BLYN — Crews this week are building the last two holes of an 18-hole disc golf course that will soon open in east Clallam County.
County Parks, Fair and Facilities Director Joel Winborn said the new park off Thompson Road northeast of Blyn should be open to the public by the end of this year.
“We’re making great progress this week,” Winborn said Tuesday.
“Hopefully it will be ready here within the next couple of months.”
The long-planned course sits on 40 acres of county land on the Miller Peninsula about 9 miles east of Sequim and 2 miles from the Jefferson County line.
Volunteers, maintenance staff and a chain gang inmate work crew have been cutting vegetation and grading the 20-foot-wide fairways.
Signs will be installed before the free course opens to disc golfers of all skill levels.
“This will be a first-rate course,” Winborn said.
Disc golf is played by throwing a Frisbee-like flying disc into a series of elevated metal baskets, or holes.
Players are challenged by trees, shrubs and varying terrain as they negotiate the course by making consecutive throws from where the previous throw landed.
Like in regular golf, the objective is to hole out in as few attempts as possible.
“We’ve had a lot of people over the years who have requested this type of an activity in our county,” Winborn said.
“The sport has really grown a lot of over the last decade.”
The Professional Disc Golf Association has more than 86,000 members playing on thousands of permanent courses around the world, including 323 in the Pacific Northwest, according to its website.
The North Olympic Peninsula has permanent disc golf courses at Lincoln Park in Port Angeles, Calvary Chapel in Sequim and H.J. Carroll Park in Chimacum.
Volunteers will help maintain the Thompson Road Disc Golf Course, which cost the county about $20,000 for metal chain pins, concrete slab tee boxes, signs and miscellaneous items, Winborn has said.
Disc golf proponents lobbied county commissioners to open a course at Robin Hill Farm County Park near Sequim in 2007. That idea was shelved after neighbors and park users objected.
County officials considered building a course at the Dungeness and Salt Creek recreation areas before selecting the Thompson Road site, which does not yet have an official address.
The course is located on the left side of Thompson Road as you travel north, Winborn said.
The property was acquired by Clallam County as a tax foreclosure in 1928. It was used as depository for debris from an estuary restoration project on Jimmycomelately Creek in 2004.
Last December, county commissioners voted to rezone the 40-acre site from rural low to parks and recreation, which enabled crews to begin construction.
Once completed, the Thompson Road Disc Golf Course will become Clallam County’s 21st park and 18th day-use facility.
“One of the things our parks board tries to do is to bring things to the community that a private individual wouldn’t necessarily have the ability to do,” Winborn said.
“This fits that niche quite well.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56450, or at rollikainen@peninsula dailynews.com.
