On April 15th, instead of working on income tax filings like everyone else, retired IRS agent Ken Anderson led a paddling trip to Lake Charlotte west of Houston. The trip was attended by Joe Coker and John Rich, who filed form 4868 to get a six-month filing extension, to give them time to go paddling instead.
First up is large-view map showing where Lake Charlotte is located, relative to Houston. From downtown, you can be there in about an hour. The second image is a detailed road map showing the relevant landmarks so that you can easily find the put-in location.
(Click once on the thumbnail images to display a larger version in a separate window.)
Instructions: Drive east on I-10. After crossing the Trinity River bridge, take exit 810, which is Road 563. Turn left on 563 and drive north about 2.6 miles. Turn left onto Lake Charlotte Rd. and head west. This is the one tricky part. You're looking for Cedar Hill Park, but there is no sign at the entrance. The sign, for some strange reason, is located inside behind some bushes, which can't be seen from the road. So look for a mobile home on the right with a small cemetery next to it. Across the street from that is a dirt road with a gate made out of large pipes. That's what you want - turn left into the entrance, and follow the dirt road back to the loop at the Lake Charlotte beach. If you miss the small cemetery, you'll end up at the 90-degree turn at the end of the road, and that means you've gone too far.
This image is the USGS online water level chart. As you can see, the water level was only 7' on this date, as shown by the red arrow. Natalie Wiest tells me that this gauge never goes below 6.8 feet, and the true water level at that reading might actually be lower than 6.8. That's just where it bottoms out. So all it really means is that the water is less than or equal to 6.8', but not how much less than. This is very low for this lake, and we feared it would impede our plans. Our concerns were soon to be justified.
Here's the close-up aerial view of the lake area. The dotted white line was the planned route. We were to start at Cedar Hill Park, paddle south to the cypress trees lining the shore, and bushwhack through the trees into Mud Lake. From there, we would take a small channel over to Miller Lake, and paddle to the high ground on the south shore for a lunch break. Then back to another channel called Lake Pass, which leads back into Lake Charlotte, and then to the take-out point once again.
However, the water was so shallow that this plan was abandoned. Paddling across Lake Charlotte the water was so shallow, that the tip of the paddle was hitting mud with every stroke. Fish were scattering across the shallows from in front of our boats. At the south shoreline, there was no water between the cypress tress as usual - just mushy mud.
So, we headed for Lake Pass and hoped to use that as a shallow water alternative to get into Lake Miller, and then resume our plan that way. But that too would prove fruitless, as you shall see.
The dotted red line was the actual paddle route we ended up taking during the course of the day. I'll talk more about that adventure below. Let's get on with the story!
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Put-in site |
This is the put-in beach in Cedar Hill Park. It's a mix of sand, mud and shell, but the mud is a minor factor, and you don't sink in with your shoes.
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| Water gauge |
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Ken and Joe check out the actual water gauge in the southeast corner of Lake Miller. It's the usual metal box with a solar cell on top for power and a radio antennae to transmit the data. It's kind of neat to be able to sit in the comfort of your home and look at the data generated by this equipment out in the waterways. It's a great tool for planning your paddling trips.
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Muddy shoreline |
The south "shoreline" of Lake Miller was a mushy mud bog. I couldn't even get to the trees before I bottomed out in mud. There was no way we were going to paddle through those trees to get to Mud Lake. I put the word "shoreline" in quotes because there really isn't any land there - it's normally just cypress trees surrounded by water.
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| Ken, south shoreline |
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Ken paddles along the south shoreline. Notice how the cypress tree trunks are darker at the bottom - that's the part that is normally under water, which reveals just how low the water is here from normal.
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Cypress tree trunk |
I don't know what it is, but there's something visually appealing to me about cypress tree trunks. I like the way they flare out at the bottom, and the convoluted folds of the wood. It reminds me of the skirt of a flamenco dancer.
And now we've arrived at Lake Pass, hoping to get through this channel into Miller Lake. The south was very muddy, and getting through the squishy mud we left tracks like sea turtles going up a beach to lay eggs. Inside the pass there was just enough water to paddle. However, there was now an even larger problem. Hurricane Ike has toppled over hundreds of trees through this area, many of which now lay across the channel, creating numerous obstacles to passage.
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| Ken does the limbo |
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Here you see Ken getting creative to pass under a log, by doing the limbo dance inside his canoe.
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Trees blocking channel |
This is typical of the trees which have fallen across the channel and now impede passage. We actually got past this blockage, by sliding over top of the trunk at the waterline, and then zigging right around the two above the waterline.
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| Joe rides side-saddle |
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Joe rides side-saddle to squeeze underneath an overhanging log.
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Ken fights a tree |
Three times we had to stop and break out a bow saw in order to cut our way through obstacles. The cutting ranged from a 5-inch thick log at the waterline, to numerous small branches, like the ones seen here. Without the saw, we wouldn't have penetrated nearly as far as we did.
Alas, we finally reached a point where there was a giant tree across the Pass, about three feet in diameter. The only way to continue would have been to portage around it, and we were too bushed to continue fighting it, with no guarantee that we wouldn't just find yet more obstacles on the other side.
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| Spider hitchhiker |
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Lake Pass right now is an interesting challenge, requiring one to be part crazy for wanting to even try it, part lumberjack, part acrobat, and part gymnast. Oh, and you also better not be afraid of spiders dropping down into your boat from all the overhanging branches.
Lake Pass needs some serious chain saw work to make it navigable once again. As it stands now, it is no longer passable. And this also means that there is no way to get into Miller Lake - it's cut off. At higher water levels you might be able to bushwhack through the cypress trees into Miller Lake, but I don't think higher water levels are going to help passage through Lake Pass.
At this point we abandoned our efforts to get to Miller Lake, and decided to head back out into Lake Charlotte, and check out Bird Island for a lunch spot. Bird Island is normally not really an island - it's just a cluster of cypress trees sticking up out of the water. But at this low water level, we figured there might actually be some land under there. And we were hungry and in need of a rest break!
Arriving at the Bird Island cluster of trees, we discovered a small shell beach hidden inside, with enough high ground to stretch our legs and enjoy a good lunch spot.
The cypress "knees" are a source of entertainment, as you can imagine them a social gathering of many people standing around engaging in good conversation. I think I even recognize a few of them as people I know.
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| Bird Island beach |
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Cypress "knees" |
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Interesting tree roots |
Warning: the two photos below are rated "R" for gruesome violence. Bird lovers, click at your own risk. Bird Island turned out to be a macabre scene out of a horror movie. The thick vines on the island were full of dead birds, which somehow got caught up in the tangle and couldn't escape. Joe came up with a theory that they might have been blown in during hurricane Ike, in winds of such high velocity, that they had no control over where they landed. The first photo shows the remains of six birds hanging in the dangling vines. It was a gruesome, creepy sight. You're not in the clear yet. The second photo is a dead ibis. There were dozens of dead birds in the small cluster of trees, most of which were egrets. There were a handful of ibis, and even one roseate spoonbill.
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| Macabre scene |
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Dead ibis |
Okay, after this one, you bird lovers are now cleared to continue looking at photos once again.
After lunch, we departed Bird Island and headed for what looked like a white sand beach at Buzzard's Roost, on the west shore of Lake Charlotte. It turned out that the "white sand" was actually white shells, but that's okay too, because it beats mud. And it was here that we made our most interesting discovery: a dead 9-foot long alligator! There were some old gator egg shells laying around, so this must have been a nest site. We checked carefully to see if any other monsters were hiding in the brush waiting to ambush us.
We gathered up some gator souvenirs from the sand, including claws, scutes - even the skull. Scutes are the bony plates which make up the gator's back.
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| Gator |
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Souvenirs |
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John with skull |
And by then it was mid-afternoon, and time to head back across the lake to the take-out. The wind was at just the wrong angle, so that I had to paddle 95% of the time on the left just to go straight, and that gets very tiring very quickly.
Our original grand plans may have been foiled by low water, but we managed to have fun anyway, and were perchance to experience and see amazing things rarely seen. So despite the challenges, it was still another great day on the water, and it sure beat the heck out of staying home and doing taxes.