Cat’s out of the bag. Pueblo’s newest whitewater park called Waterworks Park appears will likely have a legit surfable feature. For lack of a better name, we will dub this wave “Pueblo’s New Wave“.
Pueblo’s New Wave is located up river near City Park at the last of six drops and looks to be sizing up to a similar wave to Scout in Salida.
So the questions are: When will Pueblo’s New Wave open up to the public? And, What flows will the New Wave come in?
Unfortunately information has never been all that transparent to the rive surf community on the Waterworks Park project, nor input ever accepted from the river surfing community on the project. But we really need to bite our lower lip and be patient since the project is heroically removing a dangerous low-head dam that has claimed lives. The project is a big undertaking at $11 million dollars but will make that reach of the Arkansas River in Pueblo safer, environmentally improved, and hopefully a good recreational destination for the City of Pueblo that includes a nice fast moving wide smooth green faced wave… Fingers crossed on that last part there about Pueblo’s New Wave!!!…
So the original plan was the “commissioning” and handing over of the whitewater park from the contractors to the municipality July of this year to open up the whitewater park; but, it appears that the “commissioning” date has been pushed off to Fall of 2024. This seems so from the screen grab of the March 31st vid of the New Wave that the river left side down to the bottom of the whitewater park has yet to be completed. This also shows that the back pool that will make the New Wave stand up tall is only partially there at the moment. Hence why the wave is not all that big in the picture… Need a significant back pool of slow moving water to jump a wave up from the fast moving water.
We might get glimpses of how the Pueblo New Wave preforms this season; but unless the project magically gets finished enough early, we might not be officially surfing Pueblo’s New Wave until the 2025 season.
As for flows for Pueblo’s New Wave, one can only guess at the range and consistency. Since the whitewater park sits below the Pueblo reservoir on the Arkansas River, the Pueblo New Wave will not get the benefit of the daily recreational flow that Scout gets to August 15th of each season. But from a review of the flow out of the Pueblo Reservoir, the season will be similar to RRP’s kicking in about May and lasting into August. This is assuming that the wave will have a similar performance wave range as Scout 2.0 did of 400cfs to 1,200cfs.
One caveat is that there is typically a few weeks that the flow running from the Pueblo reservoir goes over 2,000 and then we have no idea how Pueblo’s New Wave will handle the big flows.
My guess is that comparing Pueblo’s New Wave to the famous original whitewater park down river limited times of surfable days, Pueblo’s overall river surfing season days will potentially increase with the addition New Wave like tenfold. Pueblo just might be banging surf destination with their New Wave and during high flow days, the two waves down river at the original whitewater park at the Pueblo levee will be an alternate spot to surf by expert river surfers. Conceivably, Pueblo could be surfable every day from May to August.
Take a look for your self at flows on the gauge nearest Pueblo’s New Waves and the original waves at the levee: ARKANSAS RIVER AT MOFFAT STREET AT PUEBLO, CO (ARKMOFCO)… https://dwr.state.co.us/Tools/Stations/ARKMOFCO?params=DISCHRG
If you want to read up on the Waterworks Park project, check out these links. Note, you have to watch the vid on the first link because it gives an idea of where Pueblo’s New Waves is compared to the other drops and at about the second minute in, it get’s hilarious with the mini-tubers…
- Update from May 2023: https://pueblowater.org/southside-diversion-dam-project-moving-forward/
- Update from Nov 2023: https://pueblowater.org/construction-begins-on-11-millon-waterworks-park-project/
- Project Timeline (appears opening date pushed off from July 2024 to Fall 2024): https://pueblowater.org/waterworks-park/
- Update January 2024: https://pueblowater.org/access-now-restricted-near-waterworks-park/
When we get more intel on Pueblo’s New Wave, we will hit you up.
LBK
“Life is so strange. Destination unknown. When you don’t know your destination and something could change, it’s unknown. And then you won’t know.. Destination unknown“…. Missing Persons (Destination Unknown). https://youtu.be/XkOUcYueNa4?si=QVXYs4wuabKA2NtL
The Denver Surf Report 