Pecos River Canoe Trip

[masterrig 1]

It's been years, since I've seen 'rapids' on the Pecos. Sounds like y'all had a blast. Thanks for sharing!


Chuck

[JohnRich 4]

More pictographs from the piggy panther site.

1) Odd stuff. Your guess is as good as mine.

2) More odd stuff. Very elaborate. And hairy. Gosh, I would sure love to know what this meant.

3) Casper the ghost on the left. Whatzit in black on the right?

4) Shooting stars approaching the mountaintops?

5) Horizontal lines and two circles. Whatzit?

This was an excellent site with a lot of pictographs in it. And very few people have ever seen it. The only way the public can view this is to take a 7-day canoe trip, or get permission from the rancher to cross his land on the mesa up above.

[JohnRich 4]

1) Rest break.

2) Dramatic river cliffs.

3) Can you spot the goats on the side of the cliff?

4) There they are!

[JohnRich 4]

Another Indian cave, at Harkell Canyon.

1) Typical cliff overhang, dirt floor, pictographs on wall.

2) Hand print.

3) Piggy-back?

4) A family of four.

5) Space man!

[JohnRich 4]

Day 4.

1) Loading boats in early morning, scenic.

2) On the water, under limestone cliffs.

Next Indian cave, at Camp Canyon.

3) A faint pair of Indians. They don't usually show bent elbow joints like this.

4) A monkey-man swinging through the trees!

5) A flying shaman! What are those four feathery things sticking out of him?

[JohnRich 4]

1) Natalie, the librarian, in her purple canoe. Look how clear that water is.

2) Me, coming through a small rapid. Look out for that hidden rock right in front of you, at 1-o'clock!

3) Phew! Made it!

4) The next side canyon had an Indian cave dubbed "The electric shaman", for reasons which will become clear in the next set of photos. The problem was, however, that there was this logjam of dead river cane blocking the entrance. Everyone wanted to just give up and continue down river. But Justin and I weren't ready to bypass an Indian pictograph site that easy. So we paddled in like an ice-breaker, and starting chopping away at the cane with our paddles to make a channel. That didn't work too well, so I laid down over my bow, reached down into the water and cane with one hand on each side, and started pulling it up and throwing it off to the sides. After about 10 minutes of this, we had a channel to get through into the canyon. And then we were off to see the cave...

[JohnRich 4]

The electric shaman cave. There were very few pictographs here, but one very neat one.

1) The painting for whom the cave was named.

2) A very faint figure. Whatzit?

3) A non-descript red blob. Whatzit?

[JohnRich 4]

Lewis Canyon, our campsite for the end of Day 4.

1) We make camp on that rock ledge, just above the beautiful blue water. Atop the mesa to the left are many wondrous petroglyphs chiseled in stone by ancient Indians in the flat limestone rock. This is my third time to see this petroglyphs, but first time arriving by water. I even did a four-day archeological dig here as a volunteer, where we uncovered some new images, thousands of years old, that no modern man had ever seen before.

2) A snake, deer tracks and an atlatl (spear-throwing stick). The tan color of this rock indicates it was part of the section we recently uncovered. Once it weathers from exposure, it turns gray.

3) There are literally thousands of images like this here, crammed into half a dozen acres of limestone.

4) Whatzit?

5) My personal favorite. This photo isn't real clear, but you have a dashed line, a series of bear tracks, surrounded by atlatls, and a set of wavy parallel lines. The interpretation is that this is the story of a bear hunt, tracked over great distance (dashed line trail), and across the river (wavy lines representing water), and hunted with spears thrown with atlatls. I like to envision the story being told here by an elder, surrounded by little wide-eyed children, listening in rapt awe.

[JohnRich 4]

More petroglyphs.

1) Turkey tracks.

2) The site also contains hundreds of mysterious geometric images, like this one, whose meaning is unknown, and can't even be guessed.

3) Mystery...

[JohnRich 4]

At the edge of the mesa is a pour-off - a notch in the cliff where water drains over the side, creating a waterfall during rain storms. Underneath the pour-off is a tinaja - that's a Spanish word for a stone basin filled with water. Tinaja's are important sources for water in the desert, where rainfall doesn't come often. And on the walls alongside this tinaja, were some pictographs.

1) The pour-off.

2) The tinaja. It looked quite deep, and I wanted to go get a rope, tie a rock to the end, and toss it in to measure the depth. But it was a lot of work getting here, and I didn't have the energy to do it twice.

3) A lot of images have fingers of exaggerated length, like this one, and are referred to as "lizard men". What's that stuff sticking out of his head?

Back in camp.

4) Louis prepares to cook dinner.

5) Dinner is served. Time to eat and relax. People band together in groups of about four for meals, and take turns cooking. Those who don't cook, do dishes. Meals are a little more efficient this way, and more fun, instead of having everyone do their own one-man thing.

[JohnRich 4]

The number of views is dwindling. I'll try and wrap it up without too many more pictures.

Day 5.

1) Mark and Richard decide to walk their canoe through this rapid, instead of trying to run it. Richard was a new paddler, and they weren't coordinating the front-end and back-end together very well.

2) This rapid was so rocky and shallow that ALL the canoes got stuck trying to pass through. It was like a rush hour traffic jam. Only the smarty-pants in the tiny little kayak made it through.

3) Donna roars through, while spectators snap action photos.

4) Oops, Christy doesn't make it right-side up. It's fun to hang out on the downside of the rapids and catch all the loose gear that floats by from people that turn over: paddles, water bottles, hats, the dog...

[JohnRich 4]

1) This was the one Class IV rapid we encountered. We pulled over at the top of the rapid and unloaded our camping gear, as we spent the night on the rock ledge on the left. Then with our boats light and maneuverable, we worked them through the rapids and parked them for the night on the downstream end. Only three people chose to run this stretch, and the rest of us "lined" our boats through. It sure looks rather calm from this view, but down there inside it, it was nasty and powerful.

2) Donna and Justin go for it, while Donna "lines" her boat, using the bow and stern lines to walk it downstream, steering around rocks by pulling on or letting out the lines.

3) Here is what happens to old-fashioned aluminum boats that try and navigate these rapids - they get mangled into junk.

4) You know you're close to Painted Canyon when you see the giant monkey face in the rocky cliff on the right. Why is it called "Painted Canyon"? Because there's more Indian pictographs to be seen!

[JohnRich 4]

1) Boats floating in a cove. There were limited places to tie-up on the rocky shore, so a couple of people grabbed those spots, and then everyone else tied up to those boats, in a big chain. That keeps them from floating away while we do stuff on shore. I like this photo, because of the crystal clear water - it looks like the boats are sitting on a piece of green glass in mid-air, like one of those Star Wars vehicles, with nothing underneath them.

2) The boats are parked for the night in a jumble, tied up to rocks, and each other.

3) Justin, the minimalist with the tiny kayak, with all his meager gear laid out.

4) Mountain lion tracks in sand, which were found both upstream and downstream from our campsite. Sleep well tonight! Don't let the dog get loose...

[jdthomas 0]

still like the idea of the minimalist kayaking.. but fun both ways.
I just purcahsed a few new dry sacks that double as back packs, very cool stuff.
I can't wait to get a trip going this spring, won't be able to do a week long one, but at least two days on the water.

www.greenboxphotography.com

[JohnRich 4]

Quote

still like the idea of the minimalist kayaking.. but fun both ways. I just purcahsed a few new dry sacks that double as back packs, very cool stuff.

Minimalist is nice, but it can also be uncomfortable. He didn't have the luxury of a nice sleeping pad, or fancy food and drink. He was eyeballing my fresh eggs every morning with great envy...

Day 6.

There were four Indian caves in the Painted Canyon area. The first two were small shelters on the cliff overlooking the Pecos River, and the other two were up the side canyon. We stayed off the water this day, and spent all day exploring the caves and canyon on foot.

Cave 1.

1) This is a very strange Indian painting. I've visited about 20 Indian caves in this region, and some images are similar in many locations. But this one was completely unique. It reminds me of a fence.

The other images at this location were very faint.

Cave 2. Also very faint images.

2) A sample of the faint images. Reminds me of a fish skeleton.

3) A man holding a very long snake over his head?

My camera memory chip filled up on my here, and I did not have my spares with me. So I had to get these photos from others, after the trip. None of them got pictures of what the actual caves looked like, as I do. Darned amateurs...

[JohnRich 4]

Cave 3. This one was dubbed "The Flying Black Shaman Cave", for a pictograph which I'll show shortly.

1) The cave itself, just a thin slit in the cliff. That slit is actually about 15-feet high, giving you some idea of the scale of this canyon wall. So you are probably asking; "How did you get up there?" Well, yeah, that was tricky, and a bit of work.

2) Inside the slit cave. It was quite rich with paintings all along the width of the back wall, which you can see on the right side of this photo.

3) The so-called "flying black shaman". Most of the shamans, or human figures, are painted standing up vertical. So this one seems to be flying along like superman, and the parallel horizontal lines give it the perception of speed. Or is it a turkey with tiny wings and big tail?

4) Boo!

5) Man with furry shawl on outstretched arms, with several decorations of some type dangling down.

[JohnRich 4]

Cave 3, continued.

1) A double-decker line-up of human figures.

2) Red outline, black head, yellow body, and polka-dots!

3) A man with red and black stripes, carrying a torch in each hand?

Chunks of paintings are sometimes missing where pieces of rock have flaked off.

[JohnRich 4]

Cave 4: Painted Cave

This site was about 1.5 miles up a canyon, and the canyon floor was full of large boulders and thorn bushes. It was tough scrambling to get there, but we did it. It has an overhang that is about 150 yards wide, jam-packed with paintings.

1) The overhang.

2) Mortar holes, where the Indians would have ground and mixed their pigments in a concave depression in the rock.

3) A sharpening stone, where the Indians sharpened stick and bone tools by rubbing them in grooves in the rock.

4) Pictograph.

5) Strange.

[JohnRich 4]

More pictographs.

1) This one intrigued everyone: a black and red ball, containing four animals inside.

2) Human figure with up-stretched arms.

3) Hand print. They would suck up paint in a reed, like a straw, place their hand on the wall, then spray the paint out around their hand.

4) The really big mystery image. Whatzit?

5) The image on top looks like a beaver. But why is he sitting on top of railroad tracks? Or maybe it's a long-neck bird with a large beak?

[JohnRich 4]

Wrapping up Painted Canyon.

1) Many of the boulders contained fossils, like these, from ancient sea life when Texas was part of the Gulf of Mexico.

2) Small skull. Can anyone I.D. this?

3) Lower jaw bone. Nice incisors. Deer?

4) Tiny little snake. What kind?

5) I love the shapes and contours of rock shaped by water.

[JohnRich 4]

Back from the hike up the canyon.

1) The ice is long gone from the coolers at this point. So if you want a cool drink, put it in a mesh bag, and dangle it in the river.

2) One man stayed behind from the hike to spend time fishing. The results.

3) After that weary hike, and a good meal, it's time to relax with a good book, and nap.

Tomorrow will be our final day on the water. Then, back to the land of hot showers and indoor flush toilets.

[nerdgirl 0]

Very nice.
VR/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[JohnRich 4]

Final day on the water, on our way back to civilization.

1) Over the weir dam. The sole purpose of this dam, I believe, is to provide constant river conditions for a water level gauge, which is used as input to understand how much water is entering Amistad Lake, downstream. Many remote water gauges provide somewhat useless readings, because the river conditions change over time, with sandbars coming and going, rivers changing course, etc. So this dam provides a set of conditions that doesn't change over time, making the readings more reliable and meaningful. In the background, at the end of the path, you see how someone gets down here to do maintenance - a ladder which descends the 300-foot high cliff. Ack!

2) Scenic river photo.

3) Me in rapids. Okay, all I've got to do is thread my way around the left side of that house-sized boulder, make a 30-degree right turn, then go around the right side of that next big rock...

4) Then make a 120-degree left turn without hitting the next wall of rocks... Close, but I made it!

[JohnRich 4]

After hours of paddling and running rapids, we reached the part of the river that is flat-water lake, backed-up from Amistad Dam, downriver on the Rio Grande. The distance to be covered here was significant, and there is always a strong headwind fighting against you, funneled through the canyon walls. Because of this, it would take an entire extra day to exit the river if you did it on your own power. And it would be boring, and exhausting. So, we had arranged in advance for someone with a motorboat to meet us up-river, to tow us out.

1) We had 12 boats, so we lined up with four rows of three-across, and tied ourselves all together.

2) The tow-out boat arrives, and lines-up in front of us, so we can tie-up to him. The rascal didn't think to bring cold beer...

3) We're underway, at about 4 mph. I was the front-middle, so this photo is looking backwards at the train of canoes beside and behind me.

4) The railroad bridge, with a passenger train crossing just as we pass underneath. Can they see us waving from way up there? This bridge is about 4 miles up-stream from our take-out point.

[JohnRich 4]

1) There were more cave shelters along the way, which remain unexplored. For now. I'll have to come back some time and spend three or four days just exploring the shelters along this flat-water part of the river. Some of them had pictographs visible as we passed by.

2) The Highway 90 bridge. 300-feet high. I hear that it has been base-jumped. We're only a mile from the boat ramp now - the adventure is almost over.

3) Done! The shallow river and sharp limestone is hell on the boats. Linda's boat is going to need some major patching. She was lucky these cracks didn't go all the way through. There are generally three layers in a plastic canoe, and you can crack the inside or outside and still remain watertight. I have one new crack about a foot long on the inside floor of mine. It was worth it.

That's all I have. End of story.

My next big canoe trip will be in February, when I'll be back on the Rio Grande, covering about 70 miles over 7 days through Big Bend National Park. I can't wait!