Zedler Mill to Palmetto

Another Perfect day on the water!
Joy and I have used this mantra almost every day that we have paddled for the last 7 years. It is our belief that any day on the water is a perfect day and it always beats being stuck in traffic on Mopac on a Wednesday evening. Saturday morning was another perfect day on the water. We put in at Zedler Mill just above the dam and started our paddle with the portage around the right side of the dam. We decided to start here to practice carrying a loaded boat over the rough rocks. We managed the portage with no problem and immediately jumped into the rhythm of our paddle with tunes coming from my new waterproof ipod speaker system. It was great having the music to paddle by on this trek. I was battling a cold all week and talking would take extra energy so it was nice to have the music in the background. We experienced the portages for Zedler Mill and Ottine Dams and had absolutely beautiful weather on this paddle. The total trip was about 15 miles and we did it in just about 4 hours.

Our average pace was around 4.5 miles on this stretch of the water. We experienced nice rapids and practiced a lot of navigation around trees and branches. We were quite excited with how well we were controlling the boat and we are starting to understand what we need to do to make quick turns and avoid obstacles. This stretch of the water has one of the most dangerous obstacles on the Texas Water Safari... the Ottine Dam. The dam sneaks up on you as you come around a right hand corner. There is no warning sign and if you are not careful you will find yourself on top of about a 15 foot drop.

The portage is to the left and we learned there are two routes available for the portage. The low route takes you past old dam equipment and down the side of the dam with a lot of loose rocks. This is a shorter portage but a lot steeper. The second route goes up the side of the hill, under metal wires and down a dirt trail to the water. We chose this route and found we could rest the boat on the ground and inch it along without any problems and with very little effort. We came across two other paddlers at the portage and they said they normally go down the dam side. After we left they followed in our footsteps and found the dirt path a lot easier to navigate. They caught up to us right before the Palmetto bridge and helped us understand the easiest way to get out of the water at the bridge. About 15 feet from the bridge the bow paddler jumps out of the boat and then the stern follows. The water is only about 2.5 feet deep and it is easier to control the boat if you keep it pointing straight at the bridge. Putting the nose of the boat on the brace of the bridge I jumped up and helped pull the front of the boat onto the bridge. Joy followed and we safely and quickly had our boat over the obstacle. We only encountered one log jam on this section and it was an easy one to navigate over.