San Marcos River - HCC Club Trip
Feb 3 and 4, 2007 - 180 CFS
High 50's- Low 60's On the water
By Christy Long

Saturday, Fraser Baker, Janice Baker, Robert Langley, Dan Carrol, Pat Isley, Susan Eda, and Chuck Bab met at Pecan Park Retreat. We paid for a shuttle and launched around 11:00 am. The day was warming up and becoming sunny.

We played at the common spots but at times had to challenge ourselves by paddling or surfing backwards. A couple of times we were able to get the whole group in a rapid. By 12:30 or so the clouds covered the sun and the wind picked up just enough to make the paddlers put on their extra shirts.

The amount of beer cans on the beaches was a surprise and a sad thing to see. Such a beautiful river to have this type of eyesore.

A tandem canoe, solo canoe, and a couple of solo kayaks took turns surfing in the waves at S-turn, also known as Broken Nose. I could see the big tree that has been on river river for the last year, maybe it has been washed out.

At Cottonseed, Pat and Susan performed a few experiments on the Cottonseed sieve, the new danger at the wall. They filled several water jugs and Chuck Bab threw them in the river on the upstream side of the wall. They were sucked under and several seconds later came up on the down stream side of the wall.

The second experiment was to let a rope be drawn into the sieve. The rope was drawn in but never came out the other side. Chuck found that it became tangled on re-bar sticking out the bottom of the wall. Scary stuff.

Chuck took measurements of the wall and where the sieve is located in relationship to the edge of the wall. I hope Susan will post the information on the list serve.

After the experiencments we played around at Cottonseed for a while then took off to meet our shuttle.

Sunday, Fraser and Janice met me at Rio Vista. We were the only boats there. What a blast we had. They tumped over, I tumped over but we just kept messing around. It was after noon when we were packing up and the local boaters were coming out. They were a hoot to watch.

Another good weekend on the river.