The Dunes At Kamloops

Kamloops sits at the confluence of the Thompson Rivers in BC's Interior, and the landscape here is genuinely unusual for Canada — a semi-arid high desert of sagebrush, ponderosa pine, and sun-baked bluffs that looks more like the American Southwest than the Pacific Northwest. That terrain shapes everything about golf in this region, and The Dunes at Kamloops leans directly into it, with sandy waste areas and open, exposed terrain that give the course its name and its character.

The Interior's climate means a long, dry season — Kamloops logs more sunshine hours than almost anywhere in British Columbia — and the course plays firm and fast as a result. Ball flight plays differently in the thin, warm air, and the natural contours of the landscape tend to reward ground game thinking alongside aerial approaches.

For golfers accustomed to the lush, heavily irrigated parkland courses of the Lower Mainland or Vancouver Island, The Dunes offers a genuine change of scenery and pace — a drier, scrappier style of golf where errant shots disappear into the scrub and position off the tee genuinely matters.