Table of Contents
July 6, 2006 General Meeting Minutes
2nd Quarter Pool Session Report
Trip Reports
Marilyn Kircus: Lake Charlotte
Justin Ceterski: Pedernales River
Jared Davidson: Week of Rivers 2006
Christy Long: Week of Rivers 2006
by Justin Ceterski
May 6, 2006
6,000 cfs
Sandy Crossing to Johnson City
Quote of
the trip:
"Then the Wave Trains... OH SHIT! Some serious wave trains. Nothing
like I've EVER seen (not that I've seen that much) Easy 6-8 foot lift
you to the heavens and drop you to hell type waves.... What a rush ..."
I had a blast this weekend with all of the rain. I ended up staying at home Friday night and skipped out on the severe weather that went through San Antonio / Austin on Friday night. That gave me plenty of time to pack up my gear and make sure that I wasn't forgetting anything for my options (kayaking, hiking, or rock climbing ... which ever I ran into first) Saturday morning I hopped on my computer and called on of my friends over in San Antonio to see what rivers were running and who was out and about. Amazingly the water was hitting just west of Fredericksburg and Johnson City filling up the Pedernales river basin. The river was rising from 600 cfs Friday night and was already at 2,000 cfs when I checked at 7:30am.
I jumped in my car and made it over to San Antonio in about 3.5 hours even with the rough weather I had to drive through. I met up with one of my friends, Lori, who said that the other guys were already out on the river. We waited for her friend Amy and drove up to Johnson City to the take out and left a truck there. We then headed towards Fredericksburg to the put in on Sandy Crossing.
The river was 2 feet above the bridge when we got there and rising. Four other Austin / San Antonio / Dallas paddlers (Jason, Rick and crew ...) were putting in at the same time and got about a 30 minute head start ahead of us.
We put in below Sandy Crossing at 1:30 pm and didn't try to play on the ever growing wave below the bridge since we had a good 14+ mile paddle ahead of us and all three of us (Lori, Amy and I) were in small play boats. The first mile or so was filled with fun wave trains and dodging holes until we got to the first dam. This dam was about a 4' drop onto a low water crossing with a good sized wave as the water poured off of the low water crossing. It was best run right of center to avoid the hydraulics on river left.
After the dam, the wave trains started to get bigger along with the holes we were dodging. The next dam about a mile downstream was broken on river right and gave us a nice green tounge to run down. For about another half mile there were bunches of waves and more holes formed by the river ledges that we dodged. The third dam we got to was a small drop of about one foot. There was a sneak slot far river right that let us go down and not have to try to break the straight line river-wide hydraulic.
Then the fun began. The waves now were getting close to 3' to 5' in height and the holes were getting steeper as we went downstream from the third dam. The bigger waves made it fun trying to make sure that the next wave wasn't really a knarly pour-over into a sticky hole. Lucky me, about two miles downstream I plowed right into the middle of a big hole and cartwheeled head over heels several times before rolling up to find myself stuck in the hole. The edge of my boat caught the upstream current and flipped me hard into the hole and rolled me a couple of times before I found myself pinned to the bottom of the river with the boat on top of me. I pulled out and swam out of the hole watching my boat get tossed a few times before getting spit out.
Amy and Lori watched my boat float down the river and chased after it as I swam hard to get to the shore since the river was a good 200' wide at that point and I was near the middle of the river. Amy came over and helped pull me the last way into an eddie and went back after my boat. The two of them were trying to push my boat to shore and slide backwards into another hole that kept all three boats. Lori was tossed around a couple of times and then swam out of the hole and Amy was left in the hole to fight to stay upright. Luckily that was the same time we came upon the four guys that left ahead of us and it was a calm section of the river. They grabbed Lori's and my boats and pulled them onto a grassy island as both of us waded over to retrive our stuff. During this whole time Amy was sitting in the hole trying to work her way out. By the time we had our boats back, Amy had successfully gotten out of the hole and paddled over to shore to stretch her legs.
The seven of us then paddled together for another mile or two until the next big rapid. This rapid was where the entire river narrowed down all on river right and rushed down a steep rapid. As the two lead boaters went down the rapid, they were completely hidded from sight as they slid down into the bottoms of the waves and popped back up as they went over the next. The key to this rapid was to start in the center and work river left to avoid the big hole river right. Amy went though the rapid and hit a good line. Lori started out going great and then turned a bit too far right and slide right into the middle of this huge hole and disappeared right in front of me. As I looked over I caught the edge of the break on the hole and flipped over but thankfully wasn't held in the hole. I rolled up and watched Lori swim by next to me as her boat popped up a little downstream. We caught all of the gear that floated off and took a break from paddling.
The four guys that we met up with paddled back upstream to tackle that rapid again and play on the waves. We waited a couple of minutes to see if they were just going to run it again or stay in surf. They chose to stay and surf so the three of us decided to keep going. We kayaked through more big wave trains and dodges more holes down the river.
About another
two miles downstream, we reached another large rapid that was flowing
fast and hard. Most of the flow was going right into an island in the
middle of the river and through a bunch of trees. We were not in the mood
to try to dodge the trees so we portaged that rapid and saved it for another
day. Another two miles downstream, a group of guys waving and screaming
at us from the top of the cliff caught our attention. They were frantically
waving thier arms and pointing river right. This was where the river narrowed
up again and rushed down another rapid. We slowly crept along the eddies
on river right and saw the gigantic waves and at least one huge hole that
hugged the left bank of this rapid. The three of us bounced down the sneak
route river right and avoided getting pounded one last time in another
big hole. The rest
of the paddle was more wave trains and dodging smaller holes down the
river.
We got to the take out around 5:30 pm which was a good pace for our slow playboats. The San Antonio/Austin guys that we were going to paddle with left a note saying that they got off the river around 3:30 pm so they missed most of the peak flow. Lori and I drove up to get my truck at the put-in and I found a note from Steve Daniel (the guy who wrote Texas Whitewater book) saying that he needed a shuttle. So we headed back to the take out and started to load up our gear. As we loaded up, the four guys that we caught up with got there along with Steve and a Chemical Engineering grad student from Texas A&M, Eric. At the take out Ken Wealty and Mark Poindexter were waiting to see who ran the Perd today. They just finished running "C" creek for the second time in two weeks (a good class 4+ creek run that's plenty illegal to run due to landownder issues).
All of us crowded into Fat Boy's Burgers for a relaxing dinner while it rained some more outside. Unfortunately it wasn't enough to bring up any of the rivers for another run on Sunday.
hmm ... up
next ... whenever the river get's back up ... Johnson City
to Perdernals Falls state park!