An Ashland man envisions a kayaking park at Powerhouse Rapids near Gold Hill, but there are big bureaucratic and financial hurdles to overcome

In a few years people could be talking about Gold Hill and Reno in the same breath.

They would be kayakers, mostly, comparing standing waves and holes in the Rogue and Truckee rivers. There would be excited chatter about enders, cartwheels and squirts, interspersed with observations on river flows and long soliloquies about the peculiar powers of fast-flowing water.

Reno recently built a whitewater park on the Truckee River, right in the middle of town. Some people think Powerhouse Rapids, upstream from the city of Gold Hill, could be the site of a similar whitewater playground.

Steve Kiesling of Ashland thinks the site could be transformed into a whitewater park that would make Gold Hill a world-class paddling destination.

The river splits into unequal thirds at Powerhouse: the main stem and smaller channels along each bank.

Advertisement

Kiesling, who owns land along the left bank, says the three routes make a perfect place for kayakers to indulge in the growing sport of "play-boating," where paddlers stay in one place on the river and challenge themselves on a single wave.

"People travel all over the world for the perfect wave," Kiesling says, but those waves are few and far between. He says the Powerhouse site offers dependable stream flow and plenty of "drop" — vertical distance — that gives the water momentum as it falls.

Whitewater parks have become popular attractions in the Rocky Mountains and to a lesser extent in the Midwest and Northeast.

Kayakers focus on a small part of the river, riding a few waves over and over, using the water’s power to make their boats spin and dive. It’s an altogether different sport from putting a kayak in the river at Point A and floating 10 or 20 or 30 miles downstream to Point B, navigating each rapid once along the way.

Kiesling, a writer, editor and kayaker, imagines a park that would offer three levels of difficulty: an easy class 2 channel on the river’s left bank (facing downstream); a challenging class 4 drop in the existing Powerhouse Rapids; and a mid-level class 3 run in the channel along the river’s right bank.

The project hasn’t advanced much beyond the talking stage yet, and it would face a number of significant hurdles, not the least of which would be raising as much as $1 million to build it. It would also have to win approval from a raft of state and federal agencies that have a stake in managing the river.

But a recent visit by an engineer who designs whitewater parks confirmed the site’s potential.

A park at Powerhouse "could blow the doors off anything that’s been built (on other rivers)," says Rick McLaughlin of Denver, who designed the whitewater course for the 1996 Olympics. "If you can get it built I think you’d have a great draw."

McLaughlin toured the Powerhouse site in mid-November along with Kiesling and fisheries biologist David Haight from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Haight says kayakers and fish wouldn’t necessarily be incompatible, but the project would need to be approved by at least two state agencies (State Lands and Fish and Wildlife) and three federal bureaucracies: the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Army Corps of Engineers, and NOAA Fisheries.

Haight says the drop in the river at Powerhouse (nearly 20 feet by McLaughlin’s calculations) makes it a much more feasible site for a whitewater park than a section of relatively flat water in Grants Pass that has also been under consideration. He says the river at Grants Pass would have to be so extensively modified to create whitewater that it could create problems for migrating fish and boaters where none exist now.

That’s not an issue at Powerhouse, which is impassable for most vessels except rafts and kayaks.

Kiesling thinks the project could be done in conjunction with modifications of a diversion dam just upstream from the rapids. The dam will have to be modified or removed to give fish an easier route upstream, and the city is seeking grants to fund the project. He says the channel on the river’s right bank could be altered to create a series of pools and drops that would be challenging for kayakers and also provide fish passage.

McLaughlin says the parks have been successful economic development engines in other areas.

"The whitewater course isn’t so much for kayakers," he says. "It’s to bring people to the river. People like to be around running water and see the action."

Former Jackson County Commissioner Sue Kupillas says a kayak park on the Rogue "is so obvious you wonder why people haven’t thought of it before." She supported the idea of a kayak park while a member of the board of commissioners and sought funding to do a study of the economic impact of a park.

Kayaking in Southern Oregon "could be like windsurfing is to Hood River," she says.

Fundraising may be Kiesling’s next project. McLaughlin estimated that a feasibility study for the park would cost $30,000 to $200,000 depending on the level of detail. The study could be used to obtain construction funding from foundations and other sources.

"The real challenge," McLaughlin says, "is to get it off the ground. You’ve got the basic ingredients."

Reach reporter Bill Kettler at 776-4492, or e-mail bkettler@mailtribune.com.