BSF Canceled

[brutalbrutus]

https://www.pdga.com/news/2021-beaver-state-fling-canceled

On February 12, 2021, snow and ice began to fall around the Portland, Oregon metro area. After several days of the same, thousands had lost power, and downed trees littered the usually-scenic landscape. When park officials were finally able to get out to Milo McIver State Park to assess the damage, they were shocked at what they found. Milo looked like a logging project had moved through the park, and it took them almost three weeks to even clear the park roads for further assessment.

Currently, the Riverbend day-use area, which includes the disc golf courses, remains closed as a safety precaution while crews work to clear the storm damage and is not expected to be open until late May, at the earliest. To add to the situation, the park is still not issuing special use permits due to the uncertainty of the state of the pandemic at the time of the event.

 

[Pevio]

Clearly the right call, but surely they could have moved the tournament to one of the other Portland courses. But maybe the PDGA said no to that.

 

[biscoe]

Clearly the right call, but surely they could have moved the tournament to one of the other Portland courses. But maybe the PDGA said no to that.

highly doubtful

 

[Three Putt]

Clearly the right call, but surely they could have moved the tournament to one of the other Portland courses. But maybe the PDGA said no to that.

highly doubtful

To be fair, it must be agonizing to have a course like Milo McIver, to know that there probably is significant damage to it but to not know for sure and not be able to do anything about it.

The PDGA probably would have been fine with moving it, but with an event like that it might not be realistic. I know every event I ever ran you could delay the start by 1/2 hour, post a sign at the park the day of saying you moved it to another park 20 minutes away and get away with it. I'm the reason everybody in the 90's wanted disc golf to move into the big time, though. Now that these events have reached a higher level of status, just picking up and going to another park has to be a lot more complicated. It just might not be something they could do. I'm going to assume that if it could have been done, they would have.

 

[ToddL]

Clearly the right call, but surely they could have moved the tournament to one of the other Portland courses. But maybe the PDGA said no to that.

All options were on the table, but Milo is the star of the show for BSF. With the Portland Open being the week before, there's still going to be some great golf up there, but Milo is special for a reason.

 

[ThrowBot]

Clearly the right call, but surely they could have moved the tournament to one of the other Portland courses. But maybe the PDGA said no to that.

Could have? Maybe.

It sounds like there are permitting issues for Covid still. Not sure which courses fall into which jurisdictions, but that could be an added hurdle. Other nearby courses might also have been damaged in that ice storm. And Blue Lake is already played the prior weekend for the Portland Open. So that's at least one other tour-worthy* Portland area course that's off the table.

Should have? Highly doubtful.

As detailed above, even finding sufficient venue(s) to host the event would be a messy task. And ANYTHING other than Milo would surely seen as an unfortunate compromise by many fans, players, and sponsors. (Heck, even the tournament staff.) I don't see the logic in putting massive extra effort into what would ultimately become "that one BSF that wasn't at Milo."

Maybe that's too pessimistic of me. But I definitely can't blame the BSF crew for cutting bait in these circumstances. It's a bummer to not have the BSF...especially for the 2nd year in a row! But that doesn't mean it should (or even could) be relocated for this year.

Edit: looks like others made some of the same points already. Sorry to pile on.

 

[Sethamphetamine]

Any update on the damage to the courses?

 

[NOStheBOSS]

Any update on the damage to the courses?

I am interested as well, such a great course and it was on my bucket list.

 

[Sethamphetamine]

I saw it was reopened recently, seemed like the full layout was playable. Might have not been as bad as it seemed tree loss wise, but I am just speculating.

 

[ODRB]

Some trees got gutted pretty bad. But it isn't trashed, by any means. Although it was. HUGE thanks to the folks that showed up for FIVE work parties to get it reopened.

A few teeshots got a little easier. A couple approaches got a little tougher.

Genius got a new, longer, harder pin position. True par 4 now (although I made my 3).

 

[jeverett]

Some trees got gutted pretty bad. But it isn't trashed, by any means. Although it was. HUGE thanks to the folks that showed up for FIVE work parties to get it reopened.

A few teeshots got a little easier. A couple approaches got a little tougher.

Genius got a new, longer, harder pin position. True par 4 now (although I made my 3).

. That's awesome! In my opinion Genius really needed a longer position! Now I just have to figure out when I can get up there to play it again.