Water park has to squeeze fun into a short season

A Montana summer without watersliding? Unthinkable.

No fear here, though. Flathead Valley residents have been happily drenching themselves for almost a quarter of a century in the largest waterpark in the state.

"During a good season, we may see 60,000 guests," said Roger Elliot, general manager of Big Sky Waterpark near Columbia Falls.

The park officially is open from Memorial Day to Labor Day, but the heaviest use of the facility occurs mainly between the third week of June and the third week of August.

"We are really a 60-day business," said Bruce Dalen of Calgary, Alberta. He's the president of Big Sky Waterpark. "So we're extremely weather-sensitive."

Market research has shown that most people decide between 8 and 10 in the morning whether or not they're going to hang out at a waterpark on any given day. This narrow time slot can make many a manager weak-kneed.

"We sometimes get a drop in attendance of from 40 and 60 percent when it's cool or rainy in the morning," Elliot said. "It's that getting in and out of the water thing, you know.

"On really bad days, if it starts raining and we don't have at least 50 paying guests, we'll close the park."

Pool water is heated between 75 and 80 degrees and it's 72 degrees on the slides.

Keeping the water on the chemical straight and narrow is a major focus of the park's safety program. Chlorine and pH are primary concerns and balance is the key concept. The pH of any solution is a measure of its acidity or alkalinity.

"If the pH gets low, the water becomes too acidic," Elliot said. "And that means red eyes. It also means corroding metal equipment. A high pH is no better than a low one. A basic [alkaline] solution can also burn."

As for chlorine, it is a powerful disinfectant used to kill harmful microorganisms. Too little chlorine and you run the risk of waterborne diseases such as those caused by e Coli. Severe overchlorination can lead to respiratory problems.

"Our water chemistry here is automatically controlled for the whole park and each pool is tested hourly," Elliot said. "We test for pH and for chlorine ions in the water."

All park equipment is tested daily for safety and everyone who works at the slides and pools receives lifeguard training. Also, before start of business each day, lifeguards walk up and down every slide to ensure all units are in position and that there are no obstacles preventing a smooth trip from top to bottom.

The slides are made from a fiberglass mold and are manufactured in 12-foot sections. Seams are bolted, glued, sealed and then covered. All water gets recycled from pool to pumphouse to top of slides.

Before the park's springtime opening, pools are cleaned, painted and re-fiberglassed.

"It takes two weeks to fill all the pools," Elliot said. "Our water is hard and comes from a well on the property, so we have to run it through a softener."

Once everything is up and going, 1,500 gallons of water per minute come surging down the rides.

Accidents at the park are rare, but they do happen. People have been known to exit the water over the edge of the slide rather than down at the bottom.

"It's the nature of the game," Elliot said. "Water sliding is an active sport."

Most frequently, he said, injuries occur when little bare feet slip on the concrete while racing on to the next slide. The deepest water at the park is four feet.

Attendance statistics break out evenly: Fifty percent of visitors are local and 50 percent are tourists. Of the tourist variety, 10 percent come from out of state.

A manufacturer of water slides since the early 1980s, Dalen was one of the original park owners, all of whom were Canadians with summer cabins in the Flathead area.

Dalen said he has some future expansion plans for the

15-acre site, but that he must always keep in mind that Big Sky Waterpark is a summer tourist attraction.

"We have to be careful how much we expand and we have to be sensitive with the capital we invest," he said, not wanting to give out any numbers. "This has been a good park for us, and we're planning some new rides. One of them will probably be a surf-type ride.

Today the park's most popular attraction is the 500-foot river ride, followed by the body slides and the Extreme Shredder, Elliot said. Geronimo, the steep, straight 70-foot slide, seems a lot more possible looking up from the bottom than down from the top.

"I'd say that maybe 15 percent of our customers will actually go down it," Elliot said. "A lot of kids chicken out at the last minute."

Reporter George Kingson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at gkingson@dailyinterlake.com