Erosion

The river has settled down a bit and some cooler weather has entered the valley. The creek peaked closer to 1200 cfs last night which seems like things are getting back to normal. These pictures are of eroding hillsides along 11 green and 14 tee box.

Plans are being made to stabilize these areas in the coming weeks and months to prevent this from happening again.

The front nine is expected to be open by Saturday with some slight temporary changes if the weather cooperates. Clean up efforts have begun and will continue into next week.

Survival

These are some of my favorite pictures from this week so far. The view from the frontage road is certainly a scary one. It seems that the creek has finally reached its peak, I hope. We have many areas cited that have come over the banks of the creek. The worst areas of destruction are the erosion to the creek side. These will need attention as soon as possible. The areas affected are along holes 7, 11, 17 and 14.

Imagine if we had a large snow year! What is amazing is how fast the snow is melting that is creating a monster out Gore Creek. I have put together a slide show of all the flood affected areas on the golf course and Aspen Lane near the 14th tee that you can view on the right side of the blog.

Fighting The Good Fight

Today, a new set of challenges. The Gore has been running so hard, it is amazing to see the power of water. This picture was taken by our field manager Mark Jero from what we call the "5K bridge"(A Nordic Term). This bridge is just upstream from the 14th tee at Aspen Lane. What a sight!
So today, with the help of many of the golf service guys, it was sandbag day and lots of them. Approximately 500 sand bags were put out today. The bags were put at #11 and #15 bridges to prevent under cutting the abutments. We have also experienced a lot of erosion at the 7th tee area. A wall was constructed there to prevent more erosion.
We have four trash pumps running, thanks to Ben Krueger (Former Superintendent and Designer of Vail GC) keeping them up all day long.
Many thanks to Head Professional Jeanne Sutherland and much of the golf staff and help from the Eagle River Water and Sanitation District and the Town of Vail. The GCM staff busted all day long to keep this place together.
We'll be back at it again tomorrow with 1,000 more sand bags.
Some say the river has already peaked or it will tonight, hope for the best!

Flooding

An interesting weekend to say the least. These pictures do not do any justice to the situation, but it has been getting bad. I am not sure how long the flooding will occur but we are having to keep the front nine closed until the water subsides.

This is life in the flood plain when the Gore reaches record levels. Last night the Gore topped off at 1600 cfs. For those of you who are not privy on that number for a creek that size, that is very high, very fast and very dangerous.

Locals who I have spoken with have never seen this much flooding occur on the golf course. The holes affected the most are 2,7 & 8. These areas are the lowest on the course and right now are having a difficult time draining into the creek. Some holes on the back nine will be effected this afternoon as the creek begins to rise again.

Experts say that the creek usually tops out between 2-4am. By this afternoon we'll have to close the back nine as flooding will most certainly occur in areas.

The GCM staff is busy catching up on mowing while levels are down in the morning. We are also working on sand bags and pumps to mitigate further damages.

More to follow.

Landscaping

Friday, we spent much of the day getting the plantings in place around the pump house building. It was a long time coming. I am tired of looking at that lonely building. All of the trees and bushes are in place. Planted were 3 white firs, 3 blue spruce, 3 lilac bushes and 7 red twig dogwood bushes. Next week we will be putting the final touches on the irrigation and planting the native grasses.

Grand Traverse Landscaping was a big help with the plantings and they are off to a great start with managing many of the landscape beds around the property.

Second Assistant Tony Giroux and Landscape Manager Stephanie Bibbens worked hard all week to prepare this area for planting.

Seeding Process on #4 New Tees

This Blog was written by our Iowa State University intern Andrew Evans.

With the good weather last week we were able to put down seed on the two new boxes on #4 and #8. Many steps were taken to ensure good growth on these tees. There were many rocks on the tee surface that had to be raked and removed. Next the seed was applied with a rotary spreader. Perennial ryegrass was used on the tees, because ryegrass has very fast growth and does well in this environment.
A bunker rake was used to rake in the seed with the soil and prepare a smoother surface. The tee boxes were then seeded a second time with rye for uniform coverage. A start up fertilizer was then applied to provide the proper nutrients to the soil for seedlings. The tees were then covered with turf covers to help with the growth process and give some protection to the newly seeded surfaces. The covers keep soil temperatures high, moisture in the soil profile and prevent drift of seed from the wind. The tees are hand watered daily for germination of the seed.

May 2010; By the Numbers

Average High Temperature: 57 Degrees F
Highest Recorded Temperature: 77 Degrees F
Average Low Temperature: 29 Degrees F
Lowest Recorded Temperature: 21 Degrees F (yesterday morning we reached 28 degrees)
Total Moisture: 3.14 inches
Total Snowfall: 12 inches