One More Round: The Owl's Den at Pelican Ponds, CO

The Friday that we were in Denver Colorado just happened to be the day after 4th of July. I'm not sure the reason, but the softball games that my niece had to play weren't until later in the day. With that in mind, I was able to convince @mrsbozz to join me for one more round of disc golf before we left Colorado on Sunday.

We were still trying to keep ourselves close to the Thornton area where we were staying and not wanting to repeat the last course we played, we found ourselves at The Owl's Den disc golf course at a park called Pelican Ponds.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that this course wasn't quite as funky as the past one. The holes were at least close to each other whereas at the other park the back nine was a mile walk away from the front nine.

It was still a lot more wide open than I have come to expect from the courses here in Michigan, but I guess that is what you get when you are out west. @mrsbozz had one request and it was that we avoided drastic elevation changes, so I think that eliminated some of our choices off the bat.

According to UDisc, this course is still under development and while it only has 18 holes now, they plan on adding another nine for a total of 27 in the future. The wide open fairways gave me the opportunity to try a couple of different techniques for throwing. I didn't realize it at the time, but the back nine ended up being a bit more "wooded" than the front nine.

Besides the lack of green in general, the other difference between this course and the first one we played was that the "holes" were a lot longer than the other one. This meant that I was having to rely on my distance a lot more than my skill. I didn't notice as much at the other course since the holes were so short, but here at the Owl's Den, I was really surprised to see just how much the higher altitude impacted the flight path of my discs.

One thing that had never occured to me was the fact that there might be snakes around this part of the country. When I was doing some research on the course, I noticed that someone had posted some photos of snakes in a fallen tree near the 7th hole. I didn't see any when we played, but there was a small patch of grass that had a rattling sound coming from it, so we steered clear of that.

When I was trudging through the scrub brush looking for errant discs rattle snakes weren't really on my mind, but then I saw a news story about this the other day. Apparently they found a huge den of Prairie Rattlesnakes in Northern Colorado. After watching the stream for a little bit I realized that given their camouflage, I could have been inches from one and I may have never known.

Just something to keep in mind if you ever play this course!

I think we got a bit lucky and visited during an overly dry period for the city. From the photos I have seen online, I think there were some lower areas of this course that may have posed a water hazard if they had gotten more rain. I think the general "dryness" has been a big issue out west given the number of forest fires they are currently fighting.

Thankfully we were long gone from Colorado before all of those really started going.

As I said, on the back 9 there was a bit more trees to contend with than on the front nine. I don't mind a wide open hole every now and then, but I prefer holes where I have to fight around some trees. Even though it's a bit more frustrating.

Luckily, I had the UDisc app on my phone to tell me the par on each of these holes, but it would have been nice if they had put that on the signs. They took the time to make such nice signs, but to leave the par for the hole off seemed a bit lame.

As you can see in the middle photo above, some of the holes were quite long. We played to the red basket mostly. I don't know as though I have ever seen a 720 foot hole before. I'm lucky if I can throw a disc 100 to 200 feet most times. Some folks throw 300 to 400 feet easily all day, so this would still be a long hole for them.

Eventually, the course brings you back to the front nine and then you have a short walk to the parking lot where the course started. We had a bit of trouble finding hole #1 when we first arrived, but the UDisc app helped us easily get where we needed to be.

We did come across a group of people towards the end of the course and thankfully they let us play through. They seemed to be much more skilled that me, but since by that point @mrsbozz had decided to stop throwing, I was moving through the holes fairy quickly.

As you have seen from the photos, there really wasn't too much brush or undergrowth to lose your disc in and have to spend a half hour looking for it.

I ended up shooting a +18 on the course, which I honestly don't feel too bad about. Given it was a new course, it had some pretty long holes, and the altitude was definitely impacting the flight of my discs, I think an average of a bogey per hole isn't too bad. I'm also including this post in the #wednesdaywalk initiative started by @tattoodjay given the amount of walking we had to do. I logged an impressive 13,000 steps on this particular Friday.

It was a beautiful way to spend the morning in Denver as we climbed into the car to head back to the rental house. We still had a day full of softball ahead of us and two more full days in the mile high city.

Sports Talk Social - @bozz.sports

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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or @mrsbozz unless otherwise sourced