Disc Golf In the Winter

20251209

I'm a Minnesotan that disc golfs all year round. Unlike ball golf, discs are pretty easy to find in the snow and most courses are open all year round. If you can bear the temperature and snow disc golf can make for an enjoyable winter outdoor activity. I figured I'd throw out some tips I've discovered throughout the years that can help you get started in winter disc golf.

Weather

You certainly can disc golf in any temperature and wind condition, however being miserable isn't exactly fun! Especially if you are like me and prefer to throw without gloves. For me it is all about the wind, I can disc golf comfortably down to about 0 degrees if there is no wind. With even a little the comfortable temp moves up to 10 degrees, and may even go as high as 20 if the wind is 10mph or higher.

Cold and wind aren't the only considerations. If the temp is too warm, and there is a lot of snow on the ground, issues around footing and traversal come into play, as the mud and wet snow make things challenging. Also consider the grounds themselves in these conditions, you can do a lot of damage to a course by playing when temps are finally warming up. For this reason I usually take a month or two off during the thaw.

Discs

The colder the air, the more overstable all of your discs will fly. For those of you newish to the sport the numbers you may see on your disc indicate its stability in neutral flight conditions, in the winter a disc with stability 2 may fly like it has stability 3. I tend to pull out my less stable discs and let the firebirds and zones take a break for the season. You should also consider the type of plastic, gummy plastics are generally less likely to shatter on impact in cold temperature, your ESP Flex, Champions, and Star plastics will handle the cold temps better than stiffer plastics which will absolutely shatter on a hard tree. I haven't gotten into this but I have heard that it also helps to pick up some glow discs with evenings starting so early.

However! If the snow is over ~6 inches you may also want to consider picking more stable discs so that they stay above the snow. Due to their wing shape, understable discs tend to dive down on a flat shot into the snow and can easily get lost under the snow. Overstable disks usually stay above. Alternatively tape about 6 feet of thread or yarn to the bottom center of the disc and you'll find the buried disks right away (they will fly far more stable with a piece of thread as well).

Lastly, if you know you are going to be hitting the course leave the discs outside for an hour before you go. Warm discs stick to snow, you'll spend the first half of the round slamming, wiping and scraping your discs clean of snow and ice. It's better to just start with them at temp.

Gear

Get a big bag. I use an Axiom Voyager Lite. It has numerous pockets and while it can't hold the most discs, it absolutely can hold all the layers I strip off while I'm hoofing it through a hilly course.

I prefer mittens when it's really cold as I'm able to pull them on and off quickly between throws. If it's over 20 degrees I generally just play barehanded. For boots I prefer something with a deep tread, and a tall ankle like Red Wing Ironrangers. You are going to slip out there so try to throw standstill if you can.

The last thing I always bring with is a towel. I mean I bring this no matter the season, but it really shines in the winter. It's good to have at least a dry spot on the disc for grip, and when there is snow your discs will have to be wiped down every throw.

Playing

This is the part that is probably the hardest for me, stop trying so hard. You are very likely not going to get any personal bests in the middle of winter, there are so many more variables between cold hands, icy footings, all your discs flying differently, and the prospect of lost discs that you shouldn't worry about playing your best. Hell I don't even track my rounds in the winter. Just get out and play, it beats sitting around inside, especially when the weather is nice. I also tend to play more forgiving courses and from the short tees.

If you do go out I hope you will find it as enjoyable as I do. It's a lot more work, and sometimes it can be straight up miserable, but it can also be a ton of fun.

Welcome to my site

20241209

I don't know about you but I've started to feel completely down about the current state of the internet.

Websites are somehow worse than the wild pop up hell that we saw during the 90's. Ads infect almost every corner of some sites, pop ups are even back in some cases. You can run an ad-blocker but these have limitations, and some sites design around them. The layout design of the sites are also often terrible. Giant swaths of space for graphics scrolling for seconds just to find a link to a useful part of the site. Information itself is hard to come by and navigating the sites often feels like a Where's Waldo game. You navigate to a site that should have the information out and open and you have to log in or create an account just to view anything. Frankly, I miss the open web, I miss simple design, and I miss folks just sharing what they have.

So anyway, I wanted a place to post things I've written, a place to stash links to helpful sites, and a place where I can send people who want to know more about me. Not a blog, per se, but a place where people who want to know more about me can go without logging in to anything. I also wanted a place I can post information I need to send people via a link.

I intend to keep the site as simple as possible. I'll be learning html again for the second (maybe third?) time. I'm a sysadmin by trade so this should be an interesting and humbling experience. This layout is straight up lifted from the W3Schools website .