Press "Enter" to skip to content

Great Golf Courses in BC, Canada’s Kootenay Region Is Easy to Reach

By Luis Chutan
Golf Writer/CanadaGolf.com

NELSON, British Columbia – Look out the left side windows of the small passenger plane you’ve just hopped to start the journey of you golf vacation to Kootenay, BC, and view the bulking mountain range so close you can count the cracks in the mountainside. Then, it dives down low over a motel with its wheels seemingly only meters from its rooftop. Then prepare for the landing in this Canadian paradise.

Once you’re debarking after one of the smoothest landings you ever experienced, the pilot usually will casually brag, “That landing is about a seven (out of 10) on the difficulty scale.”

You just smile. The pilot, John to you ever since he loaded your golf bag on the plane himself, has a way of relaxing passengers even as he throws in seven-point difficulty landing revelations after a baby-soft touchdown.

Maybe it is because you are able to watch this cockpit crew at work the entire flight.

Northern Hawk Aviation flights are intimate gatherings of quick friends. There’s no securely triple-bolted door between the cockpit and the passenger seats, no tired flight attendant ready to stare you down if you ask for a favor. There’s just a wide opening through which you can watch the co-pilot whip out a map to chart an impromptu course.

This is just a few of the perks of taking this little airline with big dreams. With reasonable regular flights from Vancouver, British Columbia to Trail, Northern Hawk is the perfect airline to take for that unique golf vacation to Kootenay.

Kootenay, BC – Canada’s Unspoiled Golf Trip

Canada’s Kootenay area is a breathtaking mountain region in the southeastern corner of BC unspoiled by cooker-cutter, strip-mall developments. It offers a mix of courses filled with the types of towering trees, mountain views and lake glimpses that most golf destination visitors in other parts of North America will never see.

All this for greens fees that make you feel like you went back into 1950 for your golf vacation.

The challenge is getting here, however. The Kootenay region is a drive from Vancouver that last seven hours, then a three-hour trek from Spokane, Washington. And on the Vancouver route these are not major highways, at least not the multilane monsters that U.S. and Canadian city drivers are accustomed to.

That’s where Northern Hawk Aviation comes in. It turns that eight-hour trying drive into an 80-minute flight. Suddenly, the 20-plus scenic courses of the Kootenays are not so remote. So get ready to enjoy some of the most scenic golf in Canada.

“Everyone in the BC, Canada golf community knows the great golf that’s available in the Kootenays,” said John Guy. “It’s just been a matter of getting here. It took so long that it deterred a lot of golfers.”

Northern Hawk’s new service is transforming that thinking. Air Canada has flown into the Kootenay region’s Castlegar airport for some time, but with virtually no competition it charged fares that made regular air travel all but a pipe dream for ordinary folks. Northern Hawk changed that by charging less than $100 one-way on many routes.

The Kootenay, BC region is also excited that Northern Hawk is competing against the bigger airline, and welcomes the added tourists. And most of the people that do book a golf vacation to the Kootenay region and arrive on these little planes admit they are better than their counterparts at Air Canada.

Golf Canada’s West is the official golf course, tee time and golf packaging company of Vancouver and the Canadian Rockies. Call them at 877-323-3633. For additional information be sure to check out GolfTheRockies.net. For more BC and Alberta vacation and tourism information, please visit Banff National Park.com and Banff Travel.com.

Be First to Comment

Leave a Reply