Ladera Ranch Has Two Disc Golf Courses. You've Probably Only Found One.

Most Ladera Ranch residents can name the pools, the pickleball courts, and the farmers market without thinking. Fewer could tell you the community has two separate disc golf courses, built by the same designer, that operate under completely different rules. One sits behind a gate and gets a resident escort. The other sits under a set of power lines, is open to anyone who shows up with a disc, and by at least one recent account is showing its age.

If you've only ever heard of "the" disc golf course in Ladera Ranch, this is the one worth sorting out before your next free Saturday.

The Nine Holes You Need a Badge For

The Cambridge Disc Golf Course sits in the greenbelt between Covenant Hills and Terramor Village, running along a stretch of the Yukon Riley Trail under the SCE power lines. It's a nine-hole, executive-style layout, meaning the distances are short and a round moves fast, typically 30 to 60 minutes according to course trackers on UDisc. Street parking is available along Cambridge Road.

Here's the catch. Official listings on LaderaLife.com and disc golf directories like UDisc and DGCourseReview are consistent on one point: the course is available only to Covenant Hills residents, and any guest has to be accompanied by a resident carrying their access badge. It was designed with West Coast Disc Golf and Jeff Spohr, a former pro disc golfer who now designs courses and consults with municipalities on disc golf layouts, so the pedigree is real. The access is just narrower than most residents assume.

The Eighteen Holes Nobody Gates

A short distance away, along the same Yukon Riley Trail corridor, is a second course that flips the script entirely. Officially the 18-Hole Yukon Riley Trail Disc Golf Course, and listed on UDisc simply as "Ladera Power Lines," this is a public, technical 18-hole layout that runs under the power line easement between O'Neill Drive and Sienna Parkway, the same stretch of open space that sits between Terramor Aquatic Park and Terramor Skate Park. The front nine sits south of the main parking area, the back nine to the north.

This one carries no residency language on its listing. It's free to play, rated "moderate" difficulty, and a full round covers close to 1.9 miles and takes most players one to two hours, according to UDisc's course data. Also designed by Jeff Spohr, it's the larger and more demanding of the two, and the one open to any Ladera Ranch resident without a card, an escort, or a Covenant Hills mailing address.

The condition, though, tells its own story. One UDisc reviewer summed up the wear bluntly:

"It's wild that a course that's only three years old looks so tired."

Other recent reviews mention the front nine's signage being hard to read and at least one hole marker missing entirely, advice worth taking if you're planning a round: pull up the course in the UDisc app before you go, rather than relying on posted signage to find your way between baskets.

The Two Courses, Side by Side

Same Designer, Two Different Rulebooks

What makes this worth untangling isn't just the course split. It's that Covenant Hills itself doesn't apply one blanket rule to everything inside its gates. Mission Hills Park, also located within Covenant Hills off Bell Pasture Road, is explicitly open to all Ladera Ranch residents. LaderaLife's own amenity page says as much: residents use their standard LARMAC access card at the park gates, no escort needed, to reach its nine-hole putting course, five-hole practice green, and lawn games like giant chess and gaga ball.

So within the same village, one recreational amenity opens with the card every resident already carries, and the other requires a Covenant Hills neighbor to walk you in. That's not a rule most people think to check before planning an evening out, and it explains why so many longtime residents have never set foot on the Cambridge course despite living a short walk from it.

There's a maintenance thread running alongside this, too. LARMAC's own project updates have flagged irrigation repairs and design modifications planned for the disc golf course inside Covenant Hills, the kind of routine attention a smaller, resident-only layout tends to receive. The public 18-hole course, doing more traffic across a larger footprint, is the one currently drawing complaints about worn signage and a missing hole marker. Whether that gap closes depends on how LARMAC prioritizes the larger, more heavily used course going forward.

If You're Actually Going to Play

If you live in Covenant Hills, the Cambridge course is a genuine after-dinner option. Nine holes, thirty minutes, no car required if you're already inside the village. If you don't have that address, the Yukon Riley Trail's 18-hole public layout is the one to know. It's free, open to any resident, and long enough to be a real outing rather than a quick loop. Bring your own discs either way. Neither course rents equipment, and if you're new to the sport, the shorter Cambridge layout (for those with access) is the gentler introduction before tackling the technical elevation changes on the public course.

Either way, pull up the route on UDisc before you go. Given the reviews on signage, it'll save you more time than reading a post like this one.

Ladera Ranch keeps adding these kinds of layered amenities, amenities that look simple from the outside but come with access rules specific to the village, the HOA assessment, or the year it was built. If you're weighing what a home in a specific village actually gets you day to day, not just on paper but in practice, that's the kind of detail worth asking about before you commit to an address. Scott Alpi has spent years working through exactly these distinctions village by village across Ladera Ranch. If you're curious how a specific neighborhood's amenities, HOA structure, or access rules might affect your day-to-day life here, reach out to schedule a consultation.