Low-Down on Lake Charlotte
December 2, 2019
by Tom Douglas
With a group outing to the Cypress Wonderland planned for Saturday December 8, four of us met up to scout out conditions ahead of time. To facilitate scouting the Lake Pass, we launched our boats from the west bank of the Trinity River near the Interstate 10 bridge. A sandbar that had appeared in front of the concrete ramp didn’t pose a problem for us, but it did require some extra maneuvering for a small power boat that we saw.
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Andy
by Tom Douglas |
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Rea
by Andy Hiester |
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Tom
by Andy Hiester |
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Wendy
by Andy Hiester |
As we headed north up the Trinity, we could see that conditions at the potential group launch site on the river’s east bank (which is much less used by power boats) looked fine. A ways farther up along the west bank, we enjoyed the unusual sight of several clusters of brown pelicans perched on branches low over the water. Conditions in the lower part of the Lake Pass tributary were good, but as we got farther up, the water became shallower and there were 10-foot-wide mud banks in places.
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Brown Pelicans
by Tom Douglas |
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Lower Lake Pass
by Tom Douglas |
The water in Lake Miller was quite shallow, too. Up in the extra-shallow fringes of the lake, about a hundred American white pelicans were busy fishing. We paddled in the direction of the popular lunch spot on the south side of the lake, but we were stopped about 100 yards short of it by too-shallow water (shown on the map below as a stop sign). Heading over toward the entrance to an alternate lunch spot near the southeast corner of the lake, we were again stopped about 200 yards short. Back at the exit to Lake Miller, we spotted several swamp lilies in bloom, and Andy’s sharp eye for wildlife detected a Mississippi green water snake coiled around vegetation at the water’s edge.
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White Pelicans
by Tom Douglas |
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Swamp Lilies
by Tom Douglas |
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Water Snake
by Tom Douglas |
Returning to Lake Pass, we continued on toward Lake Charlotte. More and more often, we found ourselves sliding our boats over logs and picking our way through branches. Right at the entrance to Lake Charlotte, a log stretched all of the way across the channel. (You can see it in the first photo.) When a couple of brave souls managed to slip over it, they found that Lake Charlotte itself was just too shallow to paddle. Our third stop sign for the day.
On our way back to the put-in, we cleared away a few branches in Lake Pass on the chance that the water level might rise enough in the next 6 days to allow passage for the planned group outing. Along the Trinity’s west bank, Andy sighted a fair-sized alligator that eyed us and slipped into the water as we passed. Arriving back at the boat ramp, we looked on as several people with a larger power boat struggled to get it over that same sandbar. How jealous they must have been of our shallow-draft, human-powered vessels. Our total paddling distance was 7.6 miles, but as you can tell, that only begins to tell the story of our event-filled scouting trip.
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Upper Lake Pass
by Tom Douglas |
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Paddling Route
by Tom Douglas |
After everything was packed up and the others headed home, Tom drove around to Cedar Hill Park, which is another launch site that is often used for outings into the Cypress Wonderland. Not surprisingly, there was a 40-foot-wide, slippery mud flat between the usual launch beach and the water’s edge (not a very inviting prospect for a group trip). All in all, it looked like we might need to move Saturday’s group trip to a location that is less affected by the prevailing water and weather conditions.
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Cedar Hill Park
by Tom Douglas
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Day's End
by Tom Douglas
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The author, Tom Douglas |