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Black Mouse Update: 5-29-24

Greetings, fellow supporters and caretakers of Black Mouse Disc Golf Course. It’s time for summer, and with it a summer update on course access and projects. Anyone interested in a workday followed by discount craft beers and reggae?

Course Closed Thursday June 6th and Friday June 7th

The school year wraps up on the SLVUSD Tri Campus next week, and that generally means the course is playable on weekdays in addition to weekends. However, graduation activities will require the course to be closed on June 6th and 7th. The very charter school that founded Black Mouse, Nature Academy, uses the stage on hole 5 for graduation ceremonies, for one thing.

They also have major renovations planned for the elementary and middle school parking lots this summer. During these times, do not park in the adjacent neighborhood.

Work Day and After Party on Sunday, June 9th

Steel Bonnet Brewery in Scotts Valley recently reached out to me asking how they might support Black Mouse. Since we’re not set up for teesign sponsorship, they offered to “sponsor” an upcoming work day by providing me with vouchers to give to those who show up mid-morning at the course for a bit or clearing and whatnot. Those vouchers can then be used for a discount on their craft beers that day.

The Shockwave food truck will be there, and my very own band SPAM will be performing from 3-5 pm. Let’s show up in force and turn it into an SLVDGC social!

This day will be as much about reconnecting as a group as making the course more playable. Show up at hole 1 at 10 AM, and bring gloves and whatever tools you think will help us move debris and give The Mouse a facelift.

Everyone is welcome; we’d love to see some of the folks from out of town who cherish the course as much as we do. Don’t bring alcohol onto the course, of course. That’ll be for later at Steel Bonnet!

Moving the Big Stuff

We still have some full-sized downed Douglas Firs and even a Redwood that need to be cut up and removed from the middle of holes. Ric Howard and I plan to renew our efforts to get a prison work crew from Calfire to get that done. Stay tuned!

black mouse updates

Black Mouse Update 10-18-23

Club Meeting, Work Days, and . . . Monthlies?

Hello to the millions of Black Mouse Disc Golf advocates around the world!

In my last update, I mentioned engaging the assistance of a prison work crew from the Calfire station in Bonny Doon to help cut up and move the numerous large trees that fell during last year’s epic storms. That hasn’t happened yet, and since it didn’t happen during summer break our next chances are winter break and spring break.

Black Mouse beauty is where you find it.

In the meantime, there is still plenty we can do to clear and cut up debris and remove potential hazards. I know plenty of the people who play the course come from over the hill, so hopefully we can loop some of them in to help. Stay tuned for an announcement of dates and times.

Next up, though, is a club meeting at Redwood Pizza in Felton on Wednesday, October 25th, at 6 p.m. Aside from nailing down a couple of work days, another key topic will be the launch of SLVDGC monthlies!

Finally, a little future gazing to excite your imagination. If we can crank up the “disc golf clubs can accomplish anything” machine, adding holes to Black Mouse, hosting events at Boulder Creek golf course (maybe a discount for club members who help maintain that course a little), and even creating a new course elsewhere in SLV are all within the realm of possibility.

If we can visualize it, we can do it. And if we build it, we know they will come! Hope to see a bunch of you next Wednesday.

save black mouse

Black Mouse Update 7-26-23

A very quick update for y’all Mighty Mouse-ka-TEE-ers:

CAUTION: On Sunday a group exiting and I was entering said they encountered yellowjacket nests near hole 7’s basket and hole 9’s tee. I didn’t see either, but proceed with awareness there, and everywhere, now that we know they are active.

Another group of disc golfers playing last weekend discovered water running through hole 11. Upon investigation, they discovered that the school’s water tank was leaking. They paused their round to notify several people with both the school and water district, and likely saved hundreds of thousands of gallons of water. I will be sure to include that in my report.

The emergency response training on the tri-campus has come and I didn’t hear of any disc golfers getting hauled out in zip ties, so I assume everyone stayed out. Thanks!

We are still in the waiting stage for scheduling a crew from Camp Ben Lomond to come cut up and move downed trees on the course. I wanted to wait until after that to schedule work days, but without knowing when they’ll be available we might as well do what we can. Watch for an announcement soon.

Since we completed our initial mission of reopening the course (HOORAY!) I’m changing the homepage. Keep your eyes peeled. After collecting testimonials for Black Mouse as part of this effort, I thought “Why not collect testimonials on this site from everywhere about how disc golf changes lives?” So maybe that’s what I’ll do. What do you think?

Uncategorized

Black Mouse Update 6-28-23

Hello all!

Let’s start with some good news, and then briefly touch on some other potentially good news, then look ahead as a club and community.

Congratulations are in order to all of us as I just renewed the club’s annual agreement with SLVUSD. This is a validation of our comprehensive efforts to obey the rules that come with utilizing school property and spread the word to others about the importance of that simple directive: Obey the school rules. Well done, us!

The other good news is that our efforts to bring in a Calfire inmate crew to cut up and clear fallen trees, per the last update, are grinding forward. We’ve completed the requisition paperwork, and now we wait for an opening, hopefully before school is back in session.

Once we have that scheduled I’d like to then schedule some work days before and after with the main job simply being collecting the smaller stuff into piles for eventual chipping. Stay tuned.

save black mouse

Black Mouse Update 5-8-23

A new threat of permanent closure; a new plan for and a new idea for cleanup and maintenance

Starting with the positive, Black Mouse is open for play. BUT NOT DURING SCHOOL HOURS! More on that in a sec.

If you haven’t been up there since the winter storms, and as you might imagine, much new damage to the course has taken place.

Photo taken on 2-12-23. Several more storms have come through since then.

Those who hold Black Mouse disc golf course precious are faced with two basic and not insignificant challenges:

Keep the course open.
Maintain the course so that it can fulfill its maximum potential as a community resource and awesome disc golf venue.

Number 1 is simple, sort of. The rules themselves make complete sense given the course’s location. Even those in the disc golf community who would rather bend a few agree that the trade-off is more than worth it.

“The best we can do is spread the consistent message that breaking those rules will get the course closed down for good. So please, do that.”

The problem is that not everyone who decides on a whim to go play Black Mouse is part of the “disc golf community.” The social mores that help keep members of a community accountable to one another don’t apply if the offenders are not part of the community.

The best we can do is spread the consistent message that breaking those rules will get the course closed down for good, in hopes that any community members who are among the rule breakers (thinking they will go undetected and therefore no harm, no foul) change their ways pronto. So please, do that. Hopefully they will hear the message.

I bring this up because I received an email from the school district over the weekend.

Taken at their word, the district agrees with the value the course brings the community and wants it open. They have told me they won’t shut it down for a single rule violation. But after that, it gets kinda vague, and that concerns me.

Course Cleanup & Maintenance

The recent storms were of the once-in-a-century variety, and their impact on the course will require at least as much work to get things ship-shape as we recently did to reopen. The reality, though, is that the same qualities that make The Mouse so special also require steady upkeep and maintenance even in normal years.

To address the big stuff, Bodi Tunheim and I took a class that will hopefully enable us to get a work crew from Camp Ben Lomond in during the summer. This is a CalFire facility in Bonny Doon that houses low-risk inmates who choose to serve their time working outdoors. They will be able to bring in large saws and hauling equipment to clear downed trees.

As for the smaller stuff and ongoing maintenance, I have an idea and would like feedback.

One notable aspect of the overwhelming response to our petition that helped reopen the course was the existence of many different clusters of friends and family. In other words, many unrelated “subsets” of our local disc golf community. Let’s call them crews— people who play together on the same course on a regular basis. They might even have unofficial names, like the Sunday Funday crew or the Bucket Brigade.

I think we easily have enough of these “crews” for each hole to be adopted by one. Maybe Victor, Steve, and Karen take one hole, Rob, Faith, Ron, and Marshall take another (although Marshall may insist on three), and so on.

So what do you think?