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m U 9 A kayaker paddles on the Arkansas River, one of Colorado's most popular for whitewater sports. would cause a bigger icing problem in the spring runoff," says Mark Gibson, assistant professor of recreation at Western State College. Gibson's program boasts the second - largest number of majors on campus, partially because the park helps recruit students, he says. Constructing and maintaining a white - water park is an imprecise science. Some say it will require more trial and error, and will continue to change over time. The top structure in the park still isn't complete says Shirley. Recently, Gunnison County hired engineer and hydrologist Jeff Crane of Crane and Associates in Hotchkiss, to re -build parts of the upstream end of the park, and fine tune other park features. "It does take what I call 'adaptive management' to do anything in the river," says Crane. "(The park) wasn't designed quite enough to take into account the bend in the river," he says, adding that one side of the whitewater park is substantially deeper than the other now. "Hydrology is so far from being an exact science that you have to plan on making revisions. You don't want to force the water to do what it doesn't want to do," says Crane, who is also the president of the Colorado Watershed Assembly. Repair to the park's original features has been problematic. Cold weather iced over the river in November, making work impossible. Crews have a narrow win- dow of opportunity to do the work, between the time when the ice melts and peak runoff arrives. Of primary importance in creating the pools and drops boaters want, is mak- ing sure historical diversions along the course still receive the water they are H r - DV/ATERS 1 5 PRI IN 2006 entitled. Part of Crane's work involves improving the diversion structure for the 75 Ditch, located near the upstream end of the park. This time of year, his design looks more like a riffle in the river, not an engi- neered structure, he says. But ultimately, the structure will fulfill two purposes. Buried rocks in the river bottom will cre- ate enough of a backwater to divert a full decree of water into the ditch, and he hopes the boulders will also create a little water feature at the top end of the whitewater park. "Is there a wave here? Is there going to be a hole? We don't know yet because we haven't had high water yet," he says. "But I have no doubt it will work well as a ditch diversion and it will work well for the river in the long term." "Designing water parks is not a hard science," says Gibson. "You put things in the river and you have to see how it acts." Regardless of what the final version of the park will be, Crane says collabora- tion will be necessary for this water park and any others that come along. "This is the future of water use in this state — developing projects that will benefit water users, recreation, storage, agriculture, everyone," says Crane. "We're pulling together because there's a very limited supply of water we have to work with." J Hundreds of boulders beneath the Gunnison River's surface create a waterpark for kayakers, and a metaphor for the park itself. Gunnison County and the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District went toe -to -toe with the state and a boatload of oppo- nents to obtain the recreational in- channel diversion water right. The boulders had to be moved in and strategically placed to create the park, and designers say adjustments, fine tuning and revisions will continue, at least for a while.