{"id":2449954,"date":"2019-10-16T22:24:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-17T04:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/public-asks-county-for-basalt-park-to-be-safer\/"},"modified":"2019-10-16T22:24:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-17T04:24:00","slug":"public-asks-pitkin-county-for-basalt-whitewater-park-to-be-safer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/public-asks-pitkin-county-for-basalt-whitewater-park-to-be-safer\/","title":{"rendered":"Public asks Pitkin County for Basalt whitewater park to be safer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Pitkin County needs to make Basalt\u2019s whitewater park safer. That was the refrain from most of those who spoke at Wednesday night\u2019s public meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not asking for a big change to the kayak park,\u201d said Glenwood Springs resident Elizabeth Bailey. \u201cWhat we are asking for is a way to get through these monster features.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bailey was among those boaters whose rafts were flipped by the lower wave during some of the Roaring Fork River\u2019s highest flows of the season. Bailey, an experienced rafter, said that because the river pushes boats to the right-hand side of the lower wave feature, there needs to be a boat chute to the right, between the hydraulic that forms at high flows and the river bank.<\/p>\n

Currently, the only way around the wave is a narrow, hard-to-spot \u201csneak\u201d on the left side.<\/p>\n

The injuries Bailey sustained June 16 sent her to the hospital.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor that to happen in a manmade park, there needs to be some responsibility,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Pitkin County Healthy Rivers and Streams hosted Wednesday\u2019s meeting at the Basalt Town Hall to gather public comment about the whitewater park\u2019s two consecutive wave features, which some say became dangerous during this year\u2019s high runoff. The lower of the two waves seemed to present the bigger challenge, even for experienced boaters.<\/p>\n

The two structures, built with concrete during the winter of 2016-17, were re-engineered the following winter after complaints that the artificial waves were dangerous. But the low flows of the spring and summer of 2018 did not provide a fair test to see whether the problems had been fixed.<\/p>\n

The features are supposed to create fun, recreational play waves at flows between 240 and 1,350 cfs. The river was flowing at about 2,500 cfs the day Bailey was thrown from her boat.<\/p>\n

Healthy Rivers Chair Andre Wille said the county\u2019s ultimate goal is to make the best whitewater park they can.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are pretty committed to getting it right,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Quinn Donnelly of Carbondale-based River Restoration, the firm that designed the park, led the public meeting and presented a few options for making the lower wave safer. Crews could lower the \u201cwings\u201d on both features, creating a path around the wave on either side, or a channel could be created around the left side of the wave.<\/p>\n

Another idea was to create a \u201ccatcher\u2019s mitt\u201d eddy just below the second wave so that boaters who get tossed from their crafts can more easily swim to shore.<\/p>\n

But some said creating a way for boaters to get around the waves didn\u2019t go far enough \u2014 the waves themselves need to be made safer.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere you have two terrifying holes,\u201d Kirk Baker said. Baker is the founder of the Aspen Kayak School and is an expert kayaker. \u201cYou should not have to go around. You should be able to go through. \u2026 You have to fix the hazard you created.\u201d<\/p>\n

Royal Laybourn agreed. Laybourn was also the victim of a flipped boat \u2014 he said the wave put him in the hospital.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t create a hazard and it doesn\u2019t matter what water level it is,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re under a mandate to correct that. \u2026 Let\u2019s just make it so any dummy can roll down through there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pitkin County chose the site for the whitewater park, which is just upstream from downtown Basalt, in part because it is just above the Roaring Fork\u2019s confluence with the Fryingpan River. That made it a good place to establish a recreational in-channel diversion water right.<\/p>\n

But that part of the river is also steep, Donnelly said, meaning hydraulics will not wash out, but, rather, become bigger as flows increase.<\/p>\n

Any new modifications to the wave features that the county and River Restoration decide on will probably come this winter.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want it to be as safe as possible,\u201d Donnelly said. \u201cIt is a river and there are hazards, but this was put in by people and it\u2019s held to a higher standard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aspen Journalism collaborates with The Aspen Times and other Swift Communications on coverage of water and rivers. For more, go to http:\/\/www.aspenjournalism.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pitkin County needs to make Basalt\u2019s whitewater park safer. That was the refrain from most of those who spoke at Wednesday night\u2019s public meeting. \u201cWe are not asking for a big change to the kayak park,\u201d said Glenwood Springs resident Elizabeth Bailey. \u201cWhat we are asking for is a way to get through these monster […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2449954","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-04 13:21:04","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2449954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2449954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2449954\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2449954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2449954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2449954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}