I had just unbuckled my seat belt and was already wondering if I had driven six hours to Texas for nothing. A once-in-a-lifetime river adventure had seemingly evaporated with some disappointing news.
It was the promise of a four-day, 33-mile canoe trip through Big Bend National Park, through awe-inspiring canyons on a mighty river, that had swept me across the state. My partner’s brother, Michael Stangl, a casual guide with Hidden Dagger Adventures, had offered to take me up the Rio Grande, one of the country’s largest rivers, which stretches from central Colorado to the Gulf of Mexico. I had only previously visited Big Bend on foot and was excited to see it from the water.
The moment I pulled into Michael’s driveway in Alpine, Texas, after driving there from Austin last April, he told me: We weren’t going through the park anymore.
“Unless you want to go canoeing, we’re going to have to run a different part of the river,” he said. Once he returned from that stretch of river — between Rio Grande Village, a small campground in Big Bend, and Heath Canyon Ranch, just outside the park — he said it was “more work than fun” and that he dragged the canoe for a quarter of a mile at a time over nearly dry riverbeds.
Instead, we would do the Temple Canyon route: an 11-mile, two-night, three-day traverse of the Rio Grande past the United States-Mexico border, more than 30 miles from where our original trip was supposed to begin. This different section of the river, entirely outside and downstream of Big Bend, was in a desert bighorn sheep restoration area known as Black Gap.
Although I was disappointed, I learned that last-minute changes to Rio Grande adventures were common.
“If the river were a heart, it would be leveling”
The Rio Grande is at risk: Its water is being drained by farmers and cities, while a climate-change-induced drought that has dehydrated the American Southwest for more than two decades threatens hopes for recovery. In 2022, the river dried up in Albuquerque for the first time in four decades. That same year, the scenic Santa Elena Canyon, one of the most popular attractions in the Big Bend, also dried up for the first time in at least 15 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“If the river was a heart, it would be flattening,” said Samuel Sandoval-Solis, an associate professor at the University of California, Davis, who studies water management.
For West Texan river guides, it’s just another precarious reality of life in the Chihuahuan Desert. “In my lifetime, I expect that river travel will no longer be feasible,” said Charlie Angell of Angell Expeditions, a guide service based in Redford, Texas.
For now, those booking Rio Grande paddling tours can expect last-minute changes if they want their boats to actually float.
“When guests book over the phone, we tell them, ‘You’re going where we tell you we’re going,'” said Mike Naccarato, founder of Far West Texas Outfitters, an adventure company based in Presidio, Texas. “And if they still insist that they want to go to Big Bend National Park when the levels are low, we tell them it’s their choice: We can either do it by dragging the boat up and down the river, or we can go and do just that , very nice trip out of the park, but still on the Rio Grande.”
While the high season for river travel is usually from March to May and the post-monsoon season from September to November, local tour operators struggle to predict when the water levels will be high enough.
“It’s really hard to say anything is normal these days – we’ve started calling it the ‘non-soon’ season,” Mr Naccarato said.
Dragging, zig-zagging and head-scratching
After an hour’s ride with canoes strapped to Michael’s truck, we stood on the edge of the river outside Heath Canyon Ranch, looking out at a decommissioned bridge spanning the Mexican border. While the sun was hidden behind the clouds, I was already drenched in sweat from carrying the full canoe gear to the bank.
It soon became clear that our “easier” 11 mile trip would still be hard work due to the lower than normal river water levels.
Within about 30 seconds of the push, Michael and I hit our first rapid section and I, a river newbie, was ill prepared. The lower water level had left overhanging rocks that we would have to navigate. Michael jumped out of his canoe and grabbed my bow. “You should turn the nose directly to the Y where the river splits and turns white, then bank the nose quickly right and then quickly left,” he instructed.
My canoe ended up jammed in a bed of gravel and I had to drop it over rocks until the river deepened. It happened again and again: On almost every fast section — and it felt like someone was going around every time I started to gain confidence — my boat ended up beaching. I must have spent more time out of my boat pushing it than rowing.
Even in sections where the river deepened, it was not easy. Instead of the current pulling us quickly into the middle, the lower water levels forced our boats to drift in a serpentine formation, back and forth on the river banks. The banks caused another problem: For most of our trip, the right bank of the river—the Mexican side—was dominated by sugar cane. Also known as border bamboo or giant cane, the sugarcane, an invasive species, spread up the bank up to 15 feet tall.
The turbulent and narrow river dragged my boat right into the reed, which cut off my hands and feet and laid me in the water. Michael instructed me – instead – to lean in front of the cane, not away from it. When I listened to his advice, my head (without a helmet) became a blunt object on which the cane broke in half. It was significantly better than the twist.
That night, blistered, bruised and wet, I asked Michael as we sat on our sleeping pads if floating the Rio had always been this arduous and fraught with obstacles. “Not when there’s actually water,” he said. In fact, as I later learned, most of the difficulties I encountered (apart from stepping into cow dung near the campsite), could be attributed to the lower water level of the river and the signs of the landscape changing as a result, he said. Jeff Bennett, hydrologist; for the Rio Grande Consortium, a conservation group trying to protect the river’s habitat.
“Boulders, gravel, sand and that invasive cane is no longer being washed downstream,” Mr. Bennett said in a telephone interview. “A flood would fix all that.”
A trip worth the bruises
On the last morning of the trip, we rescued some soggy sandwiches from the bottom of our coolers and took off. The river was calm for the few miles we had left and we saw turtles called Big Bend sliders sunbathing on the rocks.
The final challenge the river presented us with was to let it go. We passed right past the take-off point, which was wrapped in cane, and had to paddle back upstream for a quarter of a mile.
Unlike previous spots on the river where we had run our canoes ashore, this one was surprisingly deep, with the river rising to my chest. Instead of a gentle slope like the places we had camped during our trip, the takeout was, more or less, a 60-degree dune spanning 20 yards.
After running my boat through the sand, I collapsed, wet, bruised and spent, with only enough energy to disconnect into the cloudless sky.
“We think the river has changed, but really, we’ve changed the river,” Dr. Sandoval-Solis, the UC Davis associate professor, told me months later when I returned home to my creature comforts, adding that he believed . it was still possible to return the river to its once strong state through proper water management practices. “The river has a much better memory than we do.”
He’s right about its memory: When the rains come, the river remembers its identity as an age-old canyon carver, even if we know it only as a panting, shrinking giant.
He is also right about our faulty memory. Because when I think of my journey, I don’t first remember the stick hitting me, the stick in the cow dung, or the change of plans. Instead, I think about lying under a blanket of stars, passing a bottle of mezcal back and forth between the hands of cards, listening to the tracks of the bugles echo from cliff to cliff, canyon to canyon, bank to bank. And I want to do it – all of it – again. I just hope there is enough river for next time.
