Hyde Mountain Golf Course on Mara Lake: a Sicamous, British Columbia course guide

What Hyde Mountain Golf Course plays like today

Hyde Mountain on Mara Lake Golf Course sits above the east shore of the lake it is named after, a few minutes south of Sicamous on Old Spallumcheen Road. It opened in 2002 to a Les Furber routing, plays to a par of 72, and measures 6,701 yards from the black tees down to 5,049 from the red. The course trades today as Mara Hills Golf Resort — styled MaraHills by its operator, the GolfNorth group — but the land, the routing and the hole names are the ones it opened with, and plenty of the people who play it still ask for it by the older name.

The short description is that Hyde Mountain Golf Course is a mountain course that behaves like one. Furber cut the routing into a hillside falling away toward the water, so the ball is rarely on the same level as your feet and almost never on the same level as the green. The fourth, Geronimo, drops 260 feet from the tee to the landing area. That is the hole people photograph, and it is why a first round here takes longer than the yardage suggests.

What the card does not show is how much of the difficulty is vertical rather than horizontal. At 6,701 yards off the tips this golf course in Sicamous is not long by modern standards — several resort layouts in the Okanagan are 300 yards longer. The rating says something else: 72.7 with a slope of 136 from the black tees, a stiffer slope than the raw length would predict. The gap between those two numbers is the course in a sentence.

Scorecard, tees and ratings at a glance

Four tee sets are rated. The black and blue play as a different proposition from the white and red, less because of length than because of which carries they bring into play — the ravine on the fifteenth asks for 175 yards of carry measured from the blue markers, and that single number moves the hole from awkward to out of reach for a lot of golfers.

Par is 36 out and 36 in, with four par 3s and four par 5s spread evenly across the two nines. The stroke index on the scorecard is worth reading before you play: index 1 falls on the fifth, a par 4 of 380 yards climbing to a raised green, and index 2 on the eighteenth, a 590-yard par 5. Neither is the hole most visitors remember, and neither is Geronimo, which is only index 3.

The full scorecard carries all eighteen holes with yardages from every rated tee, the stroke index, and a note on what each hole asks for.

The Mara Lake setting

Mara Lake is the narrow body of water running south from Sicamous toward Grindrod, joined to Shuswap Lake by the channel the town is built on. The course occupies the slope along its eastern side, which is why so many tee shots are struck out over open air with water behind them. On a clear morning the view from the upper holes runs the length of the lake and across to the Monashee foothills.

The setting has a practical consequence as well as a scenic one. Air off the water keeps mornings cool and the greens slower than they will be by mid-afternoon, and the slope that produces the views also produces the wind. The published advice on the fourteenth — a steeply elevated par 3 — is that two clubs less than the yardage is normal when the air is still. When it is not still, the arithmetic changes.

More on the lake, the marina and the boating season is on the Mara Lake page.

Getting to the golf course in Sicamous

The address is 9851 Old Spallumcheen Road. From the Trans-Canada through town it is a short run south; from Salmon Arm about half an hour, from Vernon roughly an hour, and from Kelowna closer to two. Revelstoke is an hour east. Most people arrive as part of a Shuswap trip rather than a dedicated golf trip, which is why this golf course in Sicamous has always been sold alongside the lake rather than instead of it.

The town itself is small — a houseboat harbour with a working marina, a short row of restaurants and a lookout above it worth the climb. The Sicamous page covers what is there and the drive in from Kelowna; the stay and play page lists what is within a few minutes of the first tee, and where to eat covers the clubhouse and the town.

Where it sits among British Columbia mountain courses

Les Furber has more than fifty courses across British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan, and several of the best-known mountain layouts in the west are his: Predator Ridge above Vernon, Gallagher’s Canyon in Kelowna, Trickle Creek at Kimberley, The Springs at Radium, St. Eugene near Cranbrook, Silvertip at Canmore. Hyde Mountain on Mara Lake Golf Course is a smaller and far less publicised entry on that list, closer in character to Trickle Creek than to the resort scale of Predator Ridge.

The comparison made most often locally is with the Champions Course at Salmon Arm, also a Furber design, also cut into a hillside, half an hour west. Both reward a player who can control trajectory more than one who can carry the ball a long way, which is the recurring trait of his British Columbia work. The page on Furber sets out the rest of it, and the Shuswap golf page covers every eighteen-hole course within an hour.

Reputation has not travelled far beyond the region. Hyde Mountain Golf Course has never had the marketing budget of the Okanagan resorts an hour south, and Mara Hills Golf Resort is a name most visitors meet for the first time on a booking page. What it has instead is the drop on the fourth, a routing that uses the hillside rather than fighting it, and a lake underneath the back nine.

Winter is the long part of the year at this latitude. The course closes through it, the ski hill at Revelstoke takes over an hour to the east, the curling rink fills up, and on the quieter evenings you can explore the best online casinos in Canada without leaving the valley.

Common questions about Hyde Mountain Golf Course

Is Hyde Mountain the same course as Mara Hills Golf Resort?

Yes. It opened in 2002 as Hyde Mountain on Mara Lake and now operates as Mara Hills Golf Resort, styled MaraHills, under GolfNorth. The routing, the par, the yardages and the hole names are unchanged. Searches for the older name lead to the same eighteen holes on Old Spallumcheen Road.

How hard is it for an average golfer?

Harder than the length suggests. From the white tees it measures 5,746 yards with a rating of 68.5 and a slope of 122, which is manageable. The difficulty is vertical: most shots are played from above or below the level of your feet, and several greens sit well above the fairway, so club selection matters more than distance.

Which is the signature hole?

The fourth, Geronimo, a par 4 whose landing area lies 260 feet below the tee. Two others are singled out on the card: the fourteenth, a steeply elevated par 3 named Tee with a View, and the seventeenth, Equalizer, played from a high tee to a small green split by a ridge running front to back.

When is the course open?

Hyde Mountain Golf Course is seasonal. Play generally runs from spring into autumn, with opening and closing dates set each year by conditions rather than the calendar. Confirm current dates and green fees with the operator before travelling — the tee times page explains how.

Can you rent clubs and carts?

Both have been available through the pro shop. Given the elevation changes across the routing, a power cart is the usual choice here even among players who walk everywhere else.

What else is there to do nearby?

The lake is the main draw — Mara Lake and Shuswap Lake meet at the channel through the middle of Sicamous, and the town is one of the busiest houseboat harbours in British Columbia. There is a lookout above town with a view over both arms, a marina, and a short list of restaurants. Revelstoke is an hour east, Salmon Arm half an hour west.