A Quick Look at the Manchester Whitewater Park

I took my wife and grandson on a brief excursion to Iowa's newest water attraction, the Manchester Whitewater Park.  Since I had the boy with me, I didn't run the rapids, but I did stop to take a good look at the park's layout; I surveyed each drop, and watched a few paddlers enjoying themselves.  I also saw a couple of folks on inner tubes, and even witnessed a couple running the rapids in their open canoe.  (They made it through the first five drops and spilled on the last one.)

The river flow was low and slow today.  The Manchester USGS gauge showed a depth of about 4.1 feet, and a flow of about 160 CFS.  Higher water will make a tremendous difference from what I'm reporting today.

I had a great initial impression walking the length of the park.  There is ample parking at the upper end of the park, with easy access to the water.  Furthermore, there is a sidewalk along the entire length of the park, and you can quickly and easily put in directly upstream or downstream from all of your favorite features.

During the small amount of time I observed boaters in the water, I saw people primarily hanging around the second and fifth drop.  This is partially because there were people fishing on the first and last hole.  Apparently the guy on the first drop was kind of rude.  He was fishing with a treble hook, on the edge of the wave, and refused to move his line, even when people were trying to just run though to get to the other features.  The folks on the last drop were significantly more friendly... but then again, they were actually catching fish.

Last time I was in Charles City, people were wondering about the differences between the two parks.  All drops in Manchester are significantly narrower than the drops at the Charles City Whitewater park, leaving noticeably less room to roam across a given feature.  I estimate that each feature was about seven to eight feet wide today.  In my opinion though, this offset by the increased number of features available in the Manchester park.  The Manchester park is a good 50% longer than Charles City.  This means a significantly longer walk from the last feature back upstream to the first, but it's not a difficult walk by any stretch of the imagination.  And again, there are more features, so it's quite foreseeable that you'll take fewer walks back upstream in Manchester than you will in Charles City.

Here are some photos of the drops for your review...

Notice the ease of access to the drop, by walking along the rocks to the actual feature.  Each drop has this type of easy access.

This is the first drop.  The wife and grandson in the picture should give you a frame of reference for the size of the wave and feature.  All drops are roughly this wide.

Second Drop

Third Drop

Third Drop, closer up

This isn't an actual feature, but it has the potential to be fun.  In low water, you will drag going through this.

Fourth Drop

Fifth Drop

Sixth Drop

There is also a place to rent kayaks and tubes

If you're looking for more of a paddling oriented review of the park, feel free to look at this YouTube video.