Lodestone Golf Course — Local services in Oakland

Wisp Resort, located in McHenry, is situated in the Alleghany Mountains of Western Maryland. Wisp is Maryland’s premier year-round resort with skiing and snowboarding on 33 trails spread over 170 acres in the winter and a myriad of activities in the summer: escape games, a mountain coaster, miniature golf, indoor swimming pools, and a lot of other family-fun activities. It’s also the home of two championship golf courses, Fantasy Valley and Lodestone.

Lodestone Golf Course is located at the top of the mountain, a 10-minute drive from the hotel. PGA TOUR great Hale Irwin designed the course in collaboration with Todd Schoeder. Lodestone offers golfers 6 sets of tees and can be played anywhere from 5,185 to 7,475 yards.

The course has the look and feel of a mountain course with rolling terrain throughout. Each hole seems to be carved out from the surrounding forest and terrain. Unlike most mountain courses that feature heavily tree-lined fairways from tee to green, many of Lodestone’s fairways are wide and welcoming, allowing less skilled players to enjoy their round. The course is carpeted in Bentgrass from tee to green. The bunkering is rugged, the greens have quite a bit of undulation, and, as you would expect from a golf course at the top of a mountain, there are significant elevation changes. Lodestone is known for having some of the largest greens on the East Coast, and although they may not be the fastest, they will truly test your putting skills. Many of the tee boxes are elevated; when you’re playing a downhill hole, the ball seems to stay in the air forever.

Wildlife is abundant, including deer, rabbits, groundhogs, and bears. Although we didn’t see any of the latter, we did spot a lot of their “remnants,” which sufficiently answered that age-old question about what a bear does in the woods!

Lodestone has many memorable holes. The 9th hole was one of my favorites, a slight dogleg right that plays 391 yards from the Silver tees. It’s downhill all the way, with a fairway bunker on the left side of the landing zone and a lot of trees on the right. The approach shot into the green is visually stunning; a kidney-shaped green that slopes severely from back left to front right with a few ridges. Two deep, rugged-looking bunkers guard the left side, and there’s a 3rd in back. Anything right of the green is going down a steep bank, and any putt from above the hole is going to be extremely quick. If, for some reason, the pin is in front, pray!

As you approach the 13th tee, walk to the back of the tee box and take in the breathtaking views of Deep Creek Lake below.

Number 17 is another favorite, a par 3 which plays 167 yards from the Gray Tees. The hole has two sets of tees that provide completely different angles into the green. Regardless, you’re tee shot is all carry over a rock-faced gorge into a green that slopes front right to back left and is well-undulated. If it were up to me, I would name it “Rocky Top” and make it the signature hole!

The resort staff is very attentive and knowledgeable about the area. If you don’t have what you need, they’ll find it for you. Hotel General Manager, Freddie Harrison, has a golf background and can tell you everything about either course. Our room was a two-room suite that featured a living room area with a couch, an easy chair, a work desk, a big screen TV, and a Keurig coffee maker. The king-size bed was very comfortable; there was a 2nd TV in the bedroom, as well as a refrigerator and a safe. The bathroom was updated with a walk-in shower and a separate sink area. It was a great place to relax and unwind after a day on the golf course.

Wisp Resort offers guests several dining options, but none better than the Last Chair Bar + Bistro. Last Chair has a very laid-back atmosphere, and guests can warm up inside during the cold winter months or relax on the Beer Garden Deck during the summer. It may not be your typical Ski/golf clubhouse menu, but it's...

We thoroughly enjoyed our round at Lodestone and will definitely be back! The course is challenging but fair, and offers plenty of opportunities to score well if you hit the right spots. One of the coolest, well-thought out layouts our group has ever played.

The Good: -Staff is extremely flexible, friendly, and helpful -Course layout is spectacular and has lots of character -Views of the lake on a few holes are awesome -Greens are huge, undulating, and accessible, which makes the course fair given all the fairway undulation/slopes -Bunkers had plenty of sand (this might be a recent improvement - as some other recent reviews said the course lacked sand in bunkers - we didn't see a single bunker without sand) -The small diagrams on the scorecard were good enough to help overcome the many blind shots due to the course slopes; now that we've played it once we'll know exactly where to hit. -Fairways are plush, enabling players to spin the ball into greens.

Potential Areas to Improve: -Some tall grass is growing on the edges of many bunkers - this might be on purpose, but if so I'd suggest telling players this to avoid bad reviews. It didn't affect our ability to play out of them. -Some greens have small (quarter-sized) brown spots, which might be signs of disease? They're still completely playable and roll true. -Consider investing in some new carts - with the incredibly steep hills on this course, the carts struggled at times. Not at all a showstopper, just something to consider. -It's clear people are willing to pay a premium to play this course. Use a little of that money and pave the driveway. By the time we left, our vehicles were doused in a healthy...

I would like to start some sort of nationwide grass roots movement, made up of people who have been ripped off by this place, as well as any golfers who care about golf. The course is a perfect recreation of no man's land from the first World War, with the trenches serving as bunkers, and occasionally as greens and tee boxes. I would be pissed off if this was a muni that cost $12 to play. And the rates they charge make me want to vomit into the valuables pouch of my golf bag. Intentionally. Wisp will never bother doing anything with this place so maybe there is a way to force it to shut down.

One idea that was floated to me by myself, is to organize a few hundred golfers to show up there on a random Sunday morning, take our bags out of trunk, and just start playing the course. Everywhere. Just smashing balls in every direction. We won't check in. We won't pay. And we won't replace our divots or pitch marks. Because there is no turf decent enough to show new wear to the surface. I hate this place and the people who own it. Who's with me? I said...