The bunker work at Banff Springs is Stanley Thompson’s high-water mark for his architectural expression. He spent the early part of the decade experimenting with his own work and learning from other architects. He was slowly evolving from his early simple forms to a more complex approach to bunkering. He slowly added fingers of grass, high flashes of sand and even islands to develop more elaborate bunker compositions, but for the most part everything remained smaller in scale.
Given the massive scale of Jasper he was forced to pivot. He cleared wider to see more of the mountains and experimented with a grander scale of architecture to fit the scale of the setting. The course fit the scale, but the large simple bunkers had golfers feeling a little lost in the size of everything. It was an important step in the process to Banff, but not as successful as the work at Banff Springs would be.
At Banff Springs he figured out what could be done differently. He cleared wide again to create a dramatic backdrop to the golf. He planned his bunkering in the same grand scale to create grand carry angles and wide swings in the fairway lines. But this time he built the bunkers differently. He turned to more clusters of bunkers. He built them in various shapes and sizes, rather than building a single massive bunker. But he even took this even a step further, buy returning to the small-scale detailing he had used before Jasper Park. This brought the bunkers back to human scale and create incredibly elaborate forms. The human scale detailing made the golfer much more at home and in scale with the bunkers and surrounds. He managed to still design on a grand scale, but have the work remain relatable to each individual player. This was a master class of how to design golf courses in the mountains.
It was so successful that CN brought him back to Jasper Park to renovate the bunkering and add more of the flourishes and details seen in Banff Springs.