(4.466 Rating) A multiple layout course packed with variety, intrigue and beauty.
- HOLE VARIETY - I had a hard time deciding on how to begin this review. Every aspect of disc golf that I enjoy, was delivered at an extremely high level here. The hole variety here is just flip'n awesome. Lots of multi-play par 4s and even two par 5s. Hole distances range from 150 feet from the short Red layout, to over 1000 feet from the long Gold layout. Hole (13), which is the longest of the bunch, is a double dogleg par 5 requiring two well-conceived and well-placed shots to have any opportunity for a birdie. There is lots of modest elevation change in the 20 to 30 foot range and maxes out at around 40 feet. Water is in play a few times, there are a few wooded holes and I visually remember every hole here 45 days later. It was spectacular golf.
- 3 LAYOUTS - I love it when courses offer multiple tees and there are 3 of them on most holes here. The Red layout is a great MA3 and MA4 level test that will be both fun and rewarding. The Blue layout adds about 1500 feet of distance and will appeal to MA2s. The Gold layout appeared to be Championship level in my opinion. Measuring in at plus 8000 feet and offering many +300 foot par 3s, +600 foot par 4s. I think the ideal audience for the backs is MA1s with around a 950 PDGA rating.
- SIGNAGE AND NAVIGATION - This aspect was absolutely knocked out of the park. Courses like this one, that have a ton of options, need a lot of signage. Thankfully, every navigational aspect was accounted for, to help a first time solo like me get around. First off, huge informative and beautiful course map located near tee (1). On the back side of the map is a listing of all the distances and pars for both placements A and B. The tee signage is also fabulous. Again, these are informative and beautiful. The tee signs also have pin placement indicators and they were all correct on my play. Extra navigational cues are placed near baskets to direct traffic and there are color coded posts to indicate what tees are located down each intuitive path. On a ten-point rating scale, this aspect deserves an eleven.
- AMENITIES AND EXTRAS - In addition to the all-star signage, just about every amenity is here. Big color coded concrete tees. Top of the line Pro 28 DISCatcher baskets. Benches at more than half of the tees. Practice basket, practice range, bathroom, shelter with picnic tables and a disc return box, which I used.
- NATURAL BEAUTY - I scored this aspect 93 percentile, although I realize that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I loved the meandering of the layout through the mix of woods, hills and prairie grasses. I had a smile on my face the whole time walking around this place. The course was in superb shape too, which is apparently kept-up entirely by volunteers as this is not a public park. It was shocking to hear this was a former dump, which I never would have picked up on without being told. I also appreciated the new tree plantings on a few of the openish holes.
- HOLE 8 - A Volcano, Mount Baker, is directly in-line and in the backdrop of hole (8). Such a wonderful photo opportunity. The basket on this hole also is the highest point of the course and volunteers made a big mound in the shape of a raptor and put a basket on top of it. Such a cool hole.
- VOLUNTEERS - As alluded too above, this is not a public park. The course was made possible solely by course member donations and volunteers. A big thank you to all of them for making this place such a wonderful experience. They need to put up a donation box. I was blown away that the course is free to visitors.

There are zero cons here for most players.
- BEGINNER FRIENDLY - I wouldn't bring a first timer here. Sure the shorts are MA4 friendly, but first timers will end up spraying into thicket regardless. My family tagged along on the walk on the front nine, but they didn't throw. Disc loss potential and searching for one, is moderate.
- QUICK PLAY - of the twenty courses I played on my trip, I spent the most time here, almost 2-hours. Lots of players were here on a mid-day Monday. I would assume it's packed during prime times.
- PARKING - Unpaved gravel. Keep the Ferrari in the Garage.

Raptor's Knoll was an astonishing experience to me and this is the first course I've dropped a 4.5 rating on in about 3.5 years. I played some big-name courses on my trip to the pacific northwest, such as Pier Park, Shelton Springs and SeaTac, but this one to me, was without a doubt the best. It somewhat reminded me of top tier courses I've played such as The Canyons near Chicago, Hobbs Farm near Atlanta and Tom Brown in Tallahassee. No doubt a destination course for those traveling to Vancouver BC despite being an hour from the downtown metro area. Every disc golfer I met in Canada that had played here, said this was their favorite course, and every one that hadn't, had it on their wish list.
- THANK YOU - On hole (13) I joined locals Aaron and Henry to finish the round. Such a fun time discussing the history of Raptors Knoll, the Canadian disc golf scene and things to do in Vancouver.

Everything about this course is well done. Multiple layouts can make it as easy or hard as you want it to be. I'm spoiled having 3 course and soon to be 4 in my town but this place puts them all to shame

No washroom when I was there

Huge variety, 3 tee pad locations, quality landscaping, OB markers in place, and well laid out hole design.

Can get very busy, and the overabundance of open layouts make this course a tiny bit easier than it could be.

A fantastic course, there is very little that could make it better. It would be a little too easy for a Pro event, but great for me.

- Best tee pad setup I've ever seen. Super long tees (14' I believe) with colour coding on the front so it's super clear what tee you'r playing from.
- Top notch signage with clear overviews of the hole and distances.
- Two basket positions for most holes, with an indicator of which position is currently in play.
- Great mix of long Par 5s, short, medium and long Par 4s, and a mixed bag of Par 3s.
- Mix of open and forested holes with some elevation thrown in.
- Course is laid out to force you to play a variety of shots and I find myself using every variety of forehand, backhand, thumber, tomahawk I have in my bag. I use pretty much every disc I have on this course.
- Free parking directly adjacent to the course.
- For being a public park with trails, the course designers have done a great job of keeping the public out of play. I've played the course around a dozen times now and never had an issue with the public.
- Practice baskets run parallel to the main round down from 18/Parking lot.
- Clearly one of the best courses in the country coming from someone who's played a lot of the top Canadian courses.
- The three tee pads let every variety of skill enjoy the course, and the golds are truly designed for top tier players.
- The Raptor Hole (#8) is pretty epic, it's a sculpted raptor (eagle) when viewed from above and offers the perfect mix of risk/reward for those with the arm to run it.
- Very nice touches throughout the course where clear effort/thought/skill went into it, like constructed stairs, mandos, and amazing earth works.

- No amenities on the course in terms of a clubhouse, washrooms or even garbages at the parking lot.
- It's an old reclaimed dump site, and while it's been a long time since reclamation and the club has done an incredible job planting hundreds of trees and utilizing the adjacent forested areas, the water that drains out of the area can be pretty sketchy (red/yellowish). If you come with a dog I'd be really leary of letting your dog drink from some of the drainages.
- Not much in the way of scenery (e.g. not a destination BC course for the views like Grouse Mountain is), though Hole 8 is a pretty awesome view of the mountain in the backdrop.
- The club has done an incredible job of cutting back the nasty bramble/thorn bushes that originally dominated the area, but there are still one or two horrific spots to throw a disc into, where you're almost guaranteed to get cut up retrieving it.

- I don't love how much OB there is or how it's structured, but I'm putting this in "Other thoughts" because it's a personal preference thing.
- Great course for carts, and you'll want one if you have one for this course, it's long, hot in the summer and you'll need a wide variety of discs/shots.
- People are awesome on this course about returning discs, do the same if you find one!
- When it's busy, this course can take quite a while to play, especially if you play with a big group. Can be 3+ hours with a large group.
- Before playing this course my Top 3 Canadian Courses were Hillcrest Farms, Canmore Nordic and Aspen Meadows, now it's Hillcrest, Raptor's and Nordic.

Great signage on teepads
Great teepads
New Baskets
Well-maintained
Great variety of holes
Beautiful views
Cool features (for example, the green on hole 8 is built in the same shape as the logo for the course -- a raptor/bird of prey)
Cool hazard areas lined with bricks
Red, Blue, and Gold layouts
Good mix of par 3s, 4s, and 5s
Multiple options for lines on most holes
Beautiful distinct greens
great bridges and staircases

Navigating between holes was sometimes imperfect--an arrow near the green pointing to the next hole would help
It was a little strange that the OB stakes were like 8 feet inside of where the grass was mowed
For my first time playing, sometimes it was tough to tell exactly how the OB was laid out, and every now and then some of the OB seemed forced. But very very minor.

I was nearby for work and thought I'd play the highest-rated course in the area...this exceeded my expectations. Really fun course for any level of player.

Great concrete tee pads, amazing hole signs with switching tee locations which is marked on the sign, very well groomed, and 3 different platforms to drive off of (Gold, Blue, Red)

It would be nice of they had signs for where the next holes are but for the most part they are easy to find.

Amazing course and hole layout. The different types of shots and types of holes give you the complete disc golf experience. They mix in long par 5 holes with some shorter par 3's and there is a superb use of elevation changes on a few holes to bump up the difficulty. I believe every hole has 2-3 different tee pads you can start on depending on your skill level. The fairways were all cut very low making it easy to find disc that ended up there.

There could be a better job with signs to the next tee pads. A few times I found my group wander around for about a minute to find the next tee pad, but overall not horrible. If it is a super windy day you may not want to play here. A majority of holes are out of the treeline and the wind can really affect your disc making it harder to play.

Great 18 hole course that could even play as a quicker 9 hole due to the 9th hole ending near the parking lot. Beautiful view of Mt. Baker on a few holes especially the ramp hole with rocks on it. Well groomed grass and nice walking paths.

The brand new (June 2019) Raptor's Knoll DGP In Langley, British Columbia is just about a mile from the U.S. border crossing at Sumas and right across the street from the Langley Transfer Station, which I think is Canadian for garbage dump. There is a nice, new parking lot here.

The course is a work in progress but they're off to an awesome start. The 40 acre property appears to be disc golf exclusive and features a wonderful variety of open versus wooded areas with plenty of rolling elevation. What is completed is first class. There are two or three 16' long concrete tee pads for each hole. The pads are far enough apart as to truly change the challenge and look of each hole, from recreational to intermediate to advanced level. The baskets are lovely orange Discatchers. They have already completed some grand landscaping in places, stairs leading both up and down from several holes. There are some wonderful, challenging basket placements. It appears to be a first class operation and when complete should be one of the premier courses in BC and maybe Western Canada. Some holes have lovely views of Mt. Baker and the surrounding peaks.

Unfortunately, at this time, there is no signage of any kind and the on-line map I had printed out is kind of a blurry mess, so I was mostly lost as I wondered about. With some holes approaching 600-700 or even 800' and blind basket placements, almost from the start, I was floundering. The pretty orange Discatchers don't yet have a number on them. A small number on each would be much appreciated. My notes detail hole after hole with a question mark regarding exactly which hole I was playing?

Attaching a rating to this course will be very interesting. It will be very similar to rating the new course, Edgewater DCC, south of the border in Mount Vernon, Washington. That is, do you rate it based on it's potential? Or do you rate it on it's current state and play-ability? The potential finished product here has a much higher ceiling than the Mount Vernon course as this piece of Canadian real estate is pretty special and one can already see that the designers are building a top notch disc golf course here. I will watch the progress here and my rating will be adjusted as improvements are made and I will plan to return again in a year or so and see in person what has transpired. I'll jump my rating up to a 3.5 as soon as I see that signage has been added. A course sign would also be appreciated as well as a more readable on-line map.

I see this course as a potentially 4.0 rated course. That would make it one of 10 or 12 top courses in Canada. Of those top rated Canadian course, I've only played Hillcrest DGC on Prince Edward Island and I strongly feel that it is deserving of it's it's lofty 4.89 rating. I think it just needs one more rating to be listed among the top courses in the world. It's everything that a 5.0 rated course should entail. When finished, Raptor's Knoll will be an excellent, challenging course with a really cool name, quite possibly deserving of being called a top 10 course in the whole of Canada.

Seeing all the recent improvements, I have amended my earlier rating.

This a truly a destination course for the GVRD, BC, and Pacific Northwest. At a Par 63, it has it all--length, elevation, water, rough, wooded and open holes. Multiple tees on most holes and multiple pin placements add to a diverse set of play options. The tee boxes are excellent, particularly for those with long run ups (FYI: the line on each tee is a foot fault line to prevent erosion-inducing run throughs on your drives).

Many of the tee and pin placements are artistically installed (elevated with stairs for example, and there is the Raptor hole, which when viewed from the air shows a raptor in flight). Wet areas have bridges to help you stay dry, fairways are manicured and mown.

Many of the basket placements also use greenery to screen the basket, increasing the importance of your approach shot or drive being targeted at a landing area, rather than the putting circle--an excellent design feature to increase the complexity of shorter holes.

Similarly there is the attractive and challenging use of hazard areas on a number of holes, allowing aggressive throws and increased risk taking with the compromise of a one-shot penalty if you stick in the hazard. This is another nice feature that adds a wrinkle to your game management skills. Most holes offer a choice of attack strategies and balance of RHBH/LHBH lines. There is a ton of OB marked by stakes on the course and most of it makes sense and is fairly placed (but see cons below).

The course will have a driving range for warm up and other quality-extending features focused on creating a unique golf experience.

Some of the OB is overly restrictive, but less than in my earlier review. Course managers have tweaked much of the OB and opened up some lines. The shots are still tough, but quite fair.

Get to the course soon, as scores will only go up over time. Most of the now-open fairways have younger trees waiting to grow into your hyzer-bomb lines, so placement and strategy will become even more important over time.

The course has benefited from thousands of hours of volunteer time and its maintenance continues to be driven by volunteer labour. It will be interesting to see how this plays out over time. Similarly, this is a close collaboration between the DG community and municipality, and the long term institutionalization of the relationship will be important to ensure design quality is maintained and kept within the DG community (rather than ceded to municipal parks, which tend to lack expertise in disc golf course design and maintenance planning).

It's a long course and will get hot in the summer. Bring water and snacks. The course is intentionally designed to require players to pack it in and out, so please, give a hoot and don't pollute! I know many players like to engage in their own version of "course maintenance" by moving (or removing) obstacles (like trees and branches). Everything here has been placed with intent--change your shot, not the course.

I'm looking forward to years of great play here!