The Club at Snoqualmie Ridge
Played Snoqualmie in 2019. Brought the girls out along on a business trip and came out here from the airport before our meetings. While it’s only about a half hour ride from the airport it seems like a completely different world. We stayed at the Salish Lodge which gives you access to Snoqualmie. The Lodge is located right on the falls and was part of the opening of the Twin Peaks show many moons ago. Great lodge and locale if you’re going to do the PNW trip and are iffy on Seattle. In fact, you can plan an entire trip without ever hitting the city and have a great time.
Dining at the lodge is top notch. In fact I had visited here on a non-golfing trip eons ago and remembered the food and experience. It was so long ago that Rick Mirer was the QB savior for the Seahawks at the time and we caught a game at the Kingdome with him under center. That’s a long time ago but I did remember the lodge and the meal we had then and when the girls wanted to come out on a nature-ish trip I booked here again and was not disappointed.
Let’s get back to the Rick Mirer-led Seahawks. Hands-down the Seahawks unis of the time were one of the best ever. I hate the neon green nonsense the team is sporting now. I know the old unis scream 70s/80s but this is classic football. Eagles and Raiders are classic (the Raiders have stayed true to these too). I do like the classic Bears and Packers unis but the ones below are just better. In fact the late 70’s era produced some of the best unis ever so I have listed the top five below:
Now to the worst. Okay for the most part I tried to pick these from every day unis that were worn by the teams. Some of the one-game only Color Rush or 40’s throwbacks were so horrible I could pick 20 from these groups alone. The neon Seahawks, boring Bengals and Bledsoe Patriots were the worst every day unis but the Gold-Finger Jaguars and the Bumblebee Steelers are so wretchedly horrible, I had to include them here.
To the course. I remember conditioning was great and – since this is Seattle – we played it in the rain. Quick aside, this is actually a fallacy, I’ve played out in the PNW 15 or so times and this is the only time we really fought the rain (there are more rainy days in Pittsburgh). But I digress. There are homes surrounding the holes a good bit on the front that knock points off an otherwise top 100 course. This is a Nicklaus design and hosts the Boeing Classic. It used to be part of the TPC network.
I played like soggy poo here. Above is the par three ninth. My favorite is the 14th where you chop off as much of the ravine as you can. They play the Championship Tour from the blue tees where I did and encourage them to go for the green which I didn’t. I read somewhere that someone got a hole in one here doing just that! I labeled the hole in the photos below. The blue tees are about 6,500 yards and the wet course made it feel a lot longer. I like that they handicap and slope several tee combinations so you have a lot of playing options.
As I said, you can cobble together a Seattle trip without ever having to go into the city here. There are a few public tracks right out here by the falls but from Google Earth they all look like turd farms. The courses at Newcastle are both public and really nice (overlooking the city). These are in the eastern suburbs close-by. We’re going to try and play Salish in 2021 which is way down by Olympia and a best-in-state Indian Casino track. Can I say Indian? On the way there would be Chambers Bay. Of course if you have the means, Sahalee is close to Snoqualmie (and is awesome, write-up is here) and Aldarra is a private best-in-state track that we haven’t had the means to get on yet but is super close to Snoqualmie. Make sure if you’re out this way you stay at the Salish Lodge as that will get you on Snoqualmie. Again this would be more of a family or couples trip versus a dude’s trip.
Golf Scrapbook 