New Missoula surf wave plan surfaces Play Video
Posted: Jun 29, 2010 5:18 PM
Updated: Jun 30, 2010 9:13 AM
MISSOULA - A new wave is building in town: a surf wave for kayakers and others on the Clark Fork River.
Organizers are calling it The Max Wave, named for Max Lentz, a 17-year-old kayaker who died in 2007.
People who helped establish Brennan's Wave near Caras Park are working to gain momentum for a second surf wave on the Clark Fork River near McCormick Park. The committee's vice president Jason Shreder said more than kayakers should be excited about the project.
"It's not just a wave for kayakers," he said. "It's taking certain pieces, a section of river that's currently unsafe and hazardous to floaters and is also unaesthetic and turning it into a place like Brennan's Wave that's full of energy, safe for passage."
There's still a lot of work to do like finalizing the location and raising funds, but the group hopes to have to have The Max Wave completed by 2015.
oldcowgirl at Jun 29th 2010 9:47 PM
I thought the Mill Town Dam was taken out to make the river flow natural,(and take out Toxins) Now more waves for kayakers, just doesn't seem to fit into the recovery of the Clark's Fork river to naturally flow before the Dam ? So human intervention is still controlling the river.
Doug Ammons at Jul 6th 2010 4:37 PM
The comment above creates a false conflict between the Max Wave and a natural flowing river. What the commentator doesn't realize is that right now, without the Max wave there, the river shows the hand of man far more than it would if the wave is put in. The idea of the river flowing naturally is great, but the commenter seems not to realize that the entire river in that section, and all through Missoula, has been channelized, narrowed, rip-rapped with concrete pieces filled with rebar, with multiple irrigation diversions, and none of it is "natural". Actually the Max Wave will take an existing broken down and ugly man-made diversion called the Flynn weir - an irrigation diversion that is legal and has precedence to all other changes, natural or otherwise - and makes that diversion more efficient for irrigation, more scenic, less dangerous, better for fish habitat, prettier, and more natural - at the same time it creates a surf wave kayakers can use. We really get the best of all worlds for that change, just like we got it in the creation of Brennan's wave. Right now, the commentator doesn't mention there is a bulldozed bunch of rocks and a man-made bank of broken pieces of concrete and debris, which is as unnatural as it's possible to be. The process of creating the Max wave will clean those up, make the riverbank more natural, and definitely improve the section in every way. It won't reverse all the man-made changes, because the entire river bank and riverbed through Missoula is the result of man's intervention and control. The issue is whether we want control with bulldozed rocks and broken concrete rip-rap creating an ugly setting, or control creating and enhancing the beauty of the river, like what happened with Caras park, with a beautiful river feature that is also a great meeting place and fun for a growing segment of the community. I vote for the latter. If you knew what the area below the Higgins bridge looked like before Caras park and Brennan's wave - a trashed out, concrete rip-rapped, rebar infested dangerous, ugly weir and riverbank - compared to now, then I believe the majority of people would cheer the idea of doing the same sort of thing for the Max Wave.
ponderosa at Jul 6th 2010 4:44 PM
The idea that a kayak wave adds to human interference with the river is a common misconception. This newly proposed wave works just like the earlier creation of Brennan's Wave in downtown Missoula. The downtown wave used to be a dangerous, unsightly mess of concrete and rebar jutting out from the banks of Caras Park. The Max Wave aims to increase safety and restore a more natural flow to the river. There's already an old Missoula Irrigation District diversion there, so the Max project effectively restores river flow and improves a significantly more detrimental human change to the Clark Fork.
I'm not personally a kayaker, but it's important to remember that these people really do care about river ecology and have done much more than most people to work on improving and restoring natural river conditions.