Beyond the permafrost potholes, snow mold and moose prints, it’s course maintenance as usual for Roger Evans at North Star GC in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Many golf courses are built on challenging terrain and in demanding climates. But there might be no track that faces both of these extremes more than North Star Golf Club, located just outside the city limits of Fairbanks, Alaska. Only 130 miles south of the Arctic Circle (or 198 road miles, via the Dalton Highway), North Star GC is billed as the “northernmost USGA-rated golf course.”
According to U.S. climate data, hours of sunlight at North Star’s property range from only 3 hours, 45 minutes on December 21 to nearly 22 hours on June 21. For essentially a month during the summer, with the presence of twilight, it does not get dark. Annual snowfall is 65 inches and rainfall 12 inches, with average high temperature extremes ranging from 73º F in July to only 1º F in January. Average lows reach -17º F in January, and 52º F in July.
North Star’s course is built on a permafrost layer where the upper layer freezes and thaws annually, causing extensive settling that creates significant potholes. With snow on the course for at least six months, snow mold is also a way of life for co-owners Roger and Melinda Evans—not to mention the moose hoofprints on the greens that must be dealt with.
The club’s golf season runs from when the ground thaws—generally, mid-May—and closes when snow is called for in the forecast, usually in late September.
“People are ready to play once May rolls around,” says Roger Evans. “We’ll see people with snow shovels cleaning off the tee boxes.
“We are definitely not your typical golf course,” he adds. “There’s a lot to contend with. With the thawing and settling, we cannot get equipment out on the course until the end of May. Before then, the ground is still too frozen to drain the moisture that thaws. But we make it happen, because people love to play the game.”
Here’s more of our conversation with Roger Evans on the unique aspects of creating a “Great Green North” for Alaska’s golf enthusiasts.
C&RB: Why a golf course in Fairbanks, Alaska?
Evans: I was born and raised here. My father was a pilot. He would fly to Fairbanks as part of his work, and ended up staying here because he was offered a job. I had no choice but to be a golfer because my dad played his whole life, having grown up playing at Coronado Golf Course in California.
My stepfather, Jack Stallings, was also a golfer who owned a course in Florida. He had a lifelong dream to build a course, so he bought some farmland just outside of Fairbanks. It was perfect because the ground was fertile and there were no rocks to deal with. It could be easily shaped. I helped him because I could work the land; I operated the bulldozer. It took two years to build, because the construction window was not that big each year. It was a nine-hole course to start with when it opened in 1993.
After my wife Melinda and I bought the course from my parents, I built another nine holes in 2001 and rebuilt the original greens. The clubhouse was a modular unit originally used to build the Alaskan Pipeline. We remodeled it and put on a conventional pitched roof and a deck with a view of the impressive terrain surrounding the course that’s highly popular.
GOLF COURSE PROFILENorth Star Golf ClubWebsite: www.northstargolf.com |
C&RB: What is your background in golf?
Evans: Other than liking to play the game, I had no other golf experience. I only got the job because I had plenty of experience in building things, working for the Bureau of Land Management. I constructed roads, campgrounds, firefighter compounds and the like. I led a crew that built the Arctic Circle Wayside on the Dalton Highway, which ends at Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean. I also built Moose Mountain, the state’s largest interior ski area.
I had no intent to be a golf course owner. But Melinda, who I met when she was on a summer job at Denali National Forest, and I decided to buy it from my mother and stepfather in 1996. I have kept up by taking classes from the National Golf Course Owners Association and the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, and reading books on golf course architecture.
C&RB: Tell us about the operation of the course.
Evans: Melinda manages the clubhouse and everything that comes with it—stocking the supplies, food, tees, balls, tourist items, etc., as well as the computer system, payroll, business licenses, and permits. It’s an amazing barrage of duties, and she does it all with amazing patience and endurance. She is actually a doctor—an internist—but now just works at the course. I manage the course, the equipment, the grounds crew, course repairs and any redesign needed. We have a part-time course crew of six people.
We also own and manage Moose Mountain Ski Area. The timing works well, because the ski mountain operates from Thanksgiving to the end of March, then the golf course is open from mid-May to the end of September. So we have April and October as a chance to rest and recover. It would be impossible to keep a year-round cycle without those breaks.
C&RB: How do your course-management challenges compare to others you have seen?
Evans: We are built on a 50-foot layer of permafrost. The ground is frozen solid until it starts to thaw in the first six feet. So for a while you have this feeling of walking on a waterbed until it dries out and drains. This thawing and refreezing creates warping, sinkholes and settling. We have to be on the constant lookout for that. Sometimes it seems that all I am doing is filling potholes that hold water from the spring season or rains. But we can’t get onto the course with equipment until the top layer dries out.
This process forces us to rebuild greens about every 10 years, and sometimes earlier. We have a sign by a green that has massive undulations that says “This green used to be flat.” Because of the short growing season, the greens don’t fill in until June.
Our other issue is snow mold, but I’ve found we can lessen the chances of that by covering greens in the offseason. For anyone in the northern tier, I would promote covering greens. We also spray fungicide to combat the snow mold.
We have ponds and wells, but we only water our greens. Our summers can be dry—we can go weeks without rain. We pump water to a holding tank and then through above-ground, black-poly piping to the greens. The ground just doesn’t allow for a typical irrigation system without having too many issues.
The pipes are in the roughs and out of the way, then we move them for watering. The thawing of the permafrost, along with the rain, provides enough moisture for the fairways and roughs. We don’t use that much water.
COURSE & GROUNDS OPERATIONS PROFILEAnnual Course Maintenance Budget: $200,000 |
C&RB: Who plays at the facility, and what are their biggest challenges?
Evans: We get locals, workers who come to the area for extended stays, and tourists. We also get those hardcore people who travel to play here because we are the northernmost course, or because they want to play a round in all 50 states. We’ll do about 15,000 rounds in a year. Most of them will be after work, and about half are nine-hole rounds.
We are a relatively short course, playing 5,800 to 6,000 yards—although we can stretch the blue tees to 6,500. We are at only 430 feet altitude, so there is no gain from playing in elevation. The biggest challenge comes in that there is no even lie, because of the permafrost layer. Our greens are small, so they offer a small target. Our lateral hazards are positioned just over 200 yards off the tee, so there is risk/reward for some of the longer hitters.
The golfers share the course with plenty of wildlife—mainly moose, bears, marmots, coyotes, foxes, hares, hawks and cranes. They leave you alone, unless you decide to approach them.
The only time they bother me is when the moose get on the greens and tear them up a bit; then we have to get to work with our ballmark repair tools. The problem is the moose, for some reason, only tear up the area around the cup. It’s like they are trying to rub it in because that is where all the foot traffic is. They also seem curious about the flags.
C&RB: Will this course be passed down to future generations?
Evans: (chuckling) I think they are smarter than that. One of our children is a well-known wildlife veterinarian in Norway, and another is applying to medical school. They won’t have time to run a golf course.
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