Participants (10): Bruce Bodson, Joe Coker, Brent Hwang, Luke Hwang, Amy McGee, D. Portz, Bob Scaldino, Ellen Shipman, Fran Wilcox. Natalie Wiest.
Trip Leader: David Portz
Variably cloudy, no rain.
Temp in low 80’s
Wind: 10 mph wind at start, lessening over the course of the day.
Trinity River was in flood stage, water level was high on Lake Charlotte, gauge height 13.65 feet.
Report
Lake Charlotte and environs are another great ‘go-to’ spot for some beautiful placid-water paddling - though sometimes in the wide open ‘flats’ of Lake Charlotte and Miller Lake, wind has sufficient fetch to produce choppy water.
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Dave's safety briefing |
Our group of one canoe and eight kayaks (one sit-on-top, one fiberglass/composite, five long plastics and one plastic perfectly-suited for bush-whacking – Joe’s) gathered at the Cedar Hill Park’s mostly-submerged boat launch. Lake Charlotte was at 13.65 feet - above average due to recent rains and a flood stage Trinity River (“just right” on the gauge is circa 8.5 feet). Before launching, a beefed-up safety talk touched some recently-encountered HASK “best practices“. Boats launched at 9:35.
Initially heading south toward the Lake Charlotte lake gauge platform, we were broadside to wind and swells from the west. The group thus stayed clustered together. At times we paddled within the cypress woods bordering Lake Charlotte, shielded from the wind, quiet and beautiful. Early on, for the long boats and the canoe, slalom opportunities were enhanced by impenetrable low shrubs.
Throughout the day’s paddle, Joe Coker’s deep knowledge and recent scouting allowed him to decipher routes enabling the group to reach places only accessible in very high water levels. First on the agenda, Joe located the channel of Mud Lake Pass, indistinct from the flooded woods, so we could paddle through to Mud Lake. From Mud Lake we bushwhacked south-southwest through more cypress woods on Ghost Bayou to reach Hyacinth Lake (alternatively, “Marshy Lake”) and then south some more to the southern edge of the Trinity River basin. We paddled a the South Channel southeast and then west, emerging into Lake Miller. We stopped for lunch at 12:30 at the customary site on Lake Miller’s southernmost edge, near the memorial to Capt James Miller (War of 1812 - La Militia) under a tall tree. Many people were able to fit themselves on one slender plank to eat their lunches, surrounded by poison ivy in various disguises, and lurking stinging nettles.
Notable in the Ghost Bayou segment was a whopping big Rat Snake draped in a slender-built tree, not moving. The scent in the woods was wonderful – similar to honeysuckle. On occasional trees were the fragile casks (dried final-stage nymph skins -- “exuvia”) from which had emerged mayflies and dragonflies.
After lunch the wind was mild enough for the group to paddle across Lake Miiller. We took twisty-turny Mud Lake Bayou back to Mud Lake, and then Mud Lake Pass to emerge onto Lake Charlotte. Red-winged Blackbirds, Grackles, warblers (Northern Parulas and Prothonotaries) and White-Eyed Vireos were having a fabulous noisy confab above us at one particular place in the Mud Lake Bayou, with bass, tenor, mezzo and soprano all represented, though singing different tunes. At another place on that bayou, a large black-and-white Swallow-tailed Kite – for Houstonians, a seldom-seen migratory raptor - soared above us, perhaps inspiring that blackbird racket. We also scanned the trees looking for a swamp raccoon, who doesn’t come down from his tree if he knows what’s good for him.
Open-water invasive plants (e.g., water hyacinth, giant salvinia and alligatorweed) and natives (floating pennywort, duckweed) had been somewhat flushed out by heavy flows, but there were still places where we forced our way through patches, using our paddles. Especially on the surroundings of the well-named Hyacinth Lake.
After re-entering Lake Charlotte, the group divided between a group needing to adhere to the 3pm take-out time (that group saw a Bald Eagle and Mississippi Kites) and those game to look at the ‘sand islands’ between Lake Charlotte’s Wes Cove and the bank of the Trinity River. We poked around until Joe found the abandoned Osprey nest that marks the point of access, then bushwhacked again through wetland weedmats and low brush choke points. Joe led us on an indistinct water route to the fast-flowing Trinity itself, again marked by a gnarly cypress tree and a tumped-over black willow. A complete, workable all-water route for this is rare; some of us on the paddle had done it before with Joe, Tom Douglas and Dave Kitson, and we thought a lot about Dave. We bush-whacked back, satisfied, and then paddled for the Cedar Hill pull-out directly, passing roosting birds (Great Egrets, Roseate Spoonbills, etc.) at Buzzard Roost and then across Lake Charlotte, that is, essentially northeast.
At water’s edge on the gravel ramp at the takeout a man was butchering a still-living four-foot-long gar caught by a garrulous man camping nearby in a teepee.
Photos taken by several participants can be seen on the HCC web site here:
Bruce Bodson David Portz
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| Route |
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Swallow-tailed
Kite (stock photo) |
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Joe at marker tree
on the edge of the
Trinity River |
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Mysteriously disguised
Bob Scaldino about to
enter Hyacinth Lake |