Big Bend Ranch State Park - DIY Colorado Canyon Kayak Tour
I am a big fan of Big Bend. We have first visited it in 1998 and many times since then. We have kayaked through Colorado Canyon, Santa Elena Canyon and Mariscal Canyon two decades ago before we had our children.
My older son gave me a father's day gift to spend the weekend with me in Big Bend. We decided to paddle the Colorado Canyon on our first day, hike the Mesa De Anguila the next day and then head home the same evening.
We have our own sit on top hardshell kayaks, two of them fit on top our SUV and we threw in our two MTBs to provide our own transportation back to our car. We stayed in the El Dorado Hotel in Ghost Town Terlingua a two star little motel. It was surprisingly quiet even on the 4th of July weekend, so we got our well needed rest.
Here are a couple of pics about and from the hotel:
This was our plan for 23 miles of paddling:
Put in: Arenosa Campground
Take out: Lajitas River Access
The most important thing was water levels, so I paid close attention to the USGS measures upstream and downstream from the Colorado Canyon.
It got a little tricky to know the flow levels for our section, because of the significant distance from the measurement points. I did my own math, I estimated that the water takes about a day to reach Arenosa Campground from Castolon. In another words the day before measurements at Castolon were the approximate water levels we should have. This was 460 cf/sec which is a pretty good flow. After our trip, next morning, when we were picking up our kayaks we ran into a couple putting in for the Santa Elena Canyon. The young man turned out to be a national park employee very familiar with river trips. He stated that he has floated the Santa Elena Canyon at 12 cf/sec, which in my measure is barely any water and at those levels I would not attempt any water trips. He said that they pulled the boats a lot and took them two days to complete the 19 miles. We are from San Antonio and we have kayaked the Guadalupe river many times at 90 cf/s water levels, that was our benchmark. The river was relatively fast, it gave us good speed and we never had to get out to pull our sit on top kayaks.
Our logistics was to drop off our bikes at the Lajitas River Access (we tied/locked the bikes to a tree), drive up to Arenosa Camp Grounds (our put in place), leave our SUV at the campground and bike back to it after our paddling. It took us 7.5 hours to complete the 23 miles of kayaking including about an hour of stops for food and pictures. We paddled comfortably most of the time, but never pushed or raced, we were soaking the breathtaking views in.
Here are a couple of pics from the river:
One of the side attractions we did was Closed Canyon. We were able to hike into it from the river side with ease. This is how it looked like from inside:
Check out the 360 view inside the canyon I loaded up to Google Map. Here is the 360 just outside of it.
Our 23 mile bike trip back took 3 hours including stops for pictures and several times pushing the bikes uphill. Yes, the road had many difficult inclines, but we knew that from our planning.
It was strenuous but rewarding to ride back to our car. The view from the road is spectacular throughout but nothing beats Fandango Dom Rock. Especially, if you take the 5 min to climb up to the top of it and get the 360 view... It is hard to think something more pictures than the way the Rio Grande cuts through the Chihuahua mountains. Here are some of the highlights:
Here are two more 360s worth looking, one from bottom of Fandango Dom Rock and the other from the top of it.
If there is interest I can post a few short videos I have recorded throughout the trip...
Our water consumption in relative terms was much less during the river section, about 2 L/person and then close to 3 L/person on the bike trip. We got close to consuming 5 L/person water supply we brought with us. We took 4 sandwitches, fruits and veggies per person with us for the day which we all ate.
We had a dry bag with our backpacks in it per person in our kayaks, that was all we took with us. The backpacks had our food, water, emergency kit, flashlights, repair kit for the bikes, sunscreen, battery banks, wallets and keys. Since the road more or less follows the river, in case of an emergency, our plan was to hike up to the road and flag down a motorist.
There are a few other take out points before Lajitas, so depending on appetite or strength of the group this trip can be made anywhere from a 11 to our 23 miles paddling excursion or even longer starting farther upstream. The temperature did climb up to 100 F, but the river made it easily to cool off by splashing water on us or swimming in it. Most of the time my paddle touched the bottom of the river even at these flow rates, so when my son fell out of the kayak once he just walked/swem (the muddy bottom made it a little difficult for him) up to me in the middle of the river to get back on his boat.
It is important to note that there is absolutely no shade on the river and the thick vegetation, mainly bamboo and muddy banks make it hard to make a stop on a dime. The river itself is always full of sediments and mud, not even a foot you can see in these waters.
Last thoughts on our physical shape. I am 50, my son is 19 and we are in decent shape, we work out regularly and we are fairly experienced outdoors explorers.
If you don't have your own kayaks or bikes, there are several outfitters you can buy equipment and transportation from. Check out the National Park Services web site.
The trip surpassed all our expectations, the view throughout was spectacular, it is hard to describe it with words. We have not seen other people on the river at all the whole terrain was enchanted and thrilling, all to ourselves.
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