Fall at Fossil

So. How many of you saw New Moon this weekend? I did. You see, its my wife. She insisted that I go. (She reluctantly read the books after my sister insisted, and of course as anybody who has read the series knows, once you start its all over--you're hooked). And being the sweet husband that I am, I went along. We got there early so we could have decent seats. We waited in line for 45 minutes or so. My neighboor buddy also took his wife (or more accurately--she took HIM) and he and I counted 11 other guys in line. We likened it to a giant henhouse. (Normally being around that many girls is a good thing, however, they were all UNDER 16!!)

But anyways. We survived. The movie was...entertaining. LOVED the music. Great soundtrack.

Back to Fossil.

It's fall and winter is coming. It was a good season, though the weather has not been ideal for golf this year. Though we didn't get the extreme heat this summer, we have had many rain/snow events that have closed the course.

One question we seem to get every year about this time is people wanting to know what we do during the winter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKa68kWkP48

There are many things we do during the off season that keep us busy. The following pics will give you an idea of a few things that we do to prepare the course for the cold, WINDY weather we get here in Golden.

One thing we do every fall is cover many of our bunkers with landscape fabric to contain the bunker sand. After several years of losing large quantities of our sand due to major winter wind events (see pics) we have determined that covering them is the best solution to this problem.

Yes, that is SAND covering those bunker faces. You can see the white snow contrasted against the sand.




You can see how the wind created "sand drifts" in the bunkers and also blew it out into the fairways.

Anyways, to cover them we first pull the sand back away from the edges and pile it towards the center of the bunker: (Thanks Ryan McCarthy and Brent Schmidt for demonstrating).

Next, we lay out our sand bags (they keep the fabric in place) and fill them with sand:

Then we lay the fabric out and place the sand bags on top to hold it in place:

This process took takes about 1 and 1/2 hours to complete per bunker.

Another important project we do is put up snow fence around certain greens. This serves two purposes: First, it helps keep skiers, sledders, and snowboarders off areas that could be damaged by this type of traffic and second, it helps keep elk off of certain greens that seem to always get large amounts of elk traffic.

We also do many other projects during the off season like equipment maintenance, sanding/painting of course accessories, many outdoor course projects (when weather cooperates), evaluating the past season, planning, etc...

Here is Craig doing his thang:

Brent Schmidt is working on course accessories:




This gives you an idea of what goes on during the off season here at Fossil golf maintenance. Feel free to stop by and say hello to us if you are in the neighborhood...