This is far from a throwaway decision.

The Friends of Mount Sima Society has been granted $20,000 by the territorial Community Development Fund to create a new disc golf course on Mount Sima. 

According to the Yukon government, the project is intended to provide “a new course to support the rapidly-growing sport, promoting more activity among community members.”

Mount Sima general manager Sam Oettli explained how the project came about. 

“An idea started to formulate a couple of years ago as we were looking at different ways to expand our summer operation,” he told The Yukon Star on Wednesday.

“And we recognize that we have some pretty clear open spaces, trails and other things criss-crossing the mountain and we have some disc golf enthusiasts in our team as well.” 

Oettli said Mount Sima will have an 18-basket course starting at the top of the mountain. The cost to play the course is yet to be determined.

“It’s pretty cool to be able to go play disc golf on a mountain where you can take the chairlift to the top and then play the course.

“Our contractor is currently just doing the final layout on the mountain for the course,” Oettli said.

“We already had a bunch of preliminary work that we did together last summer just to kind of see, ‘hey, does this even make sense?’”

They requested funding and figured out pretty quickly that, as Oettli put it, “there’s some really cool opportunities for a really neat course.”

Construction has just started.

Oettli said they’re hoping to complete the layout by the end of August and have a course-opening tournament in September. 

“No promises, but for sure, next year, the course will be available,” assured Oettli. 

He said the plan is to have disc golf on the same nights as mountain biking on the hill. 

“We’re also working on a way that people can access the course outside of lift operational times. But further announcements on that will come as we develop a plan.” 

Ryan Norquay of Yukon Disc is planning the course. 

“He’s been a big supporter of the mountain for years,” said Oettli. 

Most of the $20,000 in funding will be going toward purchasing equipment, including the baskets, which can be quite pricey, and the tee pads that the discs are launched off of. 

Of the baskets, Oettli said they want to make sure they’re good quality and “stick around forever. 

“The tee pads, there’s a lot of lumber and labour that goes into that, creating those and placing them.” 

The total cost of the course is expected to be around the $30,000-mark. 

“The rest of it is going to be our in-kind contribution. Our trail crew and staff are going to be doing a lot of the heavy lifting to put things in place, clear the trails, and the lanes, or fairways,” said Oettli. 

The course will be mostly on the Blue and Green runs on the mountain to minimize steepness. 

It will start on the top of the blue Gold Rush run, go into some of the terrain parks, crossing the green Hailey’s run and the Pokey terrain park. The plan is for the course to finish at the bottom of the mountain. 

“It’s going to incorporate a fairly sizable chunk of the sort of terrain that people are used to being on when skiing or snowboarding or mountain biking,” explained Oettli. 

The actual total size of the disc golf course is to be determined, since planning of the layout isn’t finalized yet.

The official name of the course is also yet to be determined. 

Oettli said he would like to see the Sima course become the main venue for the Larger Than Life tournament that took place July 5-7 at the Solstice course in Whitehorse. 

“We’re super-thankful that we were able to get this funding and to make this project happen,” Oettli added. “I think the disc golf community is pretty pumped about it.

“I’m just excited to see it happen. And we’re going to be linking this in with some of our other summer activities in the future.”