This could be good for ski lake owners . . .

[elr]

I wonder if you can still ski a surf lake . . .

[JAG]

our lake is like that every weekend when the wakeboarders start getting busy.

[unksskis]

Interesting, anyone know the lake's ski history?

[igkya]

I forget the thread, but wasn't this already discussed a couple of months ago? Maybe it was on another forum... There's other forums???

[Onside135]

Here was the previous post.:

 

Surf Lake Link

[ALPJr]

Wow! Would like to see this. Would change inland watersports.

[Texas6]

That really is damn amazing.....Slater will hit it out of the park on that idea....And there will be plenty of soul surfers who will despise him for it, while thousands upon thousands of new inland surfers move toward the sport...

[ColeGiacopuzzi]

So the story of this is pretty interesting, I know a family that owns a private ski lake near by and told me some details. The lake that Kelly Slater used for the wave pool used to be Sunrise ski lake, it was a ski school. When the owners decided to sell, Kelly picked the lake up. The lake then was drained and the whole floor is covered in concrete. The power for the machine is borrowed from an air base miles away. There is a 10 foot wall around the whole property. the whole lake project was about $5,000,000 I heard, that doesn't count the research involved before hand.

[TallSkinnyGuy]

If what Colebrah says is true about the startup costs, it seems unlikely that such a project could ever be profitable on its own. Maybe if they can reproduce it in a densely populated area of the middle east? I would be interested in seeing the business plan and how they intended to make it profitable.

[Texas6]

@Colebrah, I was wondering how they would run a hydrofoil on a muddy sloped ski lake floor - that makes a lot of sense, as do the start up costs. Very cost prohibitive to support a business for the masses at that price, the goal long term has to be to bring that cost way down through design improvements

[ALPJr]

Have you seen the crowds at the wave pool at Mandalay Bay? I think it can be a home run in the right market.

[Texas6]

Oh I do as well. But you can swim a heck of a lot people in a wave pool that you can surf on that wave....I agree, there is an absolute out of the park homerun in this deal somewhere, it will be interesting to see how that manifests itself.

[jcamp]

So put surfing behind gates, out of the public eye, all in pursuit of perfect conditions. Hmmmm, where have I heard this story before?

[ALPJr]

My guess is inland spectators who can't get to the coasts would love it.

[unksskis]

People are very excited about the NLand Wave garden going in by Austin, wakesurfers are actually moving to Austin because it will be there.

[WBLskier]

Hard to justify costs of a football stadium based on ticket prices alone but factor in tv, licensing, etc. and somehow it works. Similar here I would guess. Surfing has a ton of money and if you could expand the surfing lifestyle to Inland "surfers" it probably doesn't matter if an individual site can make money on use fees.

[TallSkinnyGuy]

Having worked in the surf industry for 20 years I can tell you that surfing does not have "a ton of money." I assume it creates more revenue than waterskiing does, but surfing has nowhere near the interest level (i.e. money) of the big sports. If $5m is the true development cost, it really seems odd that they would re-purpose a ski lake so far away from a dense population. It wouldn't have cost that much more to start from scratch and dig a new lake closer to a population that would generate higher revenue.

[unksskis]

Please read the article

[TallSkinnyGuy]

Ha, I thought I'd read the whole article but it turns out I needed to keep scrolling down. Thanks for the tip!

 

Interestingly, the article says they bought the land in Lemoore because it was cheap and it would be cost prohibitive to buy a "plot of that size with a lake outside L.A." -- my point is they didn't need a pre-built lake. Appropriate land of the price mentioned in the article could easily be found closer to a large population. Digging the lake would be a relatively small part of the overall $5m cost.

 

Regardless, it will indeed be interesting to watch how this affects the sport of surfing. Some people have said on this forum that slalom skiing became unreachable for most people because you had to have access to a private ski pond to be able to compete effectively. Lots of differences with surfing, but it makes you wonder.

[Mateo_Vargas]

So I wonder how long it takes to generate the next wave? That's another problem with course skiing being that it is only 1 person for 10 - 15 minutes.

[DaveD]

They surf a river in Munich. You would think it would be easier and cheaper to build something like that than converting a ski lake.

[ALPJr]

Las Vegas has the money and market.