A couple of weeks ago, Linda and I went hiking at Pedernales Falls State Park. So far, this has been my favorite hiking spot.
Before we went there, we had to run some errands to Kerrville (about 20 miles south of here) so we took backroads to get to the park. This was a very nice drive through small towns and big ranches. We went through a town called Center Point which is supposed to be the center of Texas – it made me think of the movie theater that used to be next to ASU. At one point, I started thinking about the end of Cast Away where Tom Hanks’ character dropped off the package with the wings on it and was deciding where to go next. I believe that this was supposed to be in Texas and I was wondering if I would find that spot. Shortly after this thought, we passed a FedEx truck and I wanted to ask him where to go.
We got to the park and passed several signs on the way to the trailhead that warned of flash floods. There was a sign posted in front of the trailhead that showed a dry Pedernales River and another that it said was taken 5 minutes later with roaring river flowing through it. We hiked the little ways down to the river and I was more impressed with the picture of the flash flood for the river looked to be at least 100 feet across and from the river banks it looked like the river could get to be about 20-30 feet deep. That’s a hell of a lot of water to be coming down at you!
The area has been through a dry spell this year, so the river was barely running. There were a few large pools of water that had fish in them that a couple guys were trying to catch. One of these pools were actually being feed from a spring that was coming out under a tree. I dubbed it the ‘tree of life’. There was a lot of sand around the trees and I was tempted to take same to say that I went to the beach. We hiked around a couple pools and then stopped for lunch under what we think was a cyprus tree. This tree was on the edge of the river bank and had a couple roots that were at least a foot thick digging into the rocks that were downstream of it that I believe help it stay vertical during the flash floods.
After lunch, we tried to make our way upstream to see what it looked like. We could not see it from where we were for the river bed rises a good distance as it goes upstream. After failing to find a way up the side we were on, we crossed to the other side. As you may be able to tell from the pictures below, we had a problem getting down to the river bed from the sides for the water had cut its path down a valley of rocks, making the river banks vertical walls. We eventually found a little trail and followed it for about a couple hundred feet before we found a spot were we could get down to the river bed.
We found more pools of water up here and a few surprising trees that were growing in the middle of the river bottom. One pool was pretty cool for it had a little cave and at some point a flash flood pushed a tree trunk into it so that it looked like it was holding open the cave. While hiking along the river bottom, I was constantly looking to the sides to find ways to get out in case a flood did occur.
After the hike, we went to another part of the park which was further downstream and was marked as the designated swimming area. They closed off swimming at the first place we hiked back in the 70s. Anyways, we got down to the river and we noticed that all of the trees along the river banks were leaning downstream. Now, these are not little trees. These are trees that are at least 30 feet tall and have trunks at least a couple feet in diameter. While looking around, I noticed a very large object stuck about 15ft up in a tree. We could not figure out what it was, but my guess was a small port-o-potty that got smashed in. Man, that is an awesome amount of water. It would be cool to see it, but it would sooooo suck to get caught in it.
Here are some photos (or view the photos here):