Taking a step off the US PGA tour again, for this Pléiades 1 Golf Course of the Month we travel to a nine-hole course located in the ‘backyard’ of Boulder, Haystack Mountain. Designed by a local family, the Ebel’s, Haystack Mountain Golf Course is located in Niwot, Colorado and opened to the public in 1966. Since then, it has been a favorite designation for those Boulderites who are learning the game or just want to play a relaxing nine without traveling many miles to do so.
Before Haystack GC was built by the Ebel family, the land served as pastures and fields for some of Colorado’s earliest white settlers in the 1860s. And as many tragic stories go here in the West, before the settlers arrived, the lands were part of Chief Niwot’s Arapahoe Indian tribe who was displaced and later killed in a massacre. The Ebel family bought the 240-acre tract of land that is now Haystack GC in 1963. They lacked the financial capital to build out the course on their own, so they offered ‘free’ room and board to a team of temporary workers who helped them with the task.
Today, the nine-hole, Par 32 course plays 2153-yards and is considered a traditional links-style course with untamed roughs and little relief. Three of the holes play over water and five of them have double greens. Many of the original structures built on the lands in the 1900s are still there, for instance the old horse barns which are close to the pro shop and are used to store equipment. Haystack Mountain GC features bluegrass fairways and bent grass greens. My favorite hole is the short, 144-yard 4th hole as it has no hazards and (amazingly!) I actually par-ed it one time…and that is quite a feat coming from a golfer who knows more about snowmen than most.
If you are ever in the Boulder area with a few hours to burn, rent a car and take the 15 minute drive out to Niwot to play Haystack Mountain GC – the views are fabulous! In the meantime, enjoy these 50-cm color images of my favorite golf course.
A 50-cm color image of Haystack Mountain Golf Course in Niwot, Colorado collected on September 20, 2013 by Pléiades 1B. In this imagery, you can see significant damage to the course which was caused by the 2013 Boulder Flood. To see this course in 1.5-meter resolution, check out this month’s feature on SPOTMaps. Image photo enhanced by Apollo Mapping. © CNES 2012, Distribution Astrium Services / Spot Image S.A., France, all rights reserved.The Pléiades 1 High-Resolution Satellite Constellation
The Pléiades 1 constellation (or at least part of it!) has been in orbit since December 2011 and if you have not had a chance to check out any sample imagery, take a few moments and have a look at the gallery on our website. If you work with high resolution imagery, you should consider Pléiades 1 for your next geospatial project.
A variety of Pléiades 1 products are available from both a growing archive and as a new collection, including 50-centimeter (cm) pansharpened imagery and 50-cm panchromatic – 2-meter (m) 4-band multispectral bundles. We are happy to discuss the technical specifications, pricing and tasking options available with this new satellite constellation as Pléiades 1A has been joined in space by its twin, Pléiades 1B, which is now fully operational.
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