[Paddlewise] Trip report: Trinity River, Texas

In my never ending pursuit of more pleasant places to paddle, I decided
that the Trinity River from just below Lake Livingston dam had some good
potential.  Joel Venable, very knowledgeable of the Trinity, assured me
the upper stretches were very pretty and had beautiful big sand bars
(confirmed by images from Google earth).  It didn't take much more than
that, plus the ever willing-to-explore Marilyn, to get up a trip on
Sunday, October 1.  We also knew from the maps that it was about 10
miles downstream to the boat ramp at I-59 near Goodrich.
 
Browder's Marina, right up at the base of the dam, owns two prime
launching sites on both banks of the Trinity;  for $3.50 each we got a
pass for the car and water access, and by 10 a.m. were pushing back into
the quiet waters of the Trinity.  Marilyn paddled upstream from the
putin to take a closer look at the dam, and to check out the white
specks that indeed turned out to be the biggest congregation of white
wading birds I've ever seen.  There was quite a floating flock of
fishers as well.
 
The first huge sandbar on the river looked a lot more this day like an
eroded sandbar with just the pebbles and gravel underpinnings left.  My
guess is the heavy flows from hurricane Rita a year ago scoured off the
finer sediments;  to my eyes, the trees looked a bit bare too, and I'm
guessing that also was hurricane damage.  None of the sandbars looked as
pristine as apparently they did from the air some years ago, but still
plenty of space for camping or frolicking about.
 
Great blue herons, and spotted sandpipers were numerous;  as were ducks
of both the wood and blue-winged teal variety.  Kingfishers were about
too, and snowy and American egrets.  This is a beautiful float - with a
little extra effort in the sea kayaks we made the 10 miles in about 3
and a half hours.  As Joel had warned me, there are numerous snags in
the river.  The most unusual hazard was at the end - can't imagine what
kind of a structure perched on these iron pipes that stick up 20' into
the air.  Ever the curious one, I managed to get myself hung up on a
branch that was between two of the poles - then almost topped that
near-disaster with pinning myself not once, but twice on additional
poles/pipes as I got too intrigued taking pictures of people wading the
tributary opposite.  It's the closest I've come to having to do a
camera-assisted hands roll, as the paddle was riding on my lap.  That
would have been the cause of way too much merriment from Marilyn -
thankfully my old whitewater reflexes still work.
 
The other wonderful bird sighting was a bald eagle, right down at the
edge of the water a half mile from the takeout.  This is a lovely
stretch of water - I'll paddle it again, but will also check out lower
stretches until I get to the more familiar area around I-10 much farther
downstream.
 
Marilyn chronicled the trip quite nicely at her Webshots site:
http://community.webshots.com/user/mkircus and request "most recent".
 
Natalie Wiest
Galveston, Texas
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