Rocky Mountain High by Peter D Smith
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Fairmont Banff Springs
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The plane climbed gently out of Heathrow on a hot, sunny afternoon, leaving the green fields of England basking in summer sunshine. Soon the coast of Wales slid quietly past far beneath the wings, then the south of Ireland, then pretty well nothing but sea and the odd patch of cloud until we made landfall four hours later, 38,000 feet above the coast of Labrador.
That's it, I thought, almost there, welcome to Canada. But, such is the size of that vast country (the largest on earth) that it was to be another five hours crossing the vast central plains of Canada before the unmistakable Rockies slowly grew on the horizon. From 200 miles away and five miles high, they look spectacular, rising sharply up out of flat, cowboy country.
And, Calgary was in the grip of cowboy fever when we landed, the annual Stampede in progress, a huge two-week show featuring steer-wrestling, chuckwagon racing, bare-back riding, barrel-rolling, plus marching bands, live music, fireworks, a casino, roller-coaster rides and, as they say, so much more — yeehaa!
So, after an afternoon of Stampede in the blazing Alberta heat, with just a couple of little beers, it was back to the hotel for a well-earned night's sleep.
Now, when you suddenly have a seven-hour time change chances are that, no matter what time you go to bed, you're still going to wake up on the dot of 7am UK time. And I did. And stayed awake most of the rest of the night.
Next morning (almost evening for me!) I set off to take on Alberta's best golf courses. Around Calgary there are about a dozen or so now as that city, riding the economic success of beef and oil, expands at an alarming rate. What were quiet suburbs two years ago are now part of greater Calgary and although nothing like the urban spread of London it was a pleasure to head out towards the mountains that rise majestically just south of the city.
Kananaskis is the place where, in 2000, they held the G8 conference and a nicer place you could not find. A beautiful Delta hotel and lodge, with superb dining facilities (I must admit that Canadian food is very good, unlike the half hundredweight of fodder slapped on your plate in the country to the south) and a very fun bar. It also has two of the best golf courses in Canada, both designed by the late Robert Trent Jones Snr.
The Rockies are full of fast-running streams flowing off the mountains so water comes into play on many holes of this 36-hole layout. The two courses are named after the mountains at either end of the valley in which Kananaskis basks, Mount Kidd (which soars 10,000 feet into the sky, though here we are at 5,000 feet, making the ball fly higher and longer) and Mount Lorette. When I was here a couple of years ago the Mount Kidd course was in better shape but this time the opposite — but don't get the impression that one was not in good shape: they are both superb.
Lorette is fairly flat, running round and over a dozen lakes on its 7,100 yard trek. Several holes play directly over water and it is never far away on most of the others. It's one of those courses that is photogenically perfect with the most wonderful views on every hole. Choosing one hole is difficult — in my opinion every hole is a signature hole.
The Mount Kidd course is perhaps more rugged, climbing up and down hill but again with some beautiful views. An outstanding hole is the par-3 fourth, playing 183 yards (blue tees — 197 off the gold) to an island green 150 feet below you. Anything but a very high shot that can carry that distance and land softly is likely to shoot off the back of the green into the lake and although there is more dry land well to the right of the green I would hesitate to call this a bail-out area.
It's little wonder that this facility has been named as North America's best 36-hole layout. You can't argue with that.
Canmore is a little town of about 20,000 people nestling into the side of the Rockies in the Bow Valley. The ride from Kananaskis is sheer beauty, lakes, mountains, forest, elk running by the side of the road — what more could you ask.
Les Furber is a well-established Canadian golf architect who worked with Trent Jones on Kananaskis when it opened 20 years ago. Furber built Silver Tip, a new course in Canmore. Like the town, it clings partly to the side of the mountains and, although with several fairways lined with real estate it at no times interferes with your view, nor intrudes onto the course as in some other places.
Yet this is not a golf course for the faint-hearted. Several holes have blind shots and the fairways roll one way or the other so flat lies are at a premium. There are also many holes where the elevation change from tee to green is demanding and the fairways tend to be very narrow, making this a course for those competent with a long iron or 3-wood — the driver does not get too much of a look-in. The walks from green to tee are . . . no, — let me start again: you do not walk this course. It is impossible. One tee is one mile from the previous green. I kid you not. Most of our group hated this course and for a first-time player (as we were) I can see why. Yet there are some good holes. It just takes getting used to. I didn't hate it, but I didn't like it. Maybe if I played it a few times I would come to appreciate it more. I would certainly like to go back to try to score better on those holes that foxed me first time.
The Banff Springs Hotel is one of the icons of the world. In 1886, William Van Horne, General Manager of the Canadian Pacific Railway, commissioned Bruce Price of New York, one of the foremost architects of the day, to draw up plans for a hotel to be built above the confluence of the Bow and the Spray Rivers overlooking the beautiful Bow Valley. The idea was to promote tourism in the Rockies, with visitors obviously arriving on the CPR. Construction started in the spring of 1887 and the hotel officially opened on June 1, 1888, though it was not finally completed until 1928. Today it is magnificent, a national symbol for Canada and a wonderful hotel where the service really is second-to-none, thanks in part to the General Manager of today, an Englishman.
The golf course was designed by the legendary Stanley Thompson, Canada's finest, and cost the unheard of amount of C$1 million. Canadian Pacific Railway hired him following his work for their rival, CNR, at Jasper a few years earlier. It opened in 1928. Interestingly one of Thompson's pupils, a few years later, was Robert Trent Jones and it was from Thompson that Jones got his sense of using the landscape and the natural setting.
The course is superb, tough, fairly flat with decently wide fairways, but some wonderful bunkering makes approaches treacherous. Several holes run alongside the swiftly-flowing Bow river and one hole, originally the first but today the 15th, plays over the Spray river.
Coming off the 14th, a difficult par-4 covered in bunkers but with a superb view of the hotel sitting on the hill above you, you walk (or drive) across the river and up a long and winding road to a tee-box outside the hotel. There was a tea-lounge here in bygone days and a few dozen people would be sitting sipping morning coffee or afternoon Earl Grey as you teed up. The fairway is 250 feet below and 200 yards out. A nice gentle 3-wood sends the ball flying into the air, up and up against the mountain backdrop, and seems to hang forever until it disappears down onto the fairway. It's a really easy shot. But it doesn't look it. That's the mark of a genius designer.
And finally to another Stanley Thompson design, the course rated number one in Canada in a recent poll for one of their national newspapers. Jasper Park Lodge GC was built in 1924 for the owners, Canadian National Railway. It took 500 men and 50 horses the entire summer to construct.
Certainly the course is superb especially the back nine where every hole is a challenge, particularly the 14th which plays across the edge of Lake Beauvert; and the 18th, a magnificent downhill dogleg that is as tough a finishing hole as you would want.
Sadly at the time of my visit it had rained every day for the previous three months so the conditioning was far from satisfactory and the famous views were just distant images in the mist. But you could still feel the quality of the layout. So poor was the condition due to the weather that the normal walk-up green fee had been reduced from C$195 to C$119 — a drop in sterling terms of £31.
The Lodge (yet another Fairmont property) is magnificent though most people stay in cottages or condominiums dotted around the estate (though none of them intrude on the golf course, which is national park land). Some of the cabins dotted discreetly around the estate have a wonderful history, including the Outlook Cabin, a favourite of the Queen Mum both whilst George VI was alive and after. It has six bedrooms. The Stanley Thompson Cabin, halfway down the first fairway (though you would not know it was there if they didn't point it out) has only five bedrooms, though three of them have Jacuzzis. Point Cabin is a 1928 five-bedroom log cabin with huge stone fireplace and Milligan Manor (I thought it should be Mulligan Manor the way I played!) outdoes them all with eight bedrooms, a 950 square foot dining area, service kitchen, stone fireplace and dining table for 14 people. Four of the bedrooms have hot tubs.
It would have been my luck to get one of these without — but we didn't get the chance, staying instead in perfectly comfortable cottages near the lake. But the dinner that night was superb, Arctic Char, a very tasty and meaty fish similar to a wild salmon but better, washed down by some very good Okanagan wines — the Okanagan Valley being a few hundred miles away across another couple of mountains. We'll be going here soon. I can't wait to get back!