Okay Andrew, you asked for it. Not one, but four pics, hope they aren't too much...
The photo below [taken Thanksgiving weekend last year, just before the snows came] is of an area which we all agree [including Jeff Mingay, currently working out in British Columbia on "Sagebrush" with Rod Whitman & ex-PGA'er Richard Zokol, and who popped by for a quick site visit in the Spring] could become a par-4 hole, approximately 425 yards, with the green site somewhere directly in front of the toe of the ridge coming down. The old fence is simply a quarter-section line, but the current owners own 10 quarter sections, including the two valleys which we are looking into, so that "fence" is a non-issue. And those aren't rocks in the foreground, they're cowpies, from a herd of about 150 which frequent these parts every summer for three months.
The image below is of an area which "could" produce a long par-5 hole, the landing zone anywhere in front of the "butte", with the approach shot skirting the left side of it, the greensite out of sight beyond. A definite 3-shot hole. Again, this photo is from Thanksgiving weekend last year.
The photo below is from last Winter, and shows the area of what we consider to be the second hole, a par-5 of some 550 yards [we are extremely limited in variety of routing possibilities for the 1st, 2nd, 17th, & 18th holes, owing to the fact that they will be in this smaller valley...separate from the other valley in previous photos]. The clubhouse will, in all likelihood, be sited way up top on the ridge in the far left of this photo, the first hole's teeboxes high on the slope of the ridge, the fairway off to the left in this photo, a par-4 of some 450 yards. Quite an opener, we think.
Anyway,the thought for this second hole [photo taken from probable back-tee location] is to imitate the opening hole of Hurdzan's "Devil's Pulpit" course in Ontario, basically a mirror image [flip-flopped] of that hole, to some degree anyway. The creekbed here will have to be relocated way over to the base of the ridge on the left, to get it out of play as much as possible. Then, one or two diagonal fairway bunkers would be placed into the far bank of the existing creekbed, giving golfers the choice of flying their tee shot over the bunkers to the "upper" part of the fairway, giving them a better angle to the green [somewhere just in front of the "cut" in the ridge in the distance for the railway line] and a shot at reaching the green in two. The risk of that choice of play comes from o.b. on the railway line. The option would be to play safe to the left of the bunkers, to the lower fairway, but would result in a longer angle to the green.
And this last photo [hope I haven't burdened you guys with too many] gives you an impression of the undulations in the bottom of this part of the valley. The photo was also taken last Winter. I "posed" for this shot [I'm standing about 125 yards away] to give a better perspective of the scale of the valley.
JJ