Welcome to the Logging Camp, Try Not to Bleed 🪓

adjusts visor Eight players showed up at Fort Tuthill for "First Felling," episode one of the eight-week "Lumberjacks of the Fort" saga, and somehow I'm the one stuck narrating a Tuesday-league fantasy about tags drawn by lot instead of merit. Roughly 79°F, winds gusting to 12.4 mph, and lingering snow still softening the landing zones on holes 4 and 7 — the mountain, as promised, is participating. Someone spotted a rusted peavey hook near tee 12, a relic of whatever crew came before this one, which is either foreshadowing or just Forest Service litter, and I genuinely cannot tell which. The crosscut saw hangs unclaimed for now, but keep an eye on the thaw — next week's storyline already has ice holding in some corners and running dry in others, and the "Dawn Sawyers" think they've found an edge nobody else has noticed yet.

MPO Draws First Blood, Literally History 🪵

Joshua Moore opened the inaugural season with a course-record -9 (965-rated), and the lead was never simple getting there. He tied Liam Dalton for the top spot through hole 3, took it outright through hole 4, watched Jamiah Bia pull level through hole 5, then reclaimed it for good through hole 9 and never looked back — a bogey-free front and back nine, capped by a clutch birdie on 18. Behind him, Kaivyn Nez and Dalton tied for second at -6 (both 931-rated), with Nez eagling both hole 11 and hole 18 to finish 35 points above his own rating, and Dalton catching fire on the back nine — four strokes better than his front — to climb from fifth to a share of the podium with three straight birdies-or-better to close. Noah Smith (-4) and Bia (-3) rounded out the group, Smith's round landing 21 points below his 929 rating despite a mid-round push that briefly had him in third.

King of a Hill With No Competitors

Over in MA50, Stacey Briscoe had the division entirely to herself, which didn't stop the scorecard from producing a genuine wire-to-wire +5 finish at 807-rated — 90 points below her usual 897, proof that even a division of one can have a rough day with the chains. She rode a clean par train through holes 13-17 to close it out, and with the win locked, she also picked up the #1 bag tag in the Sawtooth Syndicate pool. Solo field, real trophy. 🌲

Fresh Blood, Familiar Chains

Zach Pasteris ran away with MA1 at -8 (953-rated), staying bogey-free wire-to-wire, eagling hole 11, and sealing it with a birdie on 18 — 27 points above his 926 rating and about as clean a round as this course allows. Debuting in the division, Sean Smith rode an impressive par train across holes 1 through 12 before settling for +4 (818-rated, 41 points under his 859 rating) and the runner-up spot — not a bad first outing against a field that just posted the day's best number.

The 420 Club Meets on Hole 11 🌲

Hole 11's 428-foot par 4 was the week's marquee stage, with Nez and Pasteris both parking deuces to join the 420 Club — an eagle apiece on the same hole in different divisions. Moore and Pasteris each turned in bogey-free rounds, while Smith and Dalton grabbed sole birdies on holes 12, 14, and 16, the rest of the field settling for par or worse on a stretch that included Fort Tuthill's toughest test at 16. Small nudge from the booth: the players logging full stats on PDGA Live are the ones getting the richer stories this week — more of that, please.

Hole 1 Turned Into a Toll Booth

The lone skins card got loud fast — Moore's opening birdie on hole 1 snowballed into a 13-skin haul worth $9.75, while Dalton's own hole-1 birdie netted 5 skins for $3.75. Moore then scooped a 7-skin carryover on hole 13 ($5.25) and closed with a birdie on 18 for the final skin, while Briscoe finished the card without a single skin to her name. Three players, $13.50 total exchanged — check the skins playbook if the carryover math ever seems like witchcraft.

Every Registration Chops a Little Timber

Week 1 registrations pushed $20.00 into the Fuel the NAU Disc Golf Team fund, which also happens to be the entire $20.00 raised so far — 2% of the $1,000 goal, with $980.00 still standing between this crew and a fully funded roster. Every entry fee chops a little timber toward that number, so if you want to help close the gap, the Fuel the NAU Disc Golf Team fund is right there waiting.

The Pith Witness Picks Its First Favorite 🌲

In the Ringwright Union pool, the #1 Pith Witness tag shuffled under AllIn rules and landed on Moore for the first time — his course-record round dropped the field average by 4.4 strokes, earning the tag outright rather than defending it. The tag's lore claims a grandfather who played Fort Tuthill back in '87, and now it's strapped to a bag that just wrote new history of its own — old wood, apparently, approves of fresh numbers. Meanwhile in the Sawtooth Syndicate pool, Briscoe's win handed her the #1 Sawtooth Bastion tag, giving Week 2 two very different flavors of "wooden chance" royalty to track.

The Melt Comes For the Dawn Sawyers ❄️

With Moore's course record now the number everyone's chasing and the Pith Witness freshly reassigned, the crew heads right back to Fort Tuthill — no venue change, but the ground underneath them won't stay the same. Hole 9's shaded valley is still holding ice while hole 13's exposed ridge runs fast and dry, and the self-declared Dawn Sawyers are quietly banking their frozen-ground advantage before the thaw turns their secret into common knowledge.

Register for Thaw Lines

Nothing says elite competitive disc golf quite like plotting your tee time around whether a puddle has finished melting.