Distance: 16.35 miles
Participants: Bruce Bodson, Tim Brooking, David Portz, Karen Suggs, Doug Fairchild, Joe Nick Patoski
Water Bodies: Brazos River, main stem
Bruce's Photo Album
The stretch of the Brazos from SH 21 west of Bryan, to FM 60, west of College Station is one of my favorite parts of the Lower Brazos. It has a variety of water conditions, none too technical, a variety of scenery, and a variety of interesting geological features and interesting biology. Our group consisted of Bruce Bodson, Tim Brooking, Doug Fairchild, Joe Nick Patoski, and Karen Suggs.
Joe Nick Patoski and Bruce Bodson
In addition, this being a routine look at a favorite stretch of river, we were showing Joe Nick the Lower Brazos at its best as a recreational river for a story he is working on for Texas Highways Magazine. He came out paddling a yak board about eight feet long and did great on the river.
Bruce Bodson
We had a good luck with the weather and the river. Though warm, the high was only around 90 F, not the 96 to 98F we were experiencing earlier in the week. The river, though falling, had risen to close to median flows, from the nearly historic low flows of two weeks prior.
In keeping with the norms for Brazos paddling, the put in was steep and slippery at the bottom, resulting in a nice layer of mud on things to start out. The take out was steeper, muddier and slipperier, with no good bar for landing and a copious quantity of broken concrete to encourage us not to fall.
Copious Quantity of Broken Concrete
This segment of river has a few shallow rocky rapids, but the river stage made it so we generally were able to float over the obstacles. We had a bit of fast bumpy water, but no spills, and no boat damage.
This section of the river is also known for fossil material and we did see large amounts of fossil shell, some unusual nodular formations called stromatolites up to about five feet in diameter, and large quantities of large petrified wood. By large I mean four or seven feet in length and up to three feet in diameter. At one point, what appeared to be a substantial in-channel log jam turned out to be composed entirely of petrified logs. We stopped and ate lunch on a mid channel bar and sat on petrified logs.
Karen Suggs
We saw a number of mussel species, particularly associated with sandy-gravelly substrates. Species observed included yellow sandshell, bleufer, Brazos heelsplitter, pimpleback, southern mapleleaf, pistolgrip, Tampico pearly mussel, threeridge mussel, and of course, Corbicula. It was interesting to note that the three ridge mussels, Tampico pearly mussels, and Bleufers were often considerably larger than we see further down river. The old valves were not as abundant as they have been on some trips.
The birding was once again, quite good, especially considering that it was not a prime focus of the trip. We saw green heron, great blue heron, little blue heron, great egret, snowy egret, cattle egret, and yellow-crowned night heron. There was some evidence of early shorebird movement. We observed killdeer, spotted sandpiper, western sandpiper, least sandpiper, and one white-rumped sandpiper. We had red-shouldered hawks, red-tailed hawks, broad-winged hawks, Mississippi kites, bald eagles, crested caracara, turkey vulture, and black vulture. Neotrops were largely on territory and we saw painted buntings, white-eyed vireos, summer tanager, yellow-billed cuckoo, scissor-tailed flycatcher, great crested flycatcher, eastern kingbird, Carolina wren, Carolina chickadee, tufted titmouse, northern cardinal, northern mockingbird, cliff swallows, barn swallows, purple martins, belted kingfishers. There were also pileated, red-bellied and downy woodpeckers. There were no doubt others, but record keeping was a bit lax, since this was not a bird mission.
Our take out, as already noted was a trial and we were grateful for Skai and Adam, whose younger backs and legs were major contributors toward getting everything up the banks. Our final shuttle was made a tad more interesting by a roof rack failure, and a bit of an adventure with misplaced gear- ultimately found unharmed. The roof rack also resulted in no damage beyond that to the driver’s nerves.
Total distance was 16.35 miles, and the total time was roughly eight hours. It was a good, educational day on the river.