On August 7 David Barrett of HCC and I made a run up to deep east Texas to participate in the, roughly, 31st annual Neches River Wilderness Canoe Race. This race is a fund raising event for special needs scholarships at Trinity Valley Community College. It is also one of the most entertaining and nicely run race events in Texas!
This year the field consisted of 139 racers in 108 boats, which were divided into 11 classes according to paddlers age and boat type. To prevent excessive traffic jams, the classes are all started a few minutes apart, giving each class a chance to get past the first few obstacles before the next class gets started. The fastest classes start last to try and tighten up the time at the finish. David and I were among 13 racers in the Old Goats in Plastic Boats class, aka, senior men’s solo kayaks class and started in the third wave.
Now, the Neches race is known for being an obstacle course, with numerous log jams to work your way over, under, around and through. In a typical year, I am out of my boat perhaps six to eight times to drag it over or swim it under logs that span the entire channel. Sometimes you just get out on the log and drag the boat across and scramble back in. I have done the race all but one year since 2009 and have never finished the race not bleeding- until this year.
This year the Neches was running unusually high- about six feet above normal levels- and over most of the usual obstructions. I was only out of my boat twice and only one of those was of any real difficulty, requiring me to pull my boat about ten feet up a slick clay bluff, and then figure out how to remount the boat against a sheer slope in about ten feet of water. There were lots of log s that had to be jumped and quite a few tangles of logs and limbs that required a bit of thrashing to get through, but on the whole, it was a much gentler race than usual.
The high fast water shaved nearly 45 minutes off my usual time for the race. I won the Old Goats Class in 3:44:29, followed closely by my friend Randy Jones from up in Jacksonville at 3:48:55. David, paddling a boat he had never paddled in, on a river he had never seen before, made it in 5:31:30, which is not bad for a first run on that river, especially when you are learning your boat and the river as you go.
As usual, once you made it to US 79 the Neches River Runners were grilling burgers and hotdogs and slicing watermelons, so everyone got a chance to fuel up before heading home. They also ran a shuttle to help reunite people and boats with cars.
I think most people felt like they earned their t-shirt on this one. It was a good day on a piece of river I only see once a year, and I’m looking forward to doing it again next year!