Minnedosa claws back in fight with Mother Nature

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This article was published 16/08/2022 (1187 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dan Bailey and Patrick Law were up the river with a paddle.

Sure, they had the means to get their canoe where it needed to go. The problem: that river was the sixth fairway at Minnedosa Golf and Country Club.

Bailey, the superintendent, and Law, head professional and general manager, paddled their way around one of the worst floods to hit their 18-hole track in recent memory this year to the pump house to make sure it wasn’t damaged. The pump house was critical to help remove the insane amount of water that would close the front nine for half the golf season.

The above-average volume of snow this winter led to high river levels. Coupled with significant rain in the spring, five holes were completely covered when the Little Saskatchewan River breached the dike on May 13.

“It was kind of a helpless feeling,” Law said on Sunday, just a couple of weeks after finally opening all 18 holes again on July 29. “It’s a long, tedious process and grass doesn’t grow overnight.

“… River water’s a totally different animal, you’ve got silt sitting on the fairways you’ve got to get worked in, takes forever to dry.”

The next few months were incredibly difficult for a staff of five and included all sorts of contract work to restore the damaged holes.

They had to redo all the cart paths and bunkers that were under water, wash silt off fairways and even bring in a swather to clean up the driving range. Law and some of the junior members raked what the grounds crew didn’t have time to get to.

A cluster of trees on the sixth hole was waterlogged and had roots loosen enough for a storm to rip them out of the ground, requiring another massive cleanup job.

While the course is understaffed, so are some of the companies that do the sort of work Minnedosa needed.

“That’s probably been the biggest setback time-wise is getting people in to do some of this work,” Law said. “Some have been fantastic, others are just flat-out too busy or don’t have the capacity or the equipment, or people to run the equipment to get in there.

“Every industry is kind of feeling this weird staffing shortage … and that trickles down and affects everybody in a number of different ways. We’re not exempt from that by any means.”

If no one told you about the flood before playing the course today, however, you’d step up to the first tee and have no clue.

Hole Nos. 2 and 3 are currently shortened to par 3s as they took the worst of the damage, but the fifth and sixth are completely back in play. The greens that got hit hardest are slower as they have to be eased back to normal speeds or they’ll die, but other than that, it’s in spectacular shape.

“I get to see what they accomplish and the conditions they punch out on a day-to-day basis with that little staff and that small of a budget with rising costs of fertilizer and fuel,” Law said.

“What (Bailey) is able to do to adapt and work to that is amazing. I feel our course conditions are as good as any around here.

“To deal with that plus the flood damage and all the stuff that goes on top of that is no small feat and I think they should be applauded endlessly for what they’ve pounded out here this year.”

While some disasters are inevitable, Law said a few changes should help prevent future issues moving forward. One is an irrigation pond just short and left of the sixth green to help handle droughts — Law chuckles just uttering that word this year.

They also had an engineer survey the property and make plans to improve the dike and drainage to mitigate future flooding.

“I’m pretty confident going forward,” Law said, “We’re going to put things in place so this will be a terrible memory, but a memory nonetheless.

» tfriesen@brandonsun.com

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