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WATERSKI MagazineJim Beebe crinkled his face. The coach of the Midwest Junior Development Team was in the middle of a discussion about great ski lakes around his home in Wichita, Kansas. Somebody mentioned Lake of the Ozarks, as they usually do, and Beebe's nose recoiled, as it usually does.
“Wrong move,” he said. “Unless you like crowds. It's fine with me if people keep going there. I'll take Table Rock Lake. Up around Shell Knob it's away from the pack, quiet. That's the best skiing on public water.”
Spreading 56 miles along the Missouri/Arkansas border about midway between Kansas City and St. Louis, Table Rock Lake has maintained a low profile despite the ground it covers. While attention is centered on Lake of the Ozarks, skiers in the know sneak off to the foothills where Table Rock sits packaged in forest.
“You're all by yourself,” says Beebe. “When you shut off the boat engine, all you hear are birds. The big rock bluffs make it seem like you're in a canyon. It's almost spooky.”
A disclaimer is needed here. Some who read this might be saying, “Bunk.” If you've tried Table Rock over near Branson, Missouri, you may have run into a moving mass of yahoo-ing Buck Owens fans. The key is to stay to the west side of the lake, in the upper region around Kimberling City and Shell Knob.
“The bigger boats don't come up this way,” says Dave Williams, a MasterCraft dealer in the Shell Knob area. “This is where the skiers come, around Kings River.”
On the Kings River arm, which winds among hills for at least 10 miles into Arkansas, there's flat water all day and one of the lake's three slalom courses. (The others are on Long Creek and the James River.) The farther north you go, the cleaner the water because there's less farmland. In May, the water is normally warm enough for shorts and a vest. By midsummer the water surface can reach 90 degrees down in the hills. But on Table Rock Lake even the heat is more silent than deadly.
