The Austin area is known for some cool swimming holes. Many within an hour or two drive from downtown. It’s so cool to live in a place with these all around, but one of the bummers is that everyone else in Austin also knows about them.

Last week, I went on a short hike with my roommate Anthony and a friend of ours (Timothy) to a place less than 20 minutes away from downtown. It’s a beautiful area and there’s some fun cliff jumping you can do there, but there are just so many people there. The picture below doesn’t even do justice to how many people were there. If you were to pan to the right of where this picture was taken, you would see hundreds of people swimming in the area.

As we were hanging out last week, Timothy and I began to talk about how we wished we could go to a cool place that didn’t have a ton of people. We both love to explore/backpack/hike, and love to find places that are a bit off the beaten path. I’ve realized some of my selfishness the last several years when it comes to beautiful places. I mentioned my thoughts on the matter in a post from over a year ago back in 2018 when I went on a big west coast trip.

Who am I to wish that there weren’t people at this beautiful location when I myself am there trying to enjoy the beauty?

A Secret Location

In any case, as we were talking, I mentioned a place that I had heard about from my coworker. I wasn’t sure where it was, and my co-worker had only heard about it from one of his friends. A place that was extremely tough to get to but was well worth the effort if you could find it and get to it. Timothy, to my surprise, had also heard about it. He said that ever since he had heard about it several years back he really wanted to go, but had never found someone to go with him.

At that moment, I knew that we were going to be going on an adventure.

When we were first talking, both of us were talking in a “we’ll have to do that sometime” kind of way. But as we continued, we both came to the conclusion, “Why not do this now?”

The Planning

Both Timothy and I like to go with the flow. We like to plan enough not to die, but not so much that every step we take is planned 3 months in advance. He and I both did some research online and decided to plan the trip for the next weekend.

It was very difficult to find a information on the location. It seemed that people wanted to keep it hidden (which I’m actually glad about). What we did find, was that where the spot was was completely surrounded by property owners who WOULD NOT have trespassers on their property. And that was the defining factor of what made this spot so hard to get to.

In Texas, all waterways are owned by the state of Texas and therefore public property. You cannot claim it unless it’s below a certain width. After some research and hearing about others who had made the trip, we were able to find out that there was a way to get to the spot without ever trespassing. And that was our goal. Apart from the fact that from the stories we were told, the property owners took their land VERY seriously and would fully prosecute anyone they caught on their land, I decided several years ago that I won’t break laws around trespassing.

I used to love to climb on buildings in downtown and explore and adventure there, but I realized that I wasn’t setting a very good example by paying no attention to the many NO TRESPASSING signs that I avoided.

After doing a little of our research, Timothy asked if there was anyone else we should invite on the trip, but after deciding that Anthony would likely be the only other one who could do the trip, and he was coming off a knee injury, we decided that we would make the trek ourselves.

We texted back and forth a few times during the week, but came to the decision. We would leave at 6am on Saturday to head for our start.

Initial Setbacks

Throughout this narrative, I’m purposely not using names of roads and rivers as to protect the location of this spot. If you are interested in knowing where it is, you can message me, but after our experience getting there, I think that everyone should have to do their own research to find it. No free handouts.

From our research, we found that if we were to do the trip legally, we would have to stay in the riverbed the entire way to the spot. Unfortunately, the only access point from public property (a road) into the river, was about 7 miles upstream from the spot.

We decided this would be our entry location.

From my house, it was less than an hour and a half to our entry point, but as we drove up to where we had planned to enter, we were greeted by signs all over the place that read “NO PARKING. TOWING STRICTLY ENFORCED” Along with all of these signs were many others that talked about not trespassing and that violators would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, etc.

We clearly weren’t the first ones to have this idea. It seems that it had become known that this was a legal entry point to get to the spot, and property owners were trying everything they could to stop people before they began.

We were initially bummed. We had done the research on the laws for being in the river, but weren’t sure about the laws about parking on the road. From some of what we had read, it seemed that some of these signs might have been fake. That they didn’t have any legal right to not let people park on the road. But we weren’t risking it. We drove around for a bit (probably almost 30 minutes) until we passed an older guy who was riding on a bike. We had heard that the landowners in these parts were very unfriendly and that they didn’t want tourists in this area (understandably). But at this point, I thought there wouldn’t be any harm in at least asking this fellow if he had any suggestions for us.

I turned the car around after we had passed him and once we got to him I stopped the car and got out and approached him as he biked toward me. Once he got close, he got off his bike (this guy looked to be maybe early 80s, and struggled to stop and get off the bike without falling) and I calmly asked him, with many caveats and trying to humble myself as much as possible, if he knew anything about this spot and if he knew where we could park to get to it legally.

To my surprise, he was actually quite friendly. It seemed that he had been in this area for a long time and talked about how he had been there many times before when he was younger, but he wasn’t sure how we were going to get to the spot with the river up as high as it was. He gave us a little bit of direction, but it was hard to follow, and I wasn’t convinced that the advice he gave us was going to help.

The end of his advice was basically to go down to this certain road and start knocking on doors and asking people if they knew the best way to get to it. I was incredibly grateful that he was friendly and tried to help, and we didn’t really have another option at the time, so we started going in the direction that he told us to go.

Getting the Police Involved

As we were driving into the no outlet area that we had met the guy on the bike, we noticed there was a blue vehicle (Suburban perhaps, don’t quite remember) just past the entrance to the road we were on. We saw as we drove by that this was some kind of police officer. The vehicle wasn’t even an unmarked cop car. It seemed to be his own car, but he was in full uniform. We realized later that we think he was doing some kind of security for a pipeline that was going in right next to there.

I turned to Timothy and asked, “What if I asked this guy? Maybe a terrible idea because he may tell us to get out of here, but maybe we can ask him about how to do it legally?” Timothy was cool with it, so as we drove by, I rolled my window down to talk to him. He rolled his window down as well, and I asked him about the spot.

He wasn’t familiar with the spot, but after I told him that it was on the waterway and that we were planning to stay in the waterway the whole time, he said that was probably fine as long as we didn’t trespass. So I then asked him if he knew where it was legal for us to park in order to enter from the bridge. He said that any of the roads that have the “NO PARKING” signs, we would probably get towed, but if a road didn’t have that on it, we should be fine.

I then asked him then if the road we were currently on (about a quarter-mile from the bridge that we had planned to enter the river from) was okay to park on. He looked around a little bit and said, “Yeah, I think that should be fine.”

We did a little more driving around just to confirm the spot, and along the way, we met three Venezuelan’s from Houston area who were on the same mission. We relayed the information that we had heard from the police officer, and the three of them decided to stick with us since it seemed that we knew more what we were doing.

We all circled back to the spot we had talked to the police officer, and parked our cars. Step one of the trip was completed.

Trail Beginnings

As we parked, got out, and prepared our stuff, the police officer started driving up next to us. At first I was concerned thinking that he had changed his mind, but as he stopped he simply asked if we were planning to park here to do it. I told him that if that was okay, then yes. He said he thought it was fine, but just so that he could make sure that we didn’t have any trouble and have someone try and tow us, to give him my name and phone number. He said then if someone were to call it in and try and tow us, he could call me and let me know before they did.

I was very grateful to him and expressed it profusely. It was very nice to have the peace of mind that my car wasn’t going to get towed. I did have the slightest fear that the police officer might call us in the minute we left and have us towed anyway, but I chose to trust that he really was a decent fellow who was telling the truth.

Here was our gang that set out on the trail:

Early Casualties

When I say “trail,” I say it very loosely. The very start of this “trail” consisted of jumping off a bridge into the water and wading downstream in the waist-deep river.

As we were taking the stuff out of our car and hiking the quarter-mile walk from the car to the bridge, we got to know our new friends, and when I asked them if they were pretty avid hikers, they said that they weren’t and they thought “Go big or go home, right?”

I was pretty concerned at this. From everything I had read online, this hike was not for the faint of heart. There was a guy who left a comment on a website about this hike that said he was cranking out 20 miles/day hikes in California and this was still an extremely difficult hike.

As we hopped into the river and began our wading expedition, I quickly realized that it was going to be difficult to do this trip with our new friends. I was not even moving quickly, purposely trying to go slower, and they were already lagging way behind.

It didn’t help that as we waded into the stream, it continued to get deeper. It started at waist deep, but was soon up to our chests, and then started to lap at our necks. It’s very difficult to keep any speed at all up in these kinds of conditions, and when you add a pack to your back, it makes things even worse.

It kept getting deeper until the point when I started having to swim. I was in the front of the pack by a good 50 ft, and as I started swimming, I started thinking to myself, “I have no idea if we’re actually going to be able to do this. It will take hours to go even a mile at this pace, and we’re even going with the stream. What’s it going to look like trying to go upstream after a full day of exhaustion on you?

Right around when I was thinking these thoughts, I looked back and saw the shorter Venezualan (Juan) struggling to keep his head above water. My lifeguard instincts kicked in. His arms were flailing and it looked like he could barely get a breath. I was a good 150 ft ahead of his at this point, but I looked back and told them he was not okay.

His two friends swam back to help him and talk to him. I knew that there was no way they were going to be able to do this whole trip. I had my doubts about whether Timothy and I could do it, and we are both in fairly decent shape and can both swim.

After Timothy and I waited for a bit, the girl in the group waved at us and said to continue on without them. I wish I could say I was reluctant, and I did feel bad, but I knew we had to part there. Even if they *could* do the trip, at the pace they were going, it was going to take about double the amount of time Timothy and I were doing.

As Timothy and I continued the day, we, on many occasions, talked about how glad we were that they turned when they did. I don’t think there is any way they could have made the trip and survived. We never saw them again.

The Trials of the Trail

The Water

Thankfully as we continued, the ground under the river became shallower, and we were able to touch again. We still made extremely slow progress, as we were at many times chest to neck-deep in water with our packs on our back, trying to move forward.

There were patches that the river bed popped up on one side and we were able to walk on solid ground, but there were an equal number of places that the ground became too deep to touch and we had to swim with our packs for several hundred feet at a time. For the most part, the first two miles of our journey consisted of swimming and wading.

One of the hardest mental challenges for me as we trekked our way through the river was realizing that everything we were doing we were going to have to do again on the way out, only then we would have 13 miles of exhaustion, a hot sun, and going against the current to fight with. I had to keep focused on our goal, and not think too far into the future of what future me was going to have to experience.

After the first mile, I began praying. We were moving painfully slow. I knew that if we kept the pace that we were going, it would take more than 8 hours to go the length we needed to go. The spot on the river that we were aiming for was about 7 miles downstream. And it took us over an hour to do the first mile.

I neglected to mention that when we were trying to figure out a parking spot, I was also praying adamantly. I really did not want to be towed, so I asked God to give us a spot that I could have peace of mind about. He did that, now I was asking for some dry land to hike on so that we could move more quickly to our destination. In some ways, I had peace of mind in that too. I knew that if it was God’s will, he would give us what we needed.

The Land

After about 2½ miles, the water started getting shallower and there were more dry riverbed spots. The dry riverbed wasn’t a cakewalk though. The best it got was loose stone that had a sandy consistency. Much of it however was basically boulder fields. Stones that were 1 to 2 ft in diameter that you have to be careful not to slip and break your ankle on.

At about the 4-5 mile mark, the water completely dried up. We were both relieved because we knew we could now make some real progress toward the spot.

And then it got hot.

On the way to the site, it really wasn’t too bad. The riverbed was dry and all of a sudden it looked (and felt) like we were in a desert. It was thankfully only in the 90s and we had both packed almost two gallons of water, so we survived, but it was burning on the skin.

For about two to three miles we hiked the dry riverbed. Some parts were fairly easy, smaller stones that were easily navigable, some spots required a strong mental game to make sure that each step was placed correctly as not to twist your ankle or step on a rock that would shift and cause you to fall.

The Anticipation

As we got close to 7 miles in, the desert started to give way to more vegetation. There was practically no water the last two miles, and now we were starting to see puddles of water and trees on the side of the riverbed.

We knew we were close. From the map that I had, it looked like we were no more than an ⅛ of a mile out from our destination. If it weren’t below us, we would likely already be able to see it.

Then, all of a sudden, we stumbled upon a majestic emerald green pool. I was concerned at first. The pool was small. I desperately hoped that there was going to be more. The pool was amazing, it just wasn’t quite as big as my expectations were.

The Arrival

But after pausing and taking pictures, we kept walking down the way a bit…and there it was. One of the most beautiful sites I had ever seen. Not only because my skin was peeling from itself from the sun beating down and my stomach screaming at me because it was empty. Even apart from the delayed gratification, the spot was majestic.

The top pool that we saw had a small waterfall draining into it. From what we had heard, this was all spring-fed. The water was a deep green color that looked as if it had healing powers. 

After the initial pool with the falls, it drained into another round pool that drained into a lower portion of pools (pictures below to see). There were three levels at the beginning. We had to tie a rope to a rock from the top level so that we could make sure we could get back up without having to climb up onto the cliffside (which would be trespassing).

After taking in the moment and the sight, I climbed down first into the pools. They were the perfect temperature. On the surface, the temperature was almost warm. Not a gross warm, but one that your body didn’t go into shock once it touched, however, it felt like each foot that you went down into the water took off another 5 degrees. If you dove into the pools to try and touch the bottom, your body would start freezing as soon as you got below 6 or so feet.

Exploration

One of the most beautiful things about this spot was not only the fact that it was beautiful, but that Timothy and I were the only ones there. Potentially one of the most beautiful places in Texas, and we had it to ourselves. No young kids whining and crying about the water being too cold, not college kids trying to impress their girlfriends with the cool flips they could do, no 20 something guys who brought an entire keg of beer to drink, no old women who judged everything you did.

It was us, the beauty, and silence.

When we first got there, we were both tired and extremely hungry, so after swimming into the canyon a bit, I found a place that we could sit and only have about 6 inches in the water. I tossed my backpack to the side, got my four sandwiches out of the bag, and demolished them. I kept telling myself as we were hiking that I could just wait until we got there to eat, and boy was it worth it.

After eating our food, we explored the pools for probably 30 minutes. We knew we couldn’t stay for a very long time because we still had the entire hike back to accomplish before dark. At this point, it was almost 2pm and we estimated that it took us about 5 hours to hike/swim to where we were. We weren’t in a time crunch, especially with the sun not setting until almost 9pm, but we didn’t want to dilly dally too much.

Signs of Trouble

After about 30-45 minutes in the canyon swimming in the various pools, we heard voices. Even though we knew we had followed the law and hadn’t trespassed, from other stories we heard, the property owners would do everything they could to get you kicked out.

After 5 minutes of hearing voices and not knowing where they were coming from, we saw a family (two guys, two ladies, and what appeared to be there 2 kids). We could tell from what they were wearing (complete with pool noodles and goggles) that they hadn’t just trekked 7 miles downriver, so we deduced that they were either the property owners or that they knew the property owners.

As they swam and got closer to us, I waved at them and called out a hello! They didn’t hear (or didn’t react as if they did) at first, and I was dreading that they might be the property owners and throw a fit.

Once they got close enough to have a conversation, I said hello and asked if they were the property owners. One of the women answered and said that they weren’t but that they were good friends with the people who were. She didn’t seem to be overly happy that we were there, but after I explained what we had gone through to get there (and that we hadn’t trespassed to do it), they seem to be more at ease and we had a bit of small talk about the beauty of both the day and the location.

Crisis averted. We had once again met friendly people who, though may have preferred if we weren’t there, were totally cool that we were there.

Timothy and I explored for another 15 minutes and then decided that it was time to make the trek back. As we packed up our stuff and started swimming back toward the entrance, passing by the families that went by us before, we said goodbye, and as we were getting back up onto dry land, we saw another 5 or so people. We could once again tell that these people had not made the same journey we had, and when I asked the group if they were the property owners, they said that it was their aunt and uncle’s property.

It seemed like this group was meeting the group that was already in the water. After them asking about us, I once again relayed that we had gotten in the river about 7 miles upstream and had followed the river all the way here. Reenforcing, as always, that we wanted to be sure to follow all laws and not trespass.

The said basically the equivalent of “Good job. If you did that, you deserve to be here.” It made me feel better. It seemed that the property owner’s main concern was that people would trespass on their property and that the location would lose its magic. I could totally understand that. If you opened this place up to the public, it would likely be overrun by tourists and people would trash the place.

By being intimidating and making themselves seem like they would eat you if you crossed their property lines, it made sure that only those who really were willing to sacrifice for adventure and beauty would make the journey. In the end, I really only have respect for those who own the property on either side of the location. They’re protecting a place that could so easily be misused or ruined by people who don’t care about God’s beautiful creation.

The Way Back

After 7 miles of swimming and hiking, and spending another hour and a half swimming in the canyon, not to mention, the sun having beat the heck out of us on the way here, Timothy and I were already tired starting the hike.

It felt weird to start such a long journey after just swimming. Swimming is such an exhausting thing, and usually, after I swim it feels like I need to take a nap, or at least relax for a bit out of the sun. But here we found us with one of the more difficult hikes still ahead of us.

The first three miles on the way back felt much different than they did on the way there. We knew what to expect this time, but now it was the hottest part of the day. The sun was high in the sky, and spending two hours hiking in heat of the sun, having to take care where your footing was placing you, was all-around, energy-consuming.

Whereas on the way there, we were desperately hoping for dry land to walk on, we now couldn’t wait to be back in the cool water. Even swimming sounded more preferable than getting cooked alive in the sun.

Signs of Trouble – Part 2

We eventually made it past the hottest part of the trip back and began getting to the spots that we had to swim or wade through. One of the spots that we went by had about 6 people hiking up the water. I could almost immediately tell by the demeanor that these people were either landowners or close to it.

As we got closer, I heard the lady turn to, what appeared to be her husband, and ask, “do we knew them?”

After hearing this, I yelled out and said, “I don’t think you know us.” I don’t really know what I was thinking. I was just trying to mitigate before we were yelled at I guess. As we got closer, she asked who I was. I told her my name was Joey. She then asked again and I told her again. She then asked, “And what did you say your last name was?” Without thinking I blurted out “I’m Joey Wickham!” Realizing as soon as I said it that she now had my full name to use against me if anything were to happen. I still felt okay because we hadn’t trespassed and had remained on the riverbed, but I knew landowners might still do their best to make your life miserable.

After I told her where we got in, she immediately said “You know you’re not supposed to do that, right?” This was our first real opposition. Everyone else after hearing what we did was cool with us, but this lady wasn’t going to have it. Timothy had screenshotted the laws about waterways being public property in case we came into conflict with anyone, but I was desperately hoping not to have to use it.

I explained in depth to this lady what we had done, and that we were very intentional about not trespassing. We wanted to do everything the right way, and totally understood people not wanting to trespass.

She told us that we were lucky that we hadn’t gotten arrested, and that usually, people who do that were. I had my doubts and assumed she was just trying to bully us into thinking it was a huge deal so that we wouldn’t tell our friends about it.

As the conversation went on, it became clear that what we had done was totally legal. She said that usually people who do the trip don’t prepare well and don’t have enough water, and then end up having to trespass across people’s land to get back to water faster. This was really the crux of it. Of course, if people did that they could be arrested. They’re breaking the law. But we had prepared well and had stayed in the riverbed the entire way, and still had plenty of water.

We found out that this lady was cousins with the property owner next to the river that we were going past, and once again, the guy that seemed to be her husband, seemed pretty cool with us, and in some ways gave us kudos for making the trek that we did. He said, “I bet it was worth it, wasn’t it?” I said “It absolutely was”, and he nodded with a smile.

We parted ways, and in the end, they told us that it was no problem and to be safe on our way back. I was thankful to have diverted another potential situation.

The Final Stretch

There isn’t a lot to say about the last leg of our journey. Timothy and I were both completely exhausted. As we got to the spots that we had to swim, neither of us said a word and progressed, I am sure, much more slowly than we had before. It didn’t help that we were now going upstream, though the current was negligible.

In silence we swam, would have to wade for a bit, swim again, climb up onto some boulder fields and walk for a bit, get back in and wade, repeat, repeat, repeat.

I finally saw the spot in the river that I remembered seeing our Venezuelan friends turn back the other way. I knew that we were getting close and I was excited. Timothy and I started talking again as we had new energy that the end of the journey gave us, and continued to be thankful that the Venezuelans turned back when they did.

With the final push in us, I thought it would be a good time to take a picture to document our final minutes of the adventure. I pulled my waterproof bag out of my backpack as we were treading water and pulled my phone out. Without thinking, I left my waterproof bag (opened) on top of my backpack as I tried to snap a picture. The picture was completely foggy and I realized it was a fool’s errand and turned to put my phone back in…but at that moment I realized that I had dropped my waterproof bag in the water. Which wouldn’t have been a big deal were it not that it had both my wallet, and at this moment, more importantly, my keys.

I was frantic for a second. I couldn’t believe we were so close and I had done something so stupid. I immediately prayed that we would be able to find the bag quickly on the bottom of the river floor and that the items would still be inside.

Thank the Lord, literally, because within about 1 minute, I was able to find the bag and after asking Timothy to hold my phone out of the water, dove down to retrieve it. And to my great relief, the keys and wallet were still inside.

Yet another crisis averted.

The Return Road

We made it back to the bridge we had hopped off almost 12 hours before. We climbed back on it and began the short trek to our car. I had *mostly* peace of mind about where we had parked since a police officer told us it was okay, but I still had a nagging feeling in my head of “What if it got towed though?”

I prayed and prayed as we got closer to where we would be able to see the car. “Please God don’t let it have gotten towed. We’re both exhausted.”

To both Timothy and my great relief, the car was there. In one piece, and not even a ticket on the windshield.

We got to the car. I changed out of my wet clothes immediately (which hurt like the devil due to 12 hours of sun beatdown on my poor body), took off my wet shoes, and plopped myself in the car. It hadn’t felt that good to sit in a long time.

We drove the hourish drive back to Austin, stopping at Cabo Bob’s on the way back to pick up burritos, and immediately after finishing our food, crashed for the night.

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, although I don’t think this was the most difficult hike I’ve ever been on, due to the circumstances around it, it is I think the most exhausted after a hike that I have ever felt before.

An Exhortation For Adventure

I can’t explain to you how exhilarating this trip was for me. As Timothy and I drove back home, it felt like we had just spent 3 months together. It grows you closer to people faster than you ever thought possible.

It seemed there was no way that the same day we were driving back home was the same day we had been trying to find a parking spot near the entrance.

It was truly an adventure of a lifetime, and it took less than a day. I encourage you to find an adventure. Do something crazy. Do just enough planning to make sure you don’t die, but let the details work themselves out afterward. You might gain a few gray hairs, but at least every hair will have a story behind it.

This trip cost us $14/each. Gas, food for the trail, and a Cabo Bob burrito at the end. Stop making excuses. Take an adventure.