Way back in Presidio, Tony told me to tell Hayesy, "Keith is going to wear you out," and I faithfully delivered Hayesy the message when we met in La Linda ten or eleven days later. Hayesy scoffed at the warning and retorted, "I've done this river with you eleven times. I know what I'm getting into."

Well, maybe.

Tony complains that I'm indefatigable; that I just go, go, go; never eating enough; never sitting in camp; never -- in short -- tiring. He's partially correct. I don't get tired on the Rio Grande. When my body has been pushed to its limits, I get sore.

Tony also complains that I am "the most determined person I've ever met." He sighed several times while we were mountain biking, and in an exasperated tone, said, "Man, you just don't quit...ever!" Sorry, Tony, but time is running out.

The only two guys I know who match my relentless hyperactivity on the river are Hayesy and Rob Boushel, my partner on my very first descent of both the Upper and Lower Canyons of the Rio Grande. Hayesy is a gamer, the guy you want on your side in the trenches.

Pete Billings remarked to Hayesy just as we were leaving Langtry in the canoe, "Keith is tougher than cold shoe leather." Truth be told, Hayesy is the next level of tough.

I give this lengthy preface because the four and a half day trip from Langtry to Amistad Dam was one of the singularly most demanding physical undertakings I've ever battled on this, or any other, river.

And, remember, I'm the guy who paddled the mighty headwinds of the Pecos in a raft. On that trip, the railroad bridge to the high bridge -- four miles -- took me a full nine hours at full paddle as the gale-forced winds 'blitzkrieged' the front of my raft with rolling wave after rolling wave.

Maybe my age is catching up with me, but Lake Amistad has served up a formidable paddling challenge. And, get this: we had paddling conditions bordering on the ideal. Here's the bottom line: if you decide to canoe from Langtry to Amistad Dam, be prepared to test your paddling meddle to a degree you're unlikely to face again. That is, unless you want to borrow one of my
rafts to do the two bridges section of the Lower Pecos...day after day after day.

If you know the Langtry river access, you know it's a very long carry from the river to the county road well up above. Taking out there challenges you; putting in there is a workout of Rocky proportions.

We carried all the gear and the canoe to the river's edge in Langtry hours after President Bush's second inauguration and began our first Rio Grande canoe trip together since March, 1993. Hayesy liked the swiftness of the boat immediately. We ate up nearly six miles in the time we would have done two miles in the rafts.

What Hayesy didn't like is the canoe put stress on his aging back. I tried to stop often and that first day, we grabbed a camp only nine or ten miles below Langtry, one of the few places in that stretch not inundated by the rising lake waters.

We found a clearing where someone had burned the vega and left two ladders upright against the rock face in order to access the bluff above. A family of skunks evacuated as we were setting up camp, and I could see well worn trails for deer, feral hogs, and ringtail cats on the perimeter of our site.


 Our next day offered ideal paddling conditions for the still water down to the Pecos confluence: an utter absence of wind, warm sun, and the slightest suggestion of current for an hour or so after we broke camp.

We reached the confluence early to mid-afternoon, the southeastern limit that either of us knew on the Rio Grande. Hayesy commented, "I'm really excited to see everything below here. This is what I came down here for."

Our mutual excitement however was quickly tempered by a phenomenon I've hadn't yet had to deal with on this trip: the presence of power boats. I say this in retrospect, but amazingly, the first tow power botas to pass us shut doown their engines and drifted by, eliminating any wake. The next seventy-nine (yes, we counted!) were not nearly as gracious.

I don't think Hayesy was very impressed with Texans' boating etiquette (or better put, the absence of such), and by the time we reached camp that evening, a Mexican side cove not far after the large turn at Zuberbueler Bend, I was feeling downright violent about some of the dangerous positions the wake of high speed power boats had placed us in.

Think of it this way: the river is a third of a mile wide and both shores are sheer canyon walls over a hundred feet high. You capsize there and you'll be wishing you had booked a 10-day vacation in Cancun. And, I hate the idea of vacationing in Cancun.

From the Pecos to Amistad Dam, in the hierarchy of boats, the lowly canoe is at the very bottom of the totem pole. Even the NPS rangers blasted us twice with rolling waves which challenged us to stay upright. Obviously, Ranger Rick appeared more concerned with putting in his eight hours than he cared about the safety of those whose taxes pay his wages.

But, we stayed upright -- despite the best (or worst) waves the NPS and a multitude of insensitive power boaters could throw at us on our third day below Langtry. I can't say it was an experience I am eager to repeat, and I'm especially grateful that Hayesy was along to help me paddle, allow me to vent my considerable frustration with the power boating community, and assist with the collecting of firewood, especially after the weather began to turn latet that day.

Minutes after we set up camp in a Texas side cove somewhere in the no man's land between Seminole Canyon and the first of the many bouys of Lake Amistad, a power boat trawled in toward our camp. I called to the two men aboard to ask for ice. Haysey likes his Tecate beer icy cold.

At first, the boat's driver, Chris Pullig, a self-described "outdoorsman writer" from San Angelo, said, "No, our ice has mostly turned to water."

A moment later, he called over, "Surely, you didn't come inhere in that canoe?" When I confirmed that we had, he replied, "Y'all are a lot tougher than I am."

Chris, you may get no argument from this camp, but how about that ice?

Chris and his compadre Keith delivered to us the care package of the 200 miles between La Linda and Amistad, a grocery sack filled with ice and two Miller Lite beers. OK, maybe power boaters are a much better breed than I had previously thought.

The two men came ashore to photograph us for a possible article Chris was hoping to write about my trip, and while I grilled him with questions about the lake ahead (unbelievably, I hadn't brought a map for this section of 66 miles, relying on my memorization of the Lake Amistad map/pamphlet), Chris dropped on us these downers: 1) we were still 30 miles from Lake Amistad Dam, despite our three days of hard paddling, 2) we had no chance of making it before "Wednesday or Thursday" (it is now Sunday, the very next night, and we're within sight of the dam), and 3) we would have to canoe double the miles to reach the dam (we paddled every possible short cut) because we wouldn't be able to stray from the shore.

When the Border Patrol boat arrived thirty minutes later, my first comment to the two officers was: "I sure liked those two guys who just left, but, Man, they were discouraging, even intimidating."

The Border Patrol officers, young Anglo guys, were as friendly a pair as we've encountered this part of the trip (though Hayesy maintains "Doubly" blows them out of the water on the friendliness scale). Already the knew all the details of our encounter several nights before with their two colleagues who trailed our footprints to the rim of the bowl above our camp the last night before we arrived in Langtry.

The two officers stood on the bow of their boat while I held their throw line, and they cheerfully answered every question we asked. One even went into the captain's chair to consult the map after I asked for a precise distance to the dam. Finally, as they were leaving just before dark, they offered the use of a cell phone.

Day 37, a Sunday, brought us an extraordinary gift: placid water for the push to our final camp before the dam. We out in early and paddled steadily, counting down the thirty buoys spaced irregularly in the main channel, cutting from shortest point to shortest point as we tried to minimize the distance.

About mid-afternoon, we came within sight of two small clusters of homes and trailers separated by a small canyon. When we reached the dock below the small lakeside community an hour later, we walked up to inquire where we were. An elderly man constructing his home paused long enough from his carpentry to tell us we were in Box Canyon, about four miles from Amistad Dam.

I can't think of too many things I've done in my life that are more gratifying than having paddled the choppy waters of Lake Amistad successfully; however, this is one section of the Rio Grande I will not be revisiting in a canoe or a raft.

Pete Billings was likely being overly gracious when he said I was tougher then "cold shoe leather," but you'd have to be extraordinarily determined to duplicate what Hayesy and I just completed. Being half crazy would help as well.

Hayesy concurred with Tony that I did indeed wear him out, and on my behalf, I will happily confess here that the sixty-six miles from Langtry to the dam have made my paddling muscles as sore as they are likely to be -- ever.

Unfortunately, I now lose my best river partner as he returns on the long drive to Massachusetts. First, though, he drives me across the monster causeway above the dam to see me off at the river's edge, Mexican side, for my next segment of the trip, Amistad to Laredo.

Thanks, Hayesy. You're tougher than frozen shoe leather.

[Louis: Here's an addendum to my River Report #4. As you will soon read, my complacency over having finished with Lake Amistad was premature.]


The fellow in Box Canyon who told me Amistad Dam lie only "two or three miles" away probably didn't fare well in his Geography class. Ditto for his Basic Math course. We broke camp on Monday morning believing we had an hour's paddling to reach Hayesy's truck at the Amistad Dam headquarters. An hour atfer we broke camp, I said to Hayesy. "This could take a lot longer than either of us believe."

For starters, our holiday from teh infamous winds of the lake came to a sobering halt before we had paddled even an hour. The lake waters rolled from southeast to northwest, many of the waves white capping only to build to even greater heights. Even worse, Hayesy was so eager to reach the take-out, he kept suggesting possibilities which had him walking the long round about way to the truck while I fought the perilous lake waters alone.

Within a mile of breaking camp, we were forced to hop from point to point in a curious fashion. Due to the hard charge of water into each cove, we could not paddle parallel to the shore. From each point, we would line the canoe down into the cove far enough so we could tack into the waves as we tried to cross to the next point. We repeated this frustrating exercise dozens of times and still seemed impossibly far from the dam.

When Hayesy decided he no longer wanted to get in the canoe "because it's too dangerous," I was forced to cross two coves solo while he walked the perimeter. At one point,  we even began carrying the gear up off the river, thinking we could reach the highway via a primitive ranch road. However, one direction of the ranch road dead ended in the very cove Hayesy refused to cross. The other dead ended at a locked ranch gate.

We had no choice but to return to our previous strategy of going point to point and walking the canoe, sometimes through waist deep water to avoid the submerged growth of cacti, willow, and even mesquite from the many years when the lake was low due to the prolonged drought.

Hayesy was not especially happy, and I felt guilty for putting him through it. But, we persevered all day, and by 5 pm had reached the final point, within a mile of the Highway 90 bridge and the same distance in the other direction from Hayesy's truck.

There is no way we could go in the direction of the bridge, such were the side currents, and our only viable option was to boat the long mile across a rolling lake on which a canoe had no business being. Plus, capsizing out there was an easy recipe for hypothermia.

I decided to pause at that final lonely point and scout anxiously the prospect. As badly as I knew Hayesy wished to be in his truck on the road back to Boston, I didn't like at all what we would have to do to reach the shore where it was parked.

I told him, "There's a third option here. We can wait for someone to come along to help us."

No sooner than Hayesy had time to reply incredulously, "But, what are the chances of that?" a power boat passed, then circled, and I rushed into the water to summon the two gentlemen over.

Bob Young of Dalhart, Texas, and George Keesling of Hutchinson, Kansas, soon became our new idols.

George backed his Ranger Bass Boat to within ten feet of shore, and we tied two lines from his boat to the canoe. Hayesy and I climbed about the boat, and we had ourselves a rather odd looking setup, the loaded canoe trailing only ten feet behind.

As I told there very kind gentlemen the stories from my trip, we trawled along across the choppy lake waters. And then, suddenly, the canoe capsized, and we were still six hundred yards from shore. The four of us worked frantically to untie and then unload all the cnoe's gear, passing it in a line from the stern of the bass boat to the bow. The canoe was swamped with water, so Bob suggested I hold its bow high to empty it as we cruised toward the U. S. Air Force boat dock.

It was an unlikely sight, me holding the canoe bow high above the water, George holding the middle as he drove his bass boat, and Hayesy holding the stern. Bob directed us. Clearly, he was the leader.

When we reached the boat dock, and I was interviewing George, he told me Bob Young was featured in the December edition of Forbes Magazine because of an experimental stem cell operation he had undergone. I'm eager to get to a library to find it.

On top of everything else, the two men insisted they drive Hayesy to the dam headquarters to get his truck.

Mr. Keesling and Mr. Young, I suspect you have some idea how grateful we are for the crossing, but I doubt you know just how deep that gratitude is.

Now, a day later than my report suggested, I take on the river again in the morning.

[Louis, I butchered the Zuberbueler Bend in the report #4. Can you change my spelling there to the correct one I have above. Thanks. The trip continues to generate its own magic.]