Trap Damage and Tree Felling

On Tuesday morning of this week the golf course was a mess.  The near 4 and half inches of rain decimated the traps, and left most of the course unmowable.  Most of the maintenance team spent the day either pumping, shoveling or raking sand, trying to get the bunkers back into shape for the weeks play.  Here are some photos of the what they looked like that morning.

This is the trap on the right hand side of number one fairway. 

The trap on the left hand side of number 9 green. The water had drained from the trap overnight but left the edges washed out and silt in bottom which will have to be shoveled out.

The right hand side of number six green.

Stewart and Dave pumping out the trap on the left hand side of number 17 fairway.  While all the traps have drainage in the bases, a rainfall event of 4 and half inches leaves more water than the drains can handle.  By pumping some of the water out we speed up the recovery process.  Even with the water pumped out this trap wasn't dry enough to repair until Wednesday morning.

This is the trap on the right hand side of number eight fairway.  One positive aspect of the rain fall is it demonstrated how well the drainage work we had done in this area improve the dry down time from the rain.  (see here for the post on the drainage work.)

 It's now Friday and all of the traps have been repaired to the pre-storm state.  Unfortunately due to man hours involve in the traps, and the sogginess of the golf course, mowing could not commence until Wednesday of this week.  The growth was more than we would normally allow and the clipping were of a higher volume than we would like. The tractor mounted blower came in very handy for removing the debris from the fairways and the rough. When storms interfere with our mowing schedule it's difficult to catch up and make the course presentable without conflicting with play.  Fortunately the Shotgun on Thursday presented us with an opportunity to come back to the course in the evening and remow the fairways, rough and surround while the grass was dry.  6 of the staff were in from 5:30 until dark working to return the turf to a playable state.  We very pleased with the efforts of the staff and happy to say that the course is looking good for the weekend play.

On a sad note one of the larger trees on the golf course had to removed for safety reasons.  The large Maple to the right hand side of number four fairway split during a prior storm and was a hazard to the golfers and staff.  It appeared that the tree had been damaged in the past and rot had weakened the tree to the point where it wasn't savable.  The tree had split through the trunk and there was very little remaining to hold up the heavy upper portion of the tree.  I took this footage on Tuesday September the 4th when Dave, Stewart, Gord and I removed the tree.  The whole project took about two hours, but  I have sped up the footage so you don't have to sit through the entire event.

Here's photo of the tree stump after everything had been cleared.  As you can see there is little left of the core of the tree and most likely would have fallen down in the near future.