|
Put-in
|
SH 159, west bank, moderate difficulty
|
|
Take-out
|
FM 529, east bank, moderate difficulty
|
|
River Conditions
|
Hempstead Gauge, flow was roughly 900 cfs and falling, gauge height was 10.3 feet and falling. Median flows for the date would be 1,790 cfs, and gauge height would be 12.06 feet
|
|
Temperature range
|
80 degrees F at the start, 97 degrees F at the finish
|
|
Skies
|
Mostly sunny, with a few scattered clouds
|
|
Winds
|
South and variable, a few periods of headwinds up to roughly 10 mph
|
|
Coordinator
|
Bruce Bodson
|
|
Participants
|
Tim Brooking, Greg Fan, Sara Hook, Christy Long, Faye Morrissey, David Portz, Karen Suggs
|
|
Boats
|
A variety of solo kayaks (8)
|
|
River Miles
|
19.89
|
|
|
|
View photo album here Brazos SH 159 to FM 529, July 16, 2022
Saturday a group of eight paddlers, in eight boats paddled the Brazos from SH 159 to FM 529. This section of the river is just below Hempstead. In this area the Brazos is the line between Waller County (east bank) and Austin County (west bank).
From Left: Tim Brooking, Bruce Bodson, Greg Fan, Karen Sugg, David Portz, Faye Morrissey, Christy Long. In Front : Sara Hook
Photo by Tim Brooking
To accomplish this trip we met at the take out, at FM 529 and transferred boats to half the vehicles and shuttled up to SH 159. The put in was fairly manageable this time. Though the path down to the sandbar is a bit steep, this time it was dry and not nearly as slippery as we have found it to be in the past. One unusual thing the put in was a group of eight other kayakers in short SOT boats preparing to paddle down river a way, to a friend’s property. We seldom see other paddlers on the Brazos and it was nice to see others enjoying the river.
This is a historic section of the river and figures prominently in Texas history. At approximately mil 2.80 below the put in is a limestone sill that was, for a time, the upper limit for low water steamboat navigation. This sill is adjacent to the site of Bernardo Plantation. This is the location at which the steamboat Yellowstone met Sam Houston’s army following the runaway scrape and ferried them across the Brazos. It also delivered the Twin Sisters canons to the army here.
Saturday, much of the sill was exposed and the little riffles on river right were flowing nicely. All boats made it through with no bumps or scrapes and it was pleasant to have to focus a bit on the moving water.
One of the primary purposes of this trip was to field trial the Nurdle Patrol protocol. Nurdles are pre-production plastic pellets that are melted down, colored, and formed into everything from dashboards to phone casings, bottles and caps, and even most of the kayaks we were paddling. They are roughly the size of a BB. They are often ingested by fish, turtles and bird and can result in death through obstructing the digestive tract. They also can give odd some phthalates, which are endocrine altering compounds. On the Brazos, we believe that we will find nurdles in areas around railroad switching and classification yards and trestles. We did not expect to find many nurdles on this stretch and we were not disappointed in our expectations. We looked at three locations; at 3.8 miles, 8.80 miles and 15.5 miles and found none, despite diligent looking. It does give us a baseline for this 20 miles of river though and we will continue to look at other river segments on up to Waco.
Despite the lack of nurdles it was a very pleasant day on the river. One of our group got to see her first ever wild bald eagle. It was also interesting to note the large number of recently fledged wading birds on the sand bars. We saw a couple of groups of immature little blue herons mixed with an occasional young snowy egret and a few cattle egrets. At about mile 17 we also saw a large group of immature roseate spoonbills, showing the slightest blush of pink. There were also a few spotted sandpipers, killdeer, and quite a number of belted kingfishers.
While we were not looking diligently for mussels this time we did manage to find yellow sandshell, pimpleback, Brazos heelsplitter, threeridge, fragile papershell, Tampico pearly mussel, mapleleaf, pistolgrip, bleufer, and a few Texas fawnsfoot mussels. The other invertebrate of note was the unusually large numbers of bronzed tiger beetles. They were foraging in the wet zone where the river had recently receded.
We did figure out that the group of eight that launched ahead of us were perhaps not entirely aware of the distance they were paddling, or the difficulty involved in long river trips in short, slow boats. Several of our group encountered two stragglers, short of water, hungry and overheated. A large part of their problem stemmed from a seat failure on one of the boats that was resulting in substantial back pain for the paddler. Our crew gave them much of our extra water and snacks and tried to keep periodic contact while we stopped for nurdling. Ultimately, their friends, who had made it to the takeout had summoned the EMT/river rescue folks and they we encountered them at about mile 17.5. By that time, the stragglers had figured out a system that works for them and were doing quite a bit better, alternating short paddles with sitting in the river to cool. They were clearly going to tough it out on their own, but I suspect they were very happy to see the rescuers.
In it for the long haul.
Photo by Bruce Bodson
The takeaways here I believe, are 1) know exactly how far you are paddling, before you get the river 2) in hot weather, carry more water than you think you’ll need 3) know your boat and your capabilities and stay well within them. It’s just too warm to make mistakes.
We had several of our group that were feeling the heat when we arrived at the take-out. As noted before, the take-out was of moderate difficulty, which on the Brazos can be interpreted as steep and muddy, but manageable by mere mortals. It took a while, but we did get eight boats hauled up the slope, drivers reunited with vehicles and all the boats on the correct cars. Everyone had a good time, and our three who were new to the river felt like they earned their tee shirts.
Our trusty boats waiting to be hauled home.
Photo by Bruce Bodson