Guadalupe River Trip (belated)

[Raoul Duke]

With the prolonged drought reducing the local rivers to a mere trickle, I got so desperate to experience paddling in some form that I went back and uploaded a video of my March trip down the Lower Guadalupe.  We hit is just right, because the very next weekend the Army Corps shut off the spigot on Canyon Dam and reduced the flow on the Lower Guad by more than half. 

My boy and I did the trip for Third Crossing to Gruene Crossing and hit all the classic rapids, including the Chute, the First Crossing Drop, Hueco Springs Falls, Slumber Falls, Clutter Falls, and Gruene Rapid.  It was early enough in the season that we had the river pretty much to ourselves.  If we were to paddle that same section now, we would have to wind our way through throngs of tubers.

Here is a little video I put together.  Enjoy, and keep up the rain dances!

[mule ears]

Nice!  It brings back a lot of memories, I used to practice and race on that section a lot in the early 70's,

Thanks!

[Raoul Duke]

Wow! talk about memories; your video begins at the "shoot"; from 1975 to 1981 I owned the five acres on the cliff above the "shoot", where the old ranch road used to reach the river.

Don't you wish you would have held on to that land!  I spent a lot of time on that section of river back in the early 80s as a kid, and I remember how beautiful it was back then.  I generally avoid the Lower Guad and keep to the Upper, so this was the first time I ran the Lower in many years.  I was amazed at how much it's been developed in the last 15-20 years.  There are now bars on the bank of the river where tubers can pull in and order jello shots.  That's not exactly what I like to see while floating a river.

[Cookie]

More memories for me too! My first job in High School was a raft guide on that section of the river. It's so nice to see water in it in the video....it's at 55 CFS from the dam right now.  Keep prayin' for rain!

~Cookie

[Al]

If my memory serves me, the big flood was 1981: the same year as the "Memorial Day Flood" in Austin.  I forget the peak flow but it was over 130,000 cfs on the upper Guadalupe.  My wife and I put in at the bridge west of 281 a couple of weeks later and canoed down to the takeout below 281.  I remember seeing refrigerator drawers and debris stuck up in the trees 15 or 20 feet above the water.  We almost got sucked under a log jam in a sharp bend of the river and to this day I think back and realize how lucky we were. 

Al