•	Features
•	Hotline
•	Destinations
•	Gear
•	Skills
•	Book and video Reviews

< NovDec 2000
	Destinations
Canoeing the Lone Star State Verne Huser

Texas is a big state with lots of rivers, at least four of which generate more annual run-off than the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. That distinction needs to be made, for Texas has its own Colorado River, an 831-mile-long stream generating more than two million acre feet of water annually and offering many miles of prime paddling.

Most people outside the Lone Star State know only the trio of Rio Grande canyons in Big Bend National Park--Santa Elena, Mariscal, and Boquillas--and the Lower Canyons, a 192-mile stretch of National Wild and Scenic River as isolated as any in the Lower 48. These lower canyons, so called because they lie downstream from Big Bend, offer some challenging whitewater, while Colorado Canyon above Big Bend provides a picturesque Class II.

A few may know the sparkling cypress-lined Guadalupe, the most popular paddling stream in Texas. Starting on its tributary San Marcos, the annual 258-mile Texas Water Safari follows the San Marcos to the Guadalupe, and the Guadalupe to the Gulf. One of the longest downriver races on the continent, the race, held the second week of June, draws paddlers from Canada to Mexico (see Paddler, May/June 2000).

Steve Daniel, a Texas kayaker, recently published an unlikely titled book, Texas Whitewater (Texas A&M University Press, 1999), which features more than 70 whitewater creek and river segments from multi-day trips to day trips and play spots. One of the best things about Texas whitewater is that it may be at its best in mid-winter, when so many northern rivers are frozen or too lean to paddle.

Daniel includes the Devil’s River, an isolated stream in west Texas that few people know because it was controlled by private owners who objected to anyone’s paddling through it. However, recently the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department purchased more than 20,000 acres of waterfront property along the Devil’s River, at least in part to provide paddling access to this special piece of water.

Texas rivers are as varied as the colors of wildflowers that bloom along their shores every spring--or any time there’s been enough rain. The Mexican-border Rio Grande, the Nueces of South Texas, the Pecos and Devil’s of West Texas are all desert rivers. So are the upper reaches of the Canadian, Colorado, Brazos, and Red rivers, all associated with the Llano Estacado or Staked Plains in the Texas Panhandle, an interesting feature in its own right (see Dan Flores’ recent Horizontal Yellow, his earlier Caprock Canyons, and John Miller Morris’ El Llano Estacado).

East Texas rivers flow through rolling hills and piney woods. The farther east you go and the closer to the Gulf Coast, the more you get into the Southern swamp scene with bald cypress trees and Spanish moss. Miles of the Neches and its lower tributaries Village Creek and Pine Island Bayou flow through the Big Thicket National Preserve. Its upper tributaries, the Angelina River and Attoyac Bayou, offer pristine paddling through some of Texas’s finest national forests. The Forks of the River, the marshy meeting of the Angelina with the Neches, remains one of the wildest places in Texas, reachable only by river.

The Sabine, which forms more than 260 miles of the Texas-Louisiana state line, offers miles of isolated paddling possibilities on a big river (6.8 million acre feet flowing into the Gulf of Mexico annually) where the fishing is good and the living is easy. White-sand beaches provide enticing camping spots and wildlife: alligators, bobcats, raccoon, deer, and lots of exotic birds. Even the urban rivers, often plied by powerboats, accommodate paddlers. The Trinity’s four founding forks flow through Fort Worth and Dallas before the river gets its act together for a run of several hundred miles to the Gulf (5.8 million acre feet annual discharge) through a rural area of charming quality. It forms the boundary between numerous counties in its isolated flow through the blackland prairies and cross-timbers, offering a series of day trips or long reaches that can take you away from civilization for a week or more.

The San Jacinto with its tributary Buffalo Bayou in Houston may flow through the most populous part of Texas, but it too offers many isolated segments on the coastal plain where winter paddling makes more sense than boating during the hot steamy part of the year. Sea kayaks have become popular in the placid waters of this vicinity. The lower reaches of the Colorado and the Brazos, the Trinity, Neches, and Sabine all flow through a relatively flat environment where tidal influence flushes the lower rivers twice a day.

For all their industrial pollution, these river mouths on the Gulf offer unique paddling experiences, great birding and fishing opportunities, and a getaway from the highly populated surroundings. Several state parks and wildlife refuges on these lower rivers provide a mix of excellent river access, camping facilities (most of them with showers), wildlife viewing, and interpretative services: Brazos Bend State Park, Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge, Sabine Pass Battleground State Historical Park, Sea Rim State Park, Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge, and Village Creek State Park.

From a campsite at Village Creek State Park one spring, I canoed the lower Sabine in Blue Elbow Swamp near Orange, a stretch of the Neches just north of Beaumont, several miles of Village Creek and Pine Island Bayou. I visited portions of the Big Thicket National Preserve and the Alabama-Coushatta Indian village and witnessed bright-blooming azaleas, redbud, dogwood, Indian paintbrush, bluebonnets, claret cups, crimson clover and numerous other wildflowers--all before the stifling heat of a Texas summer arrived.

I’ve also paddled the middle Colorado in mid-January. Every winter the Alamo City Rivermen of San Antonio sponsor a weekend paddle trip on the Colorado River near Bastrop southeast of Austin. Paddle clubs from all over the state participate in the annual event, which features one of the finest cookouts I’ve ever savored. Camping on a mid-river island about halfway down the 16-mile run, the group (70 people in 40 paddle-powered boats) celebrates song, poetry reading, and story-telling. It’s one of the best river events I know.

The world-famous Texas Hill Country (Edwards Plateau), settled largely by Germans in the 19th century, has more good paddling streams and serves better restaurant food than almost any other part of the Lone Star State. It is here that the Devil’s, Guadalupe, Medina, Nueces, San Marcos, San Antonio, and several tributaries of the Colorado all begin, including the Llano, Concho, and Pedernales. They flow clear and cold, most of them originating in springs flowing from their limestone bedrock, dropping over the Balcones Fault Zone in steep cascades and falls. Most are cypress-lined; many harbor rare and endangered birds. All offer delightful paddling experiences from the Lost Maples on the Sabinal, a Nueces tributary, or Enchanted Rock in the Colorado’s watershed to tight Class II-III runs through the cypress tunnels of the Medina, Frio, and Guadalupe.

You can also find whitewater on Texas rivers, especially in the Hill Country, which strikes a happy medium between topography and sufficient flow. All of Texas’s real mountains lie west of the Pecos River, but often too little rain falls in the region to generate enough run-off for real paddling. Except for the Rio Grande canyons, the Rio Pecos offers about the only challenging whitewater in West Texas: 11 rapids in 50 miles.

When the weather is right--not too cold, hot, windy or rainy--Texas’s rivers offer a wide variety of paddling opportunities, long and short, whitewater and placid, isolated and urban, historic and modern. Rivers led early settlers into the interior to create homes. Rivers watered their cattle and horses, ground their grain and taught them to build on high ground.

The Texas Declaration of Independence was signed on the banks of the Brazos, and the Texas War for Independence was won in a battle at the confluence of Buffalo Bayou with the San Jacinto. Rivers have been as important to Texas history as they are to contemporary recreational activities including rafting, canoeing and kayaking, all of which are booming in the Lone Star State.

As to guidebooks besides Daniel’s Texas Whitewater, which has an extensive section on Texas navigation laws (you need to know your rights), there are Rivers and Rapids by Ben M. Nolan and Bob Narramore (updated every few years), The Lower Pecos River by Louis F. Aulbach and Jack Richardson, The Lower Canyons of the Rio Grande by Louis Aulbach and Joe Butler, and of course, John Graves’ classic Goodbye To a River about an extended canoe trip on the Brazos. My own Rivers of Texas appeared in March; several others are in the making, one currently being written by John Graves and illustrated with color photographs by Wyman Minzner, one of Texas’s finest photographers.