Nestled in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, Mount Massive GC is North America's highest-elevation golf course. When CGCS Craig Stuller began an irrigation overhaul, getting material up the mountain was only half the battle.

2001 Leo Feser award candidate

North America's highest city is Leadville, Colo., elevation 10,152 feet. It is a town steeped in the lore of the Old West that has endured cycles of boom and bust since the 1800s, but recently tourism has become Leadville's new economic anchor.

Mount Massive Golf Club is a nine-hole public course on the outskirts of Leadville. Despite a short summer season and tourism window, Mount Masisve averages 20,000 rounds annually. Set in the open spaces of the Arkansas River Valley near the river's headwaters, ringed by the tallest mountains in the state, surrounded by ranchland and forest, it has a truly spectacular setting. Golf has been played on the site since the 1930s Ð originally on sagebrush fairways and sand greens. In the early 1970s, a $50,000 grant provided the funds for a single-row automated irrigation system. The irrigation system allowed Mount Massive to establish turf and to begin thinking of itself as a real golf course. Mostly dependent on donations and modest membership revenues, a few caring folks nurtured and tended the course into the late 1980s. Then, as the tourism-driven regional economy boomed, Mount Massive saw a steady increase in daily-fee play and revenue. This led to hiring a full-time superintendent, which led to improved maintenance and operations, and eventually to rising expectations from club members and the ever-growing groups of daily-fee players.

Craig Stuller, CGCS

Irrigation challenge
As drier, warmer summers became common through the 1990s, the irrigation system began showing its age. Our goal in 1997 was to have a new system installed and operating for the 2001 season. It seemed like a daunting task. Despite our recent modest success, we had less than $100,000 in reserve funds, only two years left on our lease with Lake County, no design and no security to offer a potential lender.

Through the winter of 1997-98, we solicited and evaluated bids from a number of golf irrigation design firms, ultimately choosing the Larry Rodgers Design Group (LRDG). Of course, not everyone was thrilled with the idea of going in to debt to replace what was generally perceived as an old but adequate system. Few were aware of the luck we'd had over the years with timely rains, abundant water supplies and the staff's repair work.

It was clear there would need to be a strong effort to educate and inform everyone involved with Mount Massive. We felt that if we could get the design done during the '98 season, and could arm ourselves with facts and figures along with ideas, we could let anyone interested make their own determination. If the reaction was positive, great. If not, we would have spent a few thousand dollars to get some maps of our course and preliminary design work done on a new system. Not a bad investment either way.

Throughout the irrigation project, play continued on the nine-hole course, which sees 20,000 rounds per year.

Following a mild winter in 1998, our rapidly draining soils, low humidity and intense solar radiation called for some timely irrigation in early May. Fortune was our friend -- the old system cranked up without a break or failed valve. The dry spring extended deep into summer and frequently caused us to irrigate around the clock.

Meanwhile, LRDG did its work, and by September we had a preliminary design. They had come up with a triple-row valve-in-head system, central computer, radio control, etc. -- the works. As operator of the system it was supposed to replace, it had a beckoning, mirage-like quality to it, not unlike an imaginary desert oasis.

Meanwhile, LRDG did its work, and by September we had a preliminary design. They had come up with a triple-row valve-in-head system, central computer, radio control, etc. -- the works. As operator of the system it was supposed to replace, it had a beckoning, mirage-like quality to it, not unlike an imaginary desert oasis.

With Colorado's highest peak, Mount Elbert, in the background, the scenic beauty is great for golfers but added another degree of difficulty to the project.

Mount Massive's unique ownership and governing authority situation now came into play. The course is located on county- and federally owned property. Mount Massive GC Inc. is a non-profit organization, governed by a volunteer board of directors elected by club members. Annual memberships are available only to Lake County residents and property owners. Mount Massive owns all the improvements and fixtures pertinent to the golf course facility except the clubhouse. Lake County holds a special use permit from the U.S. Forest Service allowing maintenance and operation on the portion of the course located on federal land. For a nominal fee, Lake County leases the property to Mount Massive GC.

In January 2000 the lease was up for renewal, which could not have been worse timing with the county wrangling with land exchanges, water rights and a Land Use Guide and Comprehensive Plan targeting the area around the course for future development. So, with the county hesitant to encumber the property, we focused on finding grants, government-subsidized loans, enterprise zone funds, bonds -- anything that would help us get the money. A local bank was willing to take a step, but required the property as security. We would need to sell that idea to the county commissioners, and there were legal and title questions. As resolve faltered, we began to rationalize that the old system worked fine last year and doubted our ability and need to take on the project. Then it was spring and time for golf.

A backhoe digs trenches for the new pipe.

Putting it together
The start-up of 1999 quickly ended any discussion of postponing a new system. There were more than a dozen freeze-related failures, many requiring replacement of valves and 20- to 40-foot sections of pipe, along with loss of turf. The system behaved well enough once started, but once again we faced narrowing fairways and overall turf decline during dry spells -- despite sometimes watering all day.

It became apparent that the future of Mount Massive depended on swaying the county commission to restructure our lease so we could offer the land as security. We knew there were risks, but said the only risk-free route was doing nothing. Doing nothing was not a risk because it had a certain ending -- the eventual loss of the golf course. The county was encouraged by our research into federal loans and grants, but after several month's work, commercial loans became our best possibility. We were allowed to proceed, and the county agreed to renew the lease under whatever terms were required for financing -- including using the land as security -- as long as it didn't cost the county anything, and they retained first right to satisfy the debt if we defaulted. Our board chose a local bank willing to extend a $400,000 line of credit. By now it was mid-winter 2000, and the project began to look like a reality. Still, if we did not get bids and a contractor selected soon, our chances for getting the system by fall were slim.

We forged ahead, setting Aug. 1, 2000, as the deadline for having all plans in place, which would allow us to close the course following Labor Day to begin construction and still have two months of working weather. Anything that couldn't be completed could be done in spring. Bids were in by early April, ranging from $370,000 to $440,000. LRDG and I preferred one contractor and were pleased that they offered the low bid.

In the next two months, the other pieces of the puzzle fell into place, and during the last week of July, the lease was signed, the loan closed and contract finalized. Now the fun would really begin.

Crew members assemble laterals for the new system.

Surprises
Major projects are always full of surprises. The first was when our contractor, Mark Williams, president of Environmental Construction Inc. (ECI), suggested not closing the course Sept. 5 as planned. He would begin mobilizing the first week of August, if we could begin prefab and staking work right away, and allow some mainline trenching to begin by mid-August. He was comfortable with staying open and working around golfers and was confident that, with reasonable weather, he could be done by Oct. 31 without closing any holes until we began plowing. Although I had been looking forward to closing to work on a number of projects, keeping revenue coming in sure wouldn't hurt.

The next surprise came while I was on vacation. With no advance notice, the piping for the mainline arrived. ECI had not begun shipping up heavy equipment, so my assistants tried to help the driver unload his delivery. The bucket on our front-end loader could not reach the top of the stack, so they used chains on the bucket to pull, swing and drop the pipe bundles to the ground. When I later learned of this, I first praised their efforts, and next explained that the bill of lading calls for 24-hour notice prior to delivery and that I would have refused the shipment. In the end, we had a few cracked pipe ends and our first labor backcharge to ECI.

The third surprise was ECI's. When their six-person crew came for their first week in Leadville it was a Monday, and we had wall-to-wall golfers. The ECI crew began organizing parts and building main-to-lateral fittings. At first, Williams was concerned that the course was busier than he had expected. Later, after the mini-excavator and trencher encountered the ancient riverbed of rocks that lay under the course, the mini-excavator was pulled off to the side, only to be used for digging holes at head locations, not mainline trenching. A medium-weight loader/hoe arrived the next day to take over that part of the job.

During a walking tour in late August, the designer, contractor and I staked out the new mains. Brian Keighin, LRDG's project manager, used Mount Massive's database file, which was developed during the preliminary design phase, to guide us along. Using a GPS satellite-communicator and notebook computer, Keighin recorded the exact location of the mainline and each lateral, gate valve and drain or air relief valve. Williams and crew spent the next three weeks trenching in and laying the mains and the hundreds of fittings and valves, laying in the needed wire runs in the mainline trenches, and backfilling. Shading material was a stumbling block. At first, Williams tried screening the spoils from the trench to clean it enough to use it directly on the pipe, but this was too time consuming to be cost effective. As each leg of the main was completed and readied for backfilling, a parade of trucks carrying sand from a local quarry hauled in imported shading material.

At times, the course looked like a trench warfare training ground. The native rough had been ravaged and pillaged. The piles of rock and dirt on the sub-alpine tundra stood out like acne on a prom-bound teen-ager.

During the digging, we were still a golf course that required irrigation. Although I marked places where the trench could sever parts of our old system, we were only about 70 percent successful in working past these intersections without damaging the existing system. We broke, then we fixed. Some areas went for days without water. We tied together hoses and ran them across fairways to greens, added surfactants to spray tanks and ran gas-powered portable pumps from the lake. When all the mains were in, trenches complete and repairs made, our old system was still 95 percent operable. Which was good, since we had a month of irrigating left to go.

At times, the course looked like a trench warfare training ground. The native rough had been ravaged and pillaged. The piles of rock and dirt on the sub-alpine tundra stood out like acne on a prom-bound teen-ager. Getting the mainline in was hectic, demanding and relentless -- reminiscent of my first few years at Mount Massive. I was reaquainted with the stunning sunsets at the course, and just like old times, I was often viewing them from a hole, knee-deep in mud, plastic and rock. I was tired, dirty, sleep-deprived and usually hungry. But I have a confession to make -- I was having a blast.

Because the controller boxes on the old system had been assaulted by many errant golf balls, the new controllers were positioned in more out-of-the-way locations on the course.

Checking the details
By the third week of September, we hadn't hit any real snags. With the mainlines installed, the chances of finishing construction before winter were good. Typically, we are able to work the dirt until Halloween, and if this fall was as dry and mild as the last two, our odds of finishing were even better. Tying the new mains into our existing pump while keeping the old system operating was a bit of a trick, with lots of fittings and angles to contend with.

The old system was very forgiving in terms of dirt and other debris, which kept our ponds clean until ECI decided to install a strainer at the tie-in point. Leg by leg, the new mains were flushed, pressurized and flushed again, exposing only two leaks.

While the pipe crew did its job, the more technical side was also proceeding. Controllers were installed, but wiring them to the heads and power sources remained. During staking, I didn't notice the as-staked location of one pair of controllers, which were set about 50 feet off to the "slice side" and in front of the No. 6 tee complex that borders the irrigation ponds and a berm. I told Williams that I'd prefer the controllers closer to the berm, out of harm's way, but to move them now would mean splicing the 120 wires to add the needed length. We didn't want to splice the new wire runs, so we moved them as far back as the laid-in wire will allow. This moved the controllers a little farther, but I felt like I just missed a 2-foot putt.

Attaching lateral to plow.

I reviewed the design and walked the course to be certain nothing else so obvious was overlooked. I discovered a few sprinkler heads that should have been half-circle instead of full, rerouted some lines around tee boxes and staked out an extension off one of the six green laterals into our sand-stash area, where I have always hoped to build a turf nursery.

Plowing process
One of the reasons I wanted ECI was their experience plowing in laterals. Many irrigation contractors are hesitant to plow pipe in the mountains. The alternative is trenching across the fairways every 60 feet and around tees and greens, which is fine for new construction, but is a slow, costly and destructive process on an existing course. After the mainline trenching, we knew the soil better, and I wondered about plowing, but Williams remained confident.

Feeding the wire during the plowing process.

We started plowing in laterals on No. 4, a par-3 frost-prone hole on the northwest corner of the course. The plowing process itself was simple: Sod was stripped, and an adequate hole dug at each staked head location. Pipe sections for each lateral were glued together and allowed to cure for a few days. Each lateral/main connection point has a 90-degree fitting coming off the top of the main and a manual gate valve. The holes at these connection points were left open. Wire with the appropriate common and individual leads for each head were left coiled in the hole, cut to a predetermined length and labeled.

Special tires on the plow minimized turf damage as sod was stripped and holes were dug at each head location.

The plow was a modified trencher, rubber tired with a vertically mounted hardened-steel blade, which vibrates 10,000 times a minute. The backside of the blade had fittings that house a hollow tube running parallel to the blade's surface. It was here that the terminal ends of each wire were inserted. The "bullet," named for its shape, was mounted near the bottom of the blade. Its tapered steel case fits around the outside diameter of the pipe. Trailing the bullet was a short piece of steel pipe tethered to the bullet housing by a chain. This slipped over the pipe to be pulled, the end of which is then inserted into the open back of the bullet.

To begin the process, the blade was positioned above the hole, lowered and, as the machine crept forward, the vibrator was kicked on. The sleeve slid down the length of pipe until the chain stopped it, and tension held it in place as the pipe was slowly pulled into the hole being created by the plow and bullet. One person fed the wire run up and into the hollow tube as the process moved along.

After the plowing process was complete the course was left with only a small seam.

At each head location, every 60 feet, the wire run was rearranged to coil a section of the common and leave behind the individual head lead. At the end of the pipe run, the bullet and pipe were unhooked, and the machine moved along to the next stop. The hole created is oversized, allowing enough manipulation of the pipe and wire to install tees and swing joints at each head location. The holes were left open and heads not attached until five to 10 laterals were plowed in and fittings attached. Then, each line was flushed, heads attached and wires spliced on. The holes were backfilled with clean material and carefully tamped. Heads were set a few inches above grade, sod replaced, and each head was manually run for a few rotations.

Initially, we were able to get four or five laterals in and 12 to 15 heads operating each day. As our season wound down and mowing ended, my crew concentrated on setting and backfill.

We closed holes as needed (play had dropped off but remained steady). Williams' estimates were correct, and holes No. 3, 4 and 5 are done by the end of September. The schedule was tight, but with good weather and barring major catastrophe, we were on course to be done before winter.

Fire and ice
On the night of Oct. 2, catastrophe came. A fire, clearly arson, gutted the clubhouse. Our project ran into delays because the plow blade kept snapping welds, late frost meant late starts and construction crew members were taking time off. A few days later, as we were halfway through on No. 6, the first snow arrived. Daytime temperatures plummeted from the 60s to the 20s. Bitter-cold air lasted only a few days, but the weather routine became light snow at night that melted during the day -- a pattern that hampered but did not halt our progress. The crew regained its pace after completing holes 6 and 7. By mid-October, No. 8 was completed, and the race was on to 9, 1 and 2. As the plow cut across our old main on No. 8 we held a ceremonial moment -- the old system lost its last isolatable loop and was history.

An arson fire damaged the Mount Massive clubhouse just as Stuller and the crews were hurrying to finish up work on the irrigation project before the Rocky Mountain winter set in.

By late October, when I typically blow out the system, the nights were cold enough to freeze heads. As half of the construction crew worked on holes 1 and 9, Williams and the other half blew out 3 through 8. Hand-held propane torches were sometimes needed to thaw the lids and get the heads up, but blowout was done in a few days. However, without a warming trend, we couldn't finish by Halloween. The advance crew had gotten too far out in front; and frozen piles of earth stood on first fairway. When my moving efforts only caused smaller chunks of frozen sod, it was time to re-evaluate. The goal now was to get the rest of the pipe plowed in and dirt moved from turf areas; it would be foolish to glue or put water into new lines now. The rest of the pipes went in, but we were 30 heads shy of completion. We came close, and maybe our two-month timeline was a bit too tight. I was satisfied and one thing was certain: We'd have a new system operating in 2001.

New ideas
As we were in the midst of building the new system, we decided to improve supply and delivery by expanding the irrigation pond and building a new pump station. The pond held 1 acre-foot of water and lost about 50 gallons per minute through the old concrete lining. The expanded pond would triple capacity and be lined with 30-millimeter PVC pipe. We used the $30,000 remaining on the loan and took $45,000 from reserve to complete this project. The $50,000 VFD-controlled vertical turbine pump station would be financed from our reserve fund. ECI was hired for this new phase of renovation as well.

The lines were flushed out just a few weeks before the course closed for the season in late October 2000.

As the weather shut down the irrigation system installation, we began the pond expansion. Excavated dirt was used to rough in mounds and berms between the No. 2 tee and No. 8 fairway, creating some visual movement and better separation between the areas. We also created berms around the fifth green and over to the third tee. Additional earth was used to add more teeing ground on several holes and some was used as cover for the pond liner.

The ECI crew endured the freezing weather and kept pushing dirt. The old concrete liner was broken apart and buried below the bottom of the "new" pond. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, the wet well arrived and was set, along with its suction line. We considered pouring the concrete for the pump station, but with the unfriendly weather, we decided not to set the pumps until spring.

The pump station building arrived from Dallas Dec. 8 and was housed in our garage/shop to protect it from winter. With the pump station occupying 80 percent of the floor space, some of our equipment spent the winter outside, which made me start to dream of our next project -- a new maintenance facility.

Craig Stuller is CGCS at Mount Massive Golf Club in Leadville, Colo., and a 10-year GCSAA member.