Tag Pioneer Pass Golf Challenge

Six photogenic candidates for “Miss Pioneer Pass” along with the competing shutterbugs and their photographic entries and gathering gold enthusiasts, will participate Friday night in the Pioneer Pass Golf Challenge “Press Night” held at the Yucca Valley Golf Club.

The terrace of the Yucca Valley Golf Club was the sight of the Pioneer Pass Camera Cavalcade Press Night Friday night in which Marsi Sipherd of Twentynine Palms was chosen to reign as Miss Pioneer Pass during the classic three-day Pioneer Pass Golf Challenge on Oct. 1, 2, 3.

eo A. Higgins, acting general chairman of the Pioneer Pass Golf Challenge Committee, has received the official confirmation of acceptance of the post of PPGC head field judge from Mervyn L. Filipponi, former recreation director of the Yucca Valley Park and Recreation District.

The eyes of Yucca Valley are looking north toward the mountains, where the Pioneer Pass, back road to Big Bear, will be coming alive with swinging clubs and flying golf balls in the world’s longest and only playable 19th Hole, the 7th Annual Pioneer Pass Golf Challenge Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

The 11th Annual Pioneer Pass Golf Challenge will be played Oct. 17 through 19. The first 18 Holes will be over the Blue Sky Golf Course and the 19th hole, a 28-mile long challenge, will be marked off along Pioneer Pass Rd. to Pioneertown in Yucca Valley.

One hole calls for a 7- or 8-iron shot across a gully on the Pioneertown ranch of Russel (Lucky) Hayden, a cowboy star of the Hopalong Cassidy era. One that sticks in a 20-foot circle perched on a parched hillside is rewarded by Hayden with a bottle of champagne. An errant hook, however, may end up in the saloon of Hayden's western-style movie set.

Sixty-six players (54 men and 12 women), plus an entourage of close to 300 spotters, judges (scorers and rules committee). Sponsors, vehicle drivers, and disbelieving friends, completed in this year's event recently–to the astonishment of deer hunters, motorcycle riders, and forest rangers who also frequent that neck of the woods.

The "course" is 27 miles of sagebrush, Joshua trees, cactus, deep ravines and rocky ledges from Baldwin Lake (altitude 8,800 feet) in the San Bernardino mountains in California to Yucca Valley (3,300 feet) in the Mojave Desert.

The common hazards on the 10-hole course includes: ravines, sagebrush, rocks, snakes and lost balls. Each golfer has a spotter to keep track of the ball. Some holes are a few hundred yards along, others more than a mile.

In the early days of the Pioneer Pass Challenge, players walked or rode horseback the entire 27 miles, but today there us transportation from hole to hole by truck. The "cup" on the 10 Pioneer Pass holes is a 20-foot circle, but to reach it players must shoot over and around sagebrush, Joshua trees, rocks and even a snake or two. Play runs past Rimrock, through Pioneertown and the Russ Hayden Western Museum en route to the final hole at the Blue Shies course.