Participants (IK-1): Turner Sharp and Susan Klimas
Dates: November 7 - November 9, 2005

We had flown from Charleston, WV to Charlotte, from there to Dallas, and from Dallas to Midland, TX, with the ducks, paddles, PFDs, and all of our necessary camping gear in checked baggage on the airplanes. We had to UPS the foam duckie floor to our shuttle outfitter since it wouldn’t fit in checked baggage. With all that, we were at the weight and size limit for all of our baggage. But, amazingly, for once, all of our bags were waiting for us in Midland after easy flights! Then a rental car, a 3-4 hour drive to Big Bend National Park in west Texas. In all that drive, we saw only a few other cars, with a speed limit on a 2 lane road of 75 mph. As we drove into Big Bend, we started seeing the roadrunners (but no coyote), so we had to slow down to avoid squishing roadrunners.

Muck up to the knees day
With all the talk of protecting the United States border with Mexico I was under the impression that we may see Border Patrol types, warning signs, barb wire, dogs , militia men etc. along the border, but there was nothing. A little fact checking after we got home showed that 225 border patrol agents in the MARFA sector made 11 arrests in 2004. This sector covers the entire Big Bend area. We were standing on a muddy beach at Lajitas with two loaded down ducks and the shuttle driver, Jason, leaving with the rental car and we saw no one. It would have taken me about two minutes and some muddy feet to get to Mexico. I am sure that a young Mexican could cut that in half coming the other way. But there was no one, no Mexicans, no US citizens and more importantly no other boaters and that the way is was for the next three days

The put-in was nondescript, with flat water as far as the eye could see, banks lined with tamarisk and river cane and an annoying pump that was probably watering the golf greens at the Lajitas resort. But we soon left that behind and started to see some of Chihuahuan Desert scenery with some low hills and rock cliffs. We encountered two or three barely class ll gravel bar rapids along with plenty of ducks, turtles and a few swimming snakes. Many of the turtles were basking in the sunny 90 degree weather. We made camp after seven miles near the False Sentinel which is on river left and which means you are not at the canyon yet. We exited out of the ducks on to a firm looking silt/mud bank that turned out to be near bottomless sucking mud. We finally gave up trying to stay un-muddy and crawled, slithered and cursed up the bank with our camping gear. It’ll wash off.

Susan Klimas stands next to an ocotillo cactus in front of the exit from Santa Elena Canyon. Big Bend National Park. Photo by Turner Sharp.

Bats in the Canyon day brought some more nice scenery, a long straight flat stretch with the Sentinel rock straight ahead on the Mexican side, signaling the approach of the Canyon. As we got closer to the entrance of the canyon the river bent left through a series of closely-spaced five to six easy gravel bar rapids. Once through them the dramatic entrance to the canyon was evident as the river appears to disappear in a slit in the high canyon walls on a right hand turn. Today the entrance was guarded by two great blue herons. There was another easy gravel bar rapid in this turn that amazingly enough is called Entrance Rapid. Once in the Canyon the sun was most mostly up on the canyon walls and the sky appeared as a long blue ribbon high above. The walls ranged from 1000 feet to 1500 feet further in, and they rose sheer from the river. It was noticeably cooler in the canyon than in the more open country, and with a slight upstream wind Susan soon put on a paddle jacket. The commercial outfitter told us that once they have a cold snap or two and the canyon walls get cold they usually camp at the entrance and call the Canyon the Icebox Run.

After a mile of impressive canyon we came to Landslide Rapid which is well know throughout the southwest as a nemesis to canoes. We attempted to scout river right (Mexican side) but soon determined that the scout would be much harder and more dangerous than just running the rapid. There is not much gradient and it’s more of a boulder maze than anything else and multiple lines are available even at low water. We did have some excitement when I led Susan into a dead end section on river right and she misinterpreted my bleating to mean keep coming instead get out of here and preferablely not via the 2 foot-wide chute with two right angled turns I was slowly being drawn towards. Once we got out of there we swung into the main current and I fixated on an orange object bobbing downstream of a chute. The orange object was a throw bag with rope attached to a red canoe submerged in the chute I was about to enter. Only about 6-12 inches of the canoe was above water and I was able to run right over top of it with no trouble. Susan was able to take a farther left line. About a half mile down-stream there was a lump of camping gear on a gravel bar on river left. I got out and kicked the lump to make sure there were no bodies present and then inspected the tags on two sleeping bags, blanket and two wool shirts. We left them there and wondered about the owners and decided they must have been a two boat trip and they had to leave some gear to make room for another paddler. We continued to see a garage sale of other gear downstream for the next mile or two.

We pulled into the first campsite we came to on river left which was a luscious green sand and gravel bar about 15 feet above water level and no mud at the shoreline. We made camp and soon noticed a pleasantly warm breeze blowing upstream. Apparently the canyon wall downstream of our camp gets enough sun to heat up and the afternoon winds gently delivered it to our campsite.

After dinner and near dusk we were lying on our backs looking at some ravens cartwheeling through the canyon when we noticed large numbers of birds circling overhead. At first I thought they were cliff swallows because the last sunlight seemed to show some light colors but it soon became apparent they were bats, and I mean thousands upon thousands of bats that were coming and going from a roost in a fissure in the canyon wall about half way up on the Mexican side. There were so many bats that we could plainly hear their squeaks all night long as kind of a background noise. Some advice: when lying on back admiring a swarm of bats below a bat roost keep your mouth closed. I had several direct guano hits.

Hike up Fern Canyon day — Not
The excitement for the day started in the morning as I was sitting on the miniature groover— an Eco-safe Boom Box. All of a sudden Boom—Boom—two good size chunks of rocks had peeled off the canyon wall over head and were heading my way. I actually only saw one land about 75 feet away. I think the other was mostly pulverized by the time it hit bottom.

Our plan today was to do a short hike up Fern canyon which our guide book indicated would be the second of two canyons coming in from the right about a mile below our camp. We passed what we thought was the first canyon and commented “boy that sure looks like an interesting hike.” When the second canyon did not appear, we finally reread the guide book that indicates the first canyon is really about 500’ above the river level and you may need some gear to get there. So we missed even seeing the first canyon and missed a nice hike up into Fern Canyon. In low water the local outfitters rent canoes so tourists can paddle up-river to see Fern Canyon. The last three or four miles had almost no gradient so it would be no chore. However the rock strata in this section tilts upward and I kept thinking we should be going downstream at a good speed and kept looking for horizon lines. Visually very deceiving. Soon we could see the end of the canyon and a few hikers on river left who were using a park trail that goes a short distance into the canyon. Terlingua Creek came in on river left and it had a miniscule flow for a big wide channel and our take-out was about a mile below here. Since we had missed our hike up Fern Canyon we had several hours to kill before our shuttle driver was to arrive at 2:00 PM. Some of the monotony was spent talking to a few tourists who happened to wander down to the beach and ask questions such as: where’s the Rio Grande?, where’s Mexico?, why doesn’t it look different in Mexico?.

Water levels for the trip were low but adequate for the Ducks we were using. The Lajitas visual gauge reported by the park service was 4.2’ at put-in and 4.0’ at take-out time. The park service reports six visual gauges on the Rio Grande every morning in their daily report. They are, in downstream order, Presidio, Lajitas, Costolon, Johnson’s Ranch , Rio Grande Village, and Dryden. They can be accessed via www.nps.gov/bibe/dailyreport/index.htm. The American Whitewater river page uses a USGS gauge (pipeline crossing at Laredo, Texas) as a link for water conditions. However this gauge is apparently below a downstream dam and many miles below any of the canyons of the Big Bend area, and is not useful to boaters.

We spent several additional very enjoyable days in Big Bend National Park. This 801,000 acre park has plenty to see. We camped one night in the spectacular Chisos Basin in the Chisos mountains and did several hikes including the Window trail and Lost Mine Trail. A small herd of javelina strolled through our camp site at dusk. A miniature subspecies of White Tail Deer are also ubiquitous. They are called Carmen Mountain Deer and are about 2/3 the size of our eastern whitetails. They are only found in the US in this area but more common in Mexico. They stay in the higher elevations which go almost to 8,000 feet while the Mule Deer stay lower in the desert areas. We spent 2 nights in the Cottonwood campground at Castolon. The first night there we had a herd of 19 javelinas come through looking for dinner, and two Rio Grande camp turkeys that roosted in the cottonwoods. None of the campgrounds filled up while we were there; on the second night at the Cottonwood campground only 3 of 31 sites were in use. This area is a hotspot for birders working on their life lists. Several times complete strangers would stop and ask if we had seen any “good “ birds today.