in Ft. Morgan, even if one course is still temporary, shows city officials, residents, and businesses that the DG community appreciates what they are doing to help grow our sport. Not to mention to show them that it is worth it for them to put concrete teepads in at Pessimist....

Just my $0.02, YMMV.

nanook

We are not back in the 80s when it was volunteers.These are paid officals. :confused:



TD's are paid officials? No wonder we needed to up our dues!