Pecos River Canoe Trip

[JohnRich 4]

It's time for me to post some more of my outdoor adventure photos. This canoe trip was just a few weeks ago, covering about 55 miles of the Pecos River through remote desert in southwest Texas, over 7 days. Along the way were a lot of side canyon hikes to ancient Indian caves containing pictographs.

The pictures start at the put-in location - a remote bridge crossing. The next road crossing is 55 miles away downstream, and will be our take-out point seven days later. In between these two points is just a whole bunch of glorious nothing!

1) How did they get FOUR boats on top of ONE vehicle? Creative rope-tying!

2) Unloading the boats from the vehicles.

3) The boats are at the waterline, and are being packed with seven days of provisions. You didn't forget the toilet paper, did you?

4) Louis (left), the expedition leader and author of Texas river guidebooks, is ready to go.

More to come...

[JohnRich 4]

1) Group photo. 12 people in 11 boats - two going tandem. They include: a firefighter, city bureaucrat, English teacher, NASA engineer, computer geek, businessman, Canadian railroad man, and a librarian. I'm the big lug in the front row, on the left.

2) We're off! Into the water.

3) Cliff scenery. The canyon here isn't very deep, but it's still plenty scenic, and there are no signs of any other humans anywhere. Notice that Ken in the red canoe doesn't have much "freeboard" - the distance between the waterline and the top edge of his canoe. That caused him to get swamped quite a bit in rapids, with his boat filling up with water.

4) Linda, normally a kayaker, this is her first time in a canoe, and a borrowed one at that. She had difficulty too. She also brought along her little toy poodle, which didn't help. It liked to perch on top of the bow, and would then get knocked off in rapids, and would have to be rescued. Next time, leave the dog home! It finally learned that the new command; "rapids" meant; "get down in the bottom of the boat". I figured the dog would disappear in the middle of the night in the mouth of a hungry mountain lion. And we did find lion tracks around camp one day. But it survived.

More to follow.

[jdthomas 0]

the amazing adventuers of John Rich cont.....very nice!

www.greenboxphotography.com

[shropshire 0]

As usual, I enjoy reading your adventures and especially seeing the wonderful places that you visit. Nice one Sir

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[piratemike 0]

Wow.

That would be a great trip.

Great scenery.

Trips like this one are usually a lot of fun.

[JohnRich 4]

1) Lunch break: pull up to a small rock ledge, and break out your snack.

2) One of the few signs of man's intrusion into this wilderness: a very neat house atop a very neat hill, overlooking the river.

3) Pulling over to a gravel bar for a break from paddling.

4) Monarch butterflies take their own break from their southward winter migration, on a small sand bar alongside the river. There were millions of these orange butterflies swirling in the trees nearly everywhere we went. It was a spectacular display.

[JohnRich 4]

How about something a little more exciting? There were rapids about every quarter-mile, which provided constant fun. They were mostly only level 1 and 2 stuff; not dangerous, but just enough to challenge your skills. You could hear the roaring water up ahead before you could see it, providing for great anticipation.

1) 78-year old WWII vet Dana charges through some small stuff.

2) Linda gets turned sideways and hung-up on a rock.

3) Natalie, by day is a mild meek librarian. On weekends she jumps into her canoe and becomes an outdoors superwoman.

4) Christy looks for a way to negotiate around all the protruding rocks.

[JohnRich 4]

1) Can you find an owl in this photo?

2) There he is!

3) Done for the day. Pull the boats up on shore, unpack, and set up camp. Some people turn their boats upside down overnight, so that if it rains, they won't fill up with water, that would then have to be bailed out.

4) Setting up camp. The site is a rock ledge just a few inches above water. The camp chairs and tables are strewn around. Tents were set up back in the grassy area.

The land on both riverbanks is private property of large ranches, so you can't get too far from the river without creating potential trespassing problems. However, Texas law says that any navigable river is public property inside the normal high-water points. So if you stay close to the water's edge, you're legal.

And the people who bother to come this far out in the wilderness, are usually conscientious enough to pack out all their trash and leave nothing behind, respecting the private land.

[davedlg 0]

Wow, that's beautiful. Being a boater from Colorado, I really hadn't ever considered that there could be 'decent' rivers in Texas for a multiday river trip. After seeing a few of these threads you've posted, I'm thinking I should go visit a few of these places. I'm really impressed.

Someday I'll put up a thread with some of my rafting pictures from the Grand Canyon, the Yampa River, or the middle fork of the Salmon River.

[JohnRich 4]

One more set of photos to end Day 1 on the river.

1) Justin was a minimalist camper. I packed about 8 gallons of fresh water, 40+ lbs. worth, for the trip for cooking, drinking, washing my face, etc. Justin brought along a filter pump, and refilled his water bags from the river every evening, to last him through the next day.

2) The kitchen is up and running, and dinner is being prepared. Three men work, while one woman watches and chats.

3) Camp on a rock ledge is an amazing disarray of colorful canoes, chairs, tables, tents and sleeping gear.

4) Jeff has an interesting setup with a cot and a bivy shelter to keep the rain and bugs out. With a cot, you don't have to worry about hard, rocky uneven ground.

5) Dinner is done, the dishes are washed, and it's time to relax around the campfire and chat. Firewood is scarce out here in the desert. So every time you pull over somewhere to rest during the day, you scrounge for dead wood, throw it in the canoe, and bring it along with you for the evening campfire.

One day done. Six more to go. That's the pattern which will follow for the next week: Break camp, pack boats, hit the river, paddle for most of the day, pull out of the water, unpack boats, make camp. And so it goes.

[jdthomas 0]

I like it..

I like the minimalist idea of packing in the water filter.

Cool stuff.

Joe

www.greenboxphotography.com

[ifall 0]

I love my PUR!!!

Thanks for the nice pics. Looks like the start of a great trip!!! Keep 'em coming!

[JohnRich 4]

Quote

I like the minimalist idea of packing in the water filter.

He did say that the water "tasted funny". But it didn't make him sick. The filters aren't perfect, either - they can still allow some dangerous stuff to get through. So even after it's filtered, you put a few drops of bleach in the water to kill whatever microbes that got through the filter. And that's kind of yucky.

In addition, those little pumps don't handle much volume. To produce a gallon of filtered water, you have to pump for about 15 minutes or longer, so it's time-consuming too. When everyone else was done with their chores, he would be down by the water pumping away...

He only has to do all this because he traveled in a tiny little kayak, and didn't have room for bulky stuff. My canoe is nearly 16-feet long and has a capacity of 1,100 lbs. So a bunch of water jugs isn't a big deal for me.

However, that weight has to be pushed around while paddling, and the heavier you are, the less maneuverability you have when you need it in rapids. So I tend to take the straightest course through the rocks that doesn't require fast, sharp turns. And if I crash into a few small rocks along the way, so be it.

I was one of only a very few people on this trip that didn't turn their canoe over at some point. I don't think that's due to any great skill on my part - more like pure dumb luck, and a really tough canoe.

I was only in trouble once, when I got turned sideways in a rapid, and slid up sideways on a rock, which tilted the upstream edge of the canoe downward, allowing the water to wash inside over the top. I very quickly managed to get myself loose, but not before about 50-gallons of water had poured inside. So now I had an extra 400 lbs. of weight inside, and still needed to maneuver through the remainder of the rapids. It wasn't pretty, but I made it. And then I bailed for quite a while to empty out the water.

[davedlg 0]

For our big trips we use a katadyn expedition water filter. The key to making the water filter work fast, keep it from clogging and stay efficient is settling the water for at least an hour before pumping, then decanting the top layer off and filtering that. If the water is very muddy, we mix some Alum into the bucket before settling the water. This has the added benefit of removing a lot of nasty stuff with it, since a lot of bacteria and viruses like to attach themselves to sand and silt particles. After pumping the water we put 5 drops of chlorox per gallon in and let it sit for an hour before drinking. This is basically a miniature version of the same process that most municipal drinking water plants use to purify their water.

As for the funny taste, that's usually due to the cholrox. If you add a bit too much, it can be really overwhelming to taste (but still safe). Mixing the water with lemonade, gatorade, or the like usually covers up the taste.

There is also a new solar powered water filter that I've heard good things about....you just sit the solar panels on the raft, put the intake hose in the water, and let it pump all day while you are on the river and you're good to go. I want to get my hands on one of those.

[JohnRich 4]

Day 2. Up for breakfast in the dark. Pack boats at sunrise, and hit the water.

1) Me and my boat, packed to the gills.

Today we start taking the time to visit ancient Indian caves, many of which contain pictographs (paintings) on the rock walls. Most of these "caves" are actually just cliff overhangs, which were used for shelter from the sun, rain and wind.

2) An unnamed cave two-thirds of the way up a cliff. A tough climb to get up there, and much of it hindered by hideous thorns. The actual opening is obscured by brush at the edge.

3) At the entrance. Me on the left in blue shirt.

4) From inside the cave, looking out.

This cave had been excavated, with holes dug inside looking for artifacts, and rock debris strewn around everywhere. There was even a shaker/strainer thing inside that archaeologists use to sift dirt. No pictographs at this site, but the ceiling was darkened from soot, indicating fire, and occupation.

The Indians is this area went back as long as 15,000 years ago.

[JohnRich 4]

1) Louis negotiates a narrow channel through river cane. Often these little side channels were the best option to avoid rock fields in the middle of the river. Brushing up against the cane would produce a shower of icky spiders that rained down on top of you. Ack!

2) Ken's boat is swamped two-thirds full of water, from running a rapid.

3) Ken pulls out his collapsible bucket and starts bailing water out of the boat.

4) We found a fresh-water spring coming out the rock alongside the river, and stopped to fill up some water bottles. Here, Richard captures the fresh water in a bailing bucket...

5) ...and pours it into a water jug.

[ryoder 1,401]

When ever I hear "Pecos River" and any mention of watercraft I'm reminded of a story I got from a local when I lived in Ft Worth:

He and his buddy were drifting down the Pecos drink....errr...FISHing. As they passed under an overhanging tree, they heard a loud "Plop!". Both looked toward the middle of the boat and...a half second later the rattlesnake had the whole boat (and a case of beer), all to himself.

"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

[JohnRich 4]

Finally, an Indian cave containing pictographs! The first of many. This one was located in Oso Canyon, but contains only a few picto's. These paintings are aged as old as 4,000 years ago. Even Sherwin-Williams paints today can't beat that longevity.

1) The "cave". This one was not really suitable for occupation, but it had a nice rock wall good for painting, and the Indians recognized that to preserve their works, they needed an overhang for protection from rain. You can see the rock around the cave is weathered gray, while inside the overhang the rock is still its natural color.

2) Animal pictographs on the ceiling. The archaeologists call this "polychrome", which simply means it was painted with more than one color.

3) A human figure?

4) Whatzit? No one has any idea what many of these images represent, because there was no written language, and the culture was lost before any modern man could record it. All we have is speculation. Furthermore, the Indians would imbibe jimsonweed, a powerful hallucinogenic plant, in order to see the "spirit world", and many of the paintings may be things they saw while in this altered state.

Some of these images are very faded, so I have enhanced the colors a bit with photo editing software to make them stand out better.

More to come tomorrow.

[JohnRich 4]

The monarch butterflies were migrating south for winter by the thousands, and were swirling in the air nearly everywhere we went. This is only the 2nd time I've witnessed this spectacle of nature, and I felt privileged to see it.

1) Close-up.

2) Sucking up nectar.

3) Swirling amidst the trees.

4) Filling the sky.

They're difficult little buggers to get a good photo of - always flitting about, and never sitting still long enough to get a good shot.

[JohnRich 4]

1) Tiny red bulbs on cactus.

2) Delicate bird nest amidst wicked thorns.

3) Dramatic scenery of campsite, day 2, spread out on a slab of rock just a few inches above water level.

4) A band of semi-wild horses came trotting through camp near sunset, seemingly upset that we were intruding upon their territory.

[JohnRich 4]

On the cliff behind the Day 2 campsite, there was a small overhang, and inside, I found these Indian pictographs.

1) Overall view. They can be a bit hard to make out, because of the shadows of shrubbery intruding upon the rock surface. From left to right: man on horseback with spear, buffalo?, another man on horseback with spear, and an Indian.

The men on horseback would be Spaniards, which introduced the horse to North America. This would date these images at no earlier than the 1600's. And of course, the sighting of these men, marked the beginning of the end for the Indian culture.

This pictures may have been a way of describing what one Indian had seen in his travels, to others back at home who had not yet witnessed such things.

2) Close up of Spaniard on horseback. It has good detail, with reins and stirrups. It reminds me of Don Quixote, slumping forward in the saddle, with the hat. Notice that there is something spewing forth from the mouth of the horse - this may have been a way of representing the sound of the "neigh" made by the horse. And why was the spear given such bold emphasis?

[JohnRich 4]

Day 3, back on the river.

1) Ken gets stuck and swamped in rapids. Others come to his assistance to free and empty his boat. A canoe full of water weighs a ton, and a half-dozen men may not be able to move it. So you try and tip it on its side to pour the water out. If that doesn't work, then there are special pullies hooked to giant carabiners which you can clip to the boat, and thread a rope through them, to get compound leverage to pull the boat loose. We only had to use that kind of rigging once. I need to buy myself one of those for my canoe kit...

2) He decides to walk it down the rest of the way. This is called "lining", which means you hold onto the bow and stern lines and let the boat float down empty, guiding it by playing the ropes in and out.

3) Bill signals for everyone to "hold up", because Linda is stuck in the middle of the channel in the rapids. If you try and come through right now, you'll just whack her with great force. We would space ourselves out so that we had adequate separation going through, one at a time, by bunching up at the top of the rapids, and taking turns. Usually.

4) Introducing: "the flutes". This was a shallow section of river, that seemed like it was 1,000-yards long. The name comes from the fluted shape of the river bottom, with longitudinal grooves. That's "fluted" in the architectural sense, like fluted columns. It was too shallow to paddle, and we had to walk over this uneven surface, pulling our boats behind us. The trick was to line the canoe up over top of one of those grooves, and it was just enough water to keep the boat from dragging bottom. But then the groove would end, and you would have to drag the boat over to another wide, deep groove, to continue. This was really hard work! As the old canoe saying goes; "Don't bring along anything you're not willing to portage (carry)".

Note that the canoe on the left has a fancy air bag, which you can inflate over top of all your packed goods, to seal out water from coming aboard in that area. And instead of a regular seat, both of these boats have a big hunk of foam which you kneel astride, for keeping your center of gravity low in rapids.

[masterrig 1]

Pretty cool, John! With all the rain we had a month or so ago, you probably could've canoed from just outside Pecos all the way to the High Bridge! I haven't seen as much water in the Pecos as I have recently. You really got some great pictures.


Chuck

[JohnRich 4]

Quote

Pretty cool, John! With all the rain we had a month or so ago, you probably could've canoed from just outside Pecos all the way to the High Bridge! I haven't seen as much water in the Pecos as I have recently. You really got some great pictures.

Yes, the water level is often lower, which leads to a lot of dragging of boats across rock. We had it pretty good with the water level, and the weather was absolutely perfect too, with lows/highs running 70/85, and no rain. It couldn't have been any better.

Next up, another Indian cave (shelter) dubbed "piggy panther", for one of the unique pictographs found inside, which you'll see in a moment.

1) The shelter site. The pictographs are on the wall underneath the lower overhang.

2) View from inside the shelter looking back down at the Pecos River canyon.

3) Here is the pictograph that gives the site it's unofficial name of "piggy panther". It's supposed to be a panther, but it looks a lot like a pig. Why do you suppose the Indian painted it half-black and half-white? Would that represent life & death? The physical being and the spiritual being? The transition from physical life to death and a spiritual afterlife?

4) Human figures with spears, arrows and atlatls (spear-throwing sticks). Three colors; black, red and the rare yellow. Do the horizontal figures represent foes slain in battle with these weapons? Would the figure in red and yellow be a chief, compared to more common figures in black with red outline?

5) A faint bird?

[Shotgun 1]

Nice!
But I'm going sailing today, so I'll get over it.

Thanks for sharing, John.