Standing on the high of Georgia’s Lookout Mountain affords a real setting–and feeling–of getting away. Its hillsides are lined in pine, birch and oak timber, and at practically 2,400 toes in elevation, the mountain offers views of seven states. As my spouse and I rose above the clouds to the summit of Lookout Mountain, the place Cloudland at McLemore Resort awaited us, we had been left practically speechless. We might solely say to one another, “Have a look at that.”
Cloudland boasts two golf programs and a brand new Curio Assortment by Hilton resort that opened in February, the mix of which the resort hopes will assist stake its declare as a brand new {golfing} vacation spot within the southeast. The profitable golf journey enterprise has been booming for the reason that pandemic: The Nationwide Golf Basis reviews that in 2023, a file 531 million rounds had been performed, surpassing the 529 million excessive set in 2021, which spiked as a result of golf was one of many few group actions that allowed for social distancing. Moreover, the NGF reviews that “rounds are trending greater than 10 % forward of the five-year, pre-pandemic common from 2015-19.”
Whereas mountain golf as an idea isn’t new, good mountain golf is troublesome to come back by due to the terrain. The builders of Cloudland, nonetheless, are native to the world, which already boasts a handful of elite personal golf programs that benefit from Lookout Mountain’s pure magnificence.
The Cloudland improvement was sparked by a need to benefit from its setting and its status as a hub for out of doors fans, Duane Horton, president of Scenic Land Firm, the developer of Cloudland, informed Observer.
The addition of the Cloudland Hilton resort is the fruits of a years-long course of. Scenic Land purchased an present resort in 2017 and rebranded it a 12 months later as McLemore, with one golf course and a few adjoining golf cottages. Within the fall of 2024, on the heels of the resort opening, they opened their second course, The Preserve, for preview play, which, not like its older brother, hugs the cliffs of Lookout Mountain. Golfers play to a variety of infinity greens, which, from a distance, seem to fall on the cliff’s edge, identical to an infinity pool. Lengthy-range views of the Smoky Mountains abound from each vantage level on The Preserve, and a stretch of holes from eight to 11 permit golfers to traverse the sting of the mountain as they play.
Whereas these holes are the prized ones of the course, architect Invoice Bergin made good use of the setting to create tumbling fairways away from the cliffs’ edges and holes with various elevations, whereas nonetheless holding the course walkable. Considered one of The Preserve’s charms is that you just play by means of uncovered rocky outcropping; the distinction of these uncovered granite slabs and inexperienced grass makes for an interesting and arresting golf panorama.
The Highlands Course is the resort’s authentic course and boasts what the resort claims on the scorecard as “the most effective ending gap in golf.” It is because golfers put their pegs within the floor proper on the edge or ridge atop the mountain, with purple-dotted mountains hugging the left facet of the golf green off within the distance till you attain the nestled inexperienced. The Highlands Course has a lot tighter enjoying corridors, with pine timber marking the perimeters of the enjoying space from gap to gap. It has a serpentine routing over the bottom and the uncovered rock on this course offers the identical texture as The Preserve, but additionally appears to reveal the land was tougher to seek out and place 18 holes of golf.
The resort breaks the course up into three distinct areas: canyons, highlands and the cliff edges. Except for the 18th, the standout holes on the Highlands are its assortment of par 3 holes. My favourite is the third gap, which is a brief par 3 to a big, sloped inexperienced guarded by two bunkers that provide little likelihood of restoration. The hillside rocks above the inexperienced present an amphitheater-like setting for this difficult gap.
After the golf is completed for the day, the brand new 245-room resort–and its eating choices–offers loads of methods to recharge. The resort is an image of contemporary consolation, with an abundance of seating in its massive frequent areas, from high-back leather-based chairs to deep couches with massive tan-leather ottomans. The library, located simply off the doorway, options backlit bookshelves with a group of classics starting from Hemingway to Woolf, in addition to trendy alternatives of nonfiction and modern fiction. Couches round espresso tables and plush swivel chairs with adjoining small tables made this a terrific room to compensate for some studying within the early morning, whereas a lot of the resort nonetheless slept. The one factor lacking was a throw blanket
On the resort’s terrace degree, on the bottom flooring, a big picket topographic cutout of the mountain vary hangs on the wall, whereas Eames-inspired chairs invite company to sit down and go to with each other. The combination of textures is each trendy and comfy, and huge flooring lamps with built-in tables provide loads of room to set down a cocktail. Friends can step outdoors to the pool deck to absorb the spectacle of the mountains earlier than them—at this elevation, the horizon takes on a unique hue of blue and purple, as if saturated of their colours.
For dinner on our first night time, we visited The Creag in the primary clubhouse (order the hushpuppies, filet and caramel cloud mousse) and watched the supermoon stand up from behind a ridge. The sky was all peach and orange, and the moon glimmered larger and better till we had been beneath its white glow. Friends, together with ourselves, rushed outdoors to movie the spectacle, take selfies and share posts.
The subsequent day, we went off-property to go to Cloudland Canyon State Park, the place a sequence of trails let you hike by means of the practically 4,000-acre web site. The Waterfalls Path was the proper morning train to burn off our dinner from the night time earlier than. The 1.8-mile roundtrip path results in Cherokee Falls and entails some 600 steps on the climb again as much as the mountain’s rim.
The property’s proximity to parks and out of doors pursuits wasn’t an accident within the planning course of. In response to Horton, it was a part of the preliminary total idea, in addition to to benefit from Lookout Mountain’s proximity to rising inhabitants facilities close by. Chattanooga is just 35 minutes away from the resort, and Cloudland can also be simply accessible from Atlanta, Nashville, Knoxville, Birmingham and Huntsville.
Like different resort communities within the southeast, reminiscent of the Cliffs and Palmetto Bluff, Cloudland features a actual property element and a personal members membership. The golf is a part of that membership, and the one public play it affords is to resort company. Like these different communities, Horton says, golf was a driver from the outset. “We believed the individuality of providing an accessible mountaintop course that was each truthful and dramatic can be a draw and create further demand for the resort group by company and members,” he stated, noting that almost all mountain programs will not be really situated atop a mountain, and none boast the expansive views of the Blue Ridge Mountains discovered at Cloudland.
On our final day on the resort, we took our children, who’re aged eight and 6, out to The Cairn, a complimentary six-hole quick course off the primary clubhouse, and watched them hit photographs between 40 and 80 yards to actual greens from actual tees. Whereas there have been loads of golfers strolling across the property, many watching faculty soccer video games at night time, there have been a number of {couples} and households, as effectively. We’d have been taking our children to mattress, however the celebration was simply getting began on the primary flooring—hearth pits had been lit up outdoors, and drinks had been ordered inside and to take pleasure in alfresco. There was one thing for everybody and even our children, again within the room, had been already asking after we had been going to come back again.
