Our strategy is to play it safe and make it thru the section without water in the boat. Our first big challenge is the Rio Vista dam. Many of the racers will run this dam thru the channels with ease. Our fear is that we will tip after the first drop and be stuck attempting to get water out of a fully loaded canoe. We are choosing to portage all three sections of the dam and put our boat safely in under the bridge. The portage has a very easy walk way and ends on a concrete dam allowing us to quickly get back in the canoe and continue paddling.
This section of the river has a lot of low hanging branches and strainers in it. We did not encounter any complete log jams, but we did have a few tricky areas where exact draws and ruttering were necessary to avoid the obstacles. Our next portage was around Thompson island. At this point in the river you have the option to follow the channel to the left and take a longer portage or stop river right and get out on the concrete barrier. We chose to go river right which works well in a short boat and would not be a good move in one of the longer 6 man canoes.
It is an easy portage and the river is moving well below the obstacle but it does have quite a few tricky corners and low hanging branches to avoid. At 4 miles we were reminded why people get confused at the intersection of the Blanco river and the San Marcos river. The wind can make it look as though the Blanco river is the downstream route. We continued to the right and picked up our pace in this open section of the river. The final obstacle is the Cummins dam where you have the option to lower the boat using ropes or walk the boat around the dam. Again we choose to walk the boat for fear of dropping the canoe or losing things out of the boat. The quick trip to San Marcos turned out good and we are planning to repeat this section Saturday morning and continue further downstream.
So I missed myself in this shot and got a lovely image of Joy :)
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