Texas Whitewater, Part 2

Texas Whitewater (Part 2): Paddling Texas Streams Today

by Zach Schiada

a Carolina Paddler article

∞ This is the second follow-up on Texas Whitewater. These articles were inspired by reading and reporting on the book, Texas Whitewater by Steve Daniel. In the first piece I spoke to several people who previously lived in Texas and discussed challenges they had in paddling whitewater creeks and rivers in the state.

For this current article, I talked to paddlers who are still living in the state and enjoying its rivers. Their outlook on paddling whitewater in Texas is mostly positive due to recent population changes. However, paddlers say not all changes have been beneficial to the culture or logistics of paddling in the state but this is often the case when rapid change occurs. Additionally, little has been done to change public perception and cultural awareness of whitewater paddling. The main barrier to paddling opportunities is rain or the lack thereof. Texas receives less than half the amount of rain annually as North Carolina. A comment I heard time and time again is that Texas paddlers rely heavily on El Niño years to maximize their paddling opportunities. As someone who paddles in Central North Carolina, this is something I don’t think about a whole lot. In this part two, I’ll speak to people who are still paddling the Lone Star state to learn what has improved and what is still difficult. 

Quinton Hathorn- San Antonio Area

Quinton grew up in the San Antonio area and has mainly paddled the local rivers. He began paddling in the early 2000s. In his area there haven’t been many problems with parking or river access. He said back in 2000, you could park closer to your put-in and takeout without any issues. However, in 2010 and more recent years, as he began paddling whitewater more seriously, “No Parking” signs have forced paddlers to park farther away from accesses or risk paying fines up to $50. He says this is specifically a problem on the Frio River lower section. Its upper section, he said, does not have this issue, but it also has less rapids.

He has heard of the challenges to paddling like those at Central Texas runs like Crabapple Creek. His experience in the San Antonio rivers such as the Frio, Sabinal and the Medina, is different. The game wardens are actually following navigability laws and enforcing paddlers’ rights to safe passage on the river. He mentions specifically that a ranch owner on the Sabinal River had bought up a ton of riverfront property and put up fences. The game wardens came and instructed the rancher to provide safe passage and access areas for paddlers.

Quinton still has to deal with fences in lesser run creeks. On a trip on the Lower West Sabinal River, for example, he had to avoid three cattle fences by shoving his sit-on-top kayak under the barbed wire and swimming through. Other than the fences, he said that the run was very fun with sights of wild horses included. He described it as majestic.

Quinton lives in Austin now and says the boating bans on places like Barton Creek are still going on. Since being in Austin, he hasn’t paddled many local runs, but he did get on Onion Creek –interesting, but lots of city trash. The Rio Vista park on the San Marcos River is available to keep his skills active and ready when it rains. Speaking of rain, he mentions he was able to get a good eight days of paddling on the Frio River after a storm in July. He’s optimistic that with the El Niño year, he should be able to get more paddle days during the cooler months, when the cypress trees aren’t demanding as much spring water. The rapids need massive amounts of rain to come to life, but there are plenty of fun days on the water while waiting for the rain. On rivers near San Antonio, where he grew up, he could usually paddle as low as 150 cfs in crystal clear spring water. Whitewater doesn’t get interesting until 800 cfs or so, but he enjoys being on the river regardless of flows. He can still find a channelized feature every now and then even with the low flows. For times when it’s not raining, he considers making trips to Oklahoma and Arkansas like so many other Texas paddlers do. He also mentioned he’s considering a trip to Week of Rivers next year, so CCC members be on the lookout to show him some cool North Carolina mountain rivers.

Veronica Sosa- Austin Area

Veronica mostly does a different type of paddling in Texas than the other people I’ve spoken to, but she regularly paddles rivers described in Daniel’s book. She is an eight-time finisher of the Texas Water Safari, which is described on its website as being the “Worlds toughest canoe race”. It is a race from the San Marcos’ spring headwaters in San Marcos, TX to Swan Point in Seadrift,TX. The race has been held since 1963. She was introduced to the race and paddling in general by her father in the 1980s. Her fastest completion time was 45 hours in a C2. Using the race as a gauge for popularity of paddling in Texas, she mentions participation in the event increases every year with 185 registrations in the latest race.

She also paddles races outside of Texas. She recently did the Suwannee River race from Georgia all the way to the Florida coast, completing it in 54 hours. Veronica and her partner had some stiff competition against a men’s tandem team near the end but ultimately beat them to the finish. She admired the tannin stained water and she didn’t worry much about the alligators, but the big sturgeon suddenly jumping from the river were terrifying. Veronica is an inspiring racer with the stamina for nonstop paddling with only an hour or so rest in the evenings.

She paddles all sorts of craft: C2’s, Safari Unlimited (a 22 ft long carbon boat), SUP, etc. Whatever gets her on the water, she paddles it. She also paddles whitewater sometimes. She mentions trips she’s made to Costa Rica to paddle beautiful class III-IV rapids through the jungle. Her passion in her hometown of Austin is long distance paddling rather than the flashy creeks she avoids for safety reasons. Veronica does a lot of trail running next to Barton Creek, for example, and has come to the conclusion that creeking is not for her.

Her favorite local river is the San Marcos, which she compares to a log ride at an amusement park–with its swift current, rapids and crystal clear spring water. She likes the constant, narrow and twisty nature of the river keeping her on her toes. She also enjoys paddling the Guadalupe River near New Braunfels. In the 1980’s, when water was more plentiful, the Guadalupe had a lively rafting industry. The Colorado is another of her favorites, but it has many strainers to avoid.

Although she is an Austin native, she has explored much of the Rio Grande drainage. She paddled the main river from Lajitas to Terlingua this March. It was a two day trip, 21 miles with good water for her and her friend. She says the weather was perfect during the daytime and cold at night. She remembers Rockslide Rapid as a fun one on the trip. She would love to get back on this section of the Rio Grande.

In a separate trip, Veronica paddled a tributary I have heard little about, the Pecos River, Her experience was similar to Darrell’s on the Devil’s River, deep water followed by long distances of shallow, abrasive rock in ankle deep water. It was a 65 mile trip with complicated logistics and demands: packing lots of drinking water, filtration sytems, satellite phones for emergencies and tons of determination to make it to the end at Lake Amistad. She did have a hot dinner delivered to her on the third night of her trip. The trip involved a lot of boat dragging but it wasn’t all bad. The scenery was great and she saw wild horses and petroglyphs.

Veronica is passionate about her thriving local rivers and paddling community. She is friends with Ben Kvanli and other whitewater paddlers who spend time at the San Marcos Whitewater Park at Rio Vista. She says to enjoy the park, one needs to know what they’re doing in whitewater, especially with the first drop.

Veronica isn’t aware of the current status of paddler access on the disputed rivers and creeks. She does echo the same challenge to paddling others have mentioned– scarcity of water. However, her overall outlook on paddling in her area and the state is positive. She doesn’t have any major barriers to her future plans for paddling.  She is in the process of working on another long trip on the Colorado River all the way to the coast, a trip she expects to make as soon as the logistics are worked out.

Ben Kvanli- Central Texas

Although familiar with paddling throughout Texas, Ben Kvanli provided all sorts of information about Central Texas. He’s a former K1 Olympic paddler and current paddle instructor. Ben rose to fame for a ferry he did across an ultra high Pedernales River below its confluence with North Grape Creek. He had to sneak by police, television crews and helicopters on this stealth mission, but when all was said and done, he was looked at more as a curiosity from onlookers rather than someone in distress and in need of rescue. He comments that he’s famous for the ferry, but really he wishes people would recognize the massive wave he surfed by the cliffs there, an ocean sized monstrosity that almost no paddlers would be able to reach. He was filmed by a caretaker of a nearby property and featured on the news.

Ben maintains his experience signifies a recent change in the public’s perception of whitewater paddling, partly due to more people moving to Texas from different parts of the country. Many ranchers have started to relocate and new estate owners, who have seized the opportunity to build on large tracts of former ranch land, are now seeing kayakers as curiosities and view paddling high water as entertainment.

Ben says population growth and the changes accompanying it are not all positive. He noted a dramatic change in the sky view in Austin as skyscrapers have blossomed. Along with growth, though, came a trend of more respect and admiration of paddlers and less confrontation. He had similar comments as others regarding the lack of paddlers with ability to jump on harder runs such as Crabapple due to the limited opportunities for practicing steep creek runs and the infrequency of runnable water. He had all sorts of information about Crabapple, including his personal run-ins with the rancher there. He observed most creeks differ from Crabapple, which is composed of solid granite and holds water. Most exciting creeks, however, are at the fault line, where gradient is often higher. However, water disappears into the karst limestone when the underground system isn’t full and perks up in a spring downstream, feeding rivers such as San Marcos. A paddler can have decent water on an upstream limestone run only to suddenly run out of water mid-run and have a long hike to the takeout.

Since Ben has paddled all over the state for decades, he’s familiar with higher class runs like the Buchanan Dam spillway, at which he was given a tour of by the dam operator on 4X4s. Similarly, he shared his discovery of Mexican Creek, which he found out about through a friend.  The friend would ride his moped around exploring. It would later be added in Texas Whitewater, 2nd edition. He describes Mexican Creek as a Disneyworld kind of fun for steep creek paddling. He’s got some wild stories for this spot as well including some furious run-ins with the landowners association there.

Ben has oftern paddled the famous, yet challenging to reach, Blanco Narrows, a unique quarter mile of narrow canyon uncharacteristic of the rest of the Blanco River. He was part of the original runs on Onion Creek where the second drop of Barber Falls became known as Teardrop Falls, a reference to onions making one’s eyes water. On the topic of creeks within Texas, he mentioned exploring Bear Creek and Little Bear Creek, which he says come up sometimes and have great ledges. For the little creeks and lesser run stuff, he likes to make a point to paddle three of these every wet season. He likes to check in on the creeks, since they have higher gradients, but they don’t get his juices flowing like big water paddling. What he really likes is getting on the Pedernales River with friends, “Some of the best waves in the world when the river is up.” Ben feels no identified run has got away from him, but he’d like to make it up to the upper Frio and explore some of its higher gradient sections.

He doesn’t minimize the challenges Texas paddlers have faced over the years: angry ranchers, guns being drawn, shots fired, cattle fences and low bridges obstructing creeks and more. A lawyer friend once presented him with legal notes to show to landowners and law enforcement as a “real-time rule book” to justify his right to paddle. The legal notes worked a few times, but he says there is still a need to be on defense. He argues with the recent cultural shift to wealthy mansion owners instead of ranchers, the landscape is changing in a way that benefits paddlers. This is building up an already vibrant paddling culture in the state. As other paddlers have noted, paddling whitewater is becoming a more regular activity for many people. The best example is the  San Marcos Whitewater Park, put together by the same people who designed the Oklahoma, Montgomery and Charlotte Whitewater Centers. He has an overall positive outlook of Texas whitewater paddling now and into the future. His love for his state and paddling community showed in the conversation we had. Ben was highly informative and entertaining throughout. Like the other paddlers I spoke to, I could listen to stories of his adventures for hours.

It was a pleasure to speak to each of these paddlers. I’ve learned quite a bit about the current state of whitewater paddling in Texas. The paddlers knew what they were talking about and were entertaining. On top of that, I was inspired by everyone’s passion for paddling despite all of the challenges they face. I am grateful to them for their time, stories and photos. My hope is to accurately represent their points on the status of paddling whitewater in the state since the publication of Texas Whitewater. I welcome any additional comments, especially since I never had a boat on any of these streams.

My goal in speaking to these paddlers, aside from curiosity, was to point out the unique offerings Texas has for paddlers and maybe shine some light on the challenges faced. I figure if attention is given to this unique state, maybe as a community we can help our fellow paddlers as opportunities arise. Like in North Carolina, accessibility and disputes between paddlers, governments and private property owners can often be a complicated situation. In the future, paddling an obscure creek in Texas just might be a possibility, given a different landscape and cooperation between the various parties.  Paddlers have expressed optimism, so I’m hopeful.

 It was a blast hearing all sorts of stories on the paddling culture in Texas. The state is more active than I had imagined. I was very impressed with the amazing people I spoke to about the state. Texas will be on my list to visit, in my retirement years, if not before. I’ll try and bring some water with me if I can make it there.