Our long-awaited Charlotte/Mud Lake Bayou (MLB) paddle finally came to pass on May 18 after Mega storms and massive flooding. One of the only good things resulting from all the bad weather was wonderfully high water on Lake Charlotte! We usually paddle out there at around 8 feet, but on Saturday the level was over 14 feet; a huge 6 feet above any cypress knees, low foliage and other usual hazards. That gave us epic access deep into the woods. Awesome! Plus the weather could not have been better…blue skies, low humidity, temps in the 80’s and wind at 5 mph for glassy flat water.
Charlotte reached 17.27 ft. (Gauge #08067118: 11.12 + 6.15 conversion) on 5/7/24, just short of the Hurricane Harvey record of 17.53 ft. in 2017. The following two pics taken by Natalie W. out at the Cedar Hill Park put-in on 5/8 show what it looked like… Amazing!
The original trip route had to be modified a bit since the planned put-in under the Trinity Bridge was completely flooded out and the river itself was still running at flood stage above 30 ft. and about 73,000 cfs; way too big to be playing on! Usually when we’re out there it’s only at about 5 to 10 feet and under 2,000 cfs.! Consequently, we put-in at Cedar Hill Park on Lake Charlotte and did an out-and-back from there
That path took us down the East coast, into Mud Lake, through Ghost Bayou, into Lake Miller (lunch on Miller Hill since our usual spot on the Miller south channel was submerged!), part of Mud Lake Bayou and back onto Charlotte for another beautiful lacing through the trees on the way home.
Interestingly, we saw less wildlife than usual, even relatively few birds. Not a single gator. It’s the height of the breeding season for them and they usually play all night and sleep all day. Still we would normally see at least a couple. Undoubtedly they, along with all other critters out there were suffering some major displacement resulting from the high water.
Very apparent on all the trees was the prominent high water line clearly marking the 3 foot even higher level from 10 days earlier! Also interesting was how the Spanish Moss was still wrapped around the trees from the high winds during previous days.
All in all, it was a wonderful trip highlighted by lots of lazy paddling wandering through miles of cypress forest. It’s a real treat to have high enough water to do that. So lucky!
There were 17 of us. We put in at about 9:30 and were out by about 3:30. Total distance 7.5 miles. Some of us capped it off with Large Chocolate Malts at DQ on the way home! Oh yeah
Another great day on the water!