Among the 160 canoes floating in Spring Lake’s waters for the 62nd Annual Texas Water Safari on June 13, Gage Smith, stern rower and accounting senior, and Jared Richter, bow rower and finance senior, had many reasons to be nervous.
They were unaware of paddling before February, when Smith first proposed the idea to Richter. Before then, they had only met a few times. They spent the next few months paddling for six hours at a time on the San Marcos River whenever they could, using the unconventional way of trial and error. The days leading up to the race filled them with impending doom, as they would spend up to the next 100 hours traversing 260 miles southeast from San Marcos to Seadrift, Texas, in an aluminum boat.
Additionally, several storms the day before caused the Guadalupe River to rise 13 feet, changing every aspect of the race from natural hazards to altered checkpoints. Race officials warned teams to prepare for high water, unlike what they experienced before.
“Everything that we practiced for months was essentially irrelevant because the river wasn’t the same river at that point,” Richter said. “There are all these obstacles that weren’t a factor 24 hours prior to the kickoff.”
As Smith and Richter stepped into their boat and took hold of their paddles, a sense of agency replaced their anxiety. They agreed to participate in the race to see if they could, with Smith wanting to try another endurance event and Richter unable to imagine passing up such an opportunity. Their strategy would remain the same: work from problem-to-problem and checkpoint-to-checkpoint.
The sounds of community members cheering at local parks or on bridges dissipated after the first few hours. At any given time, there were about three boats within sight. Smith and Richter needed to make the first two checkpoints by the same-day cutoff times, or they could not continue the race. Smith said this was intentional to ensure those who were adequately prepared could keep that pace. There was hardly any time to replenish food and water on the go, so all they could do was paddle.
“We knew going into it that day one was going to be fast paced, and we weren’t going to be able to stop very often, and so we were pretty rushed,” Smith said.
The upper San Marcos River had many rocks and hazards. One team had their canoe cracked in half on a rock and wrapped around a tree. Another waited against the river’s strong current under a bridge for half an hour. Smith and Richter observed how other people managed the obstacles before attempting them, emerging mostly unscathed.
“Every time someone else got into an accident, it’s one time that we didn’t,” Richter said. “We were on the same course, so there was no shortage of risks and no shortage of hazards. The same obstacles that people wrapped their boats around or got flipped on were just ones that we played a little bit different or got lucky on.”
Smith and Richter made the first two checkpoints in time and nearly reached the third one by dusk. The first day felt like any other training day. On the first night, they were excited to be in the water for 24 hours.
Then the sun rose, and the heat returned. The days started blending in, and trees and branches started looking funny. While Richter saw canoes that were not there, Smith dreamt with his eyes open. They almost fell out of the boat multiple times. At night, they navigated the waters by moonlight and a little headlamp. Branches belonging to trees swallowed by the flooding danced with the river’s current, and they dodged underwater trees about half the time.
Their support system — friends, family and partners who followed the two in their cars — kept them going. They hugged and motivated Smith and Richter at each checkpoint, bringing them snacks and comfort. Their team captains, Caleb Crabtree and Zay Clarke, coordinated the meetups, taking the time and weather into consideration as they waited for Smith and Richter to arrive.
“Having the checkpoints and being able to see friends, families and loved ones was incredibly motivating for a few reasons, but also it did help punctuate the days and… forget about everything that happened previously to the next checkpoint,” Richter said.
Seeing familiar faces tempted Smith and Richter to stay and hang out, but every minute they spent not in the boat was more time they would have to stay out there.
Smith said the high water did not become a factor until further downriver. On the second day, the river rose 2 feet during a flash flood. Lightning crackled down as Crabtree and Clarke waited in the pouring rain at a checkpoint in Cuero, Texas, spotting debris and a fridge floating downriver. Richter called them earlier, informing them of their plan to seek shelter on a hilltop and latch the boat to a tree to wait out the storm. Crabtree could not reach them for a while due to a bad cell phone signal.
“I called Jared’s dad, and I was telling him, ‘I know Gage well, and I feel I can judge his mentality on it, but how would Jared feel in this situation?’ and he was like, ‘Don’t call it yet, wait it out,’” Crabtree said.
Richter called them 30 minutes later. The rain passed, so they returned to the river and kept going.
Day three felt the same. At noon, another team informed Smith and Richter about the race’s official finish line changing to be 30 miles closer due to hazardous water conditions. Their speed slightly decreased with their morale.
“After that, we were feeling a mix of emotions — a little sad we got shorted out of the longer sections of the bay that we were hoping for but also excited knowing we would be done that evening before the sun went down,” Smith said.
Blasting the angriest gym playlist Richter could find on their speaker, he and Smith gave the rest of the race all they had. They chased the same team from earlier down the river, the latter frantically splashing their paddles and anxiously peeking over their shoulders as the former approached them, gasping and wheezing.
The two teams simultaneously crossed the finish line, with another storm soon approaching. Between the rowing, sleepless nights and lack of back support, Smith and Richter were very fatigued and high on adrenaline.
Because they finished sooner than expected, their support system missed the end but trickled in to congratulate them. They hugged one another, exchanging good jobs and high-fives. Crabtree never doubted they would finish the race.
“In the end, [the high-water levels] honestly worked to their advantage because they gave them that extra momentum they needed to get through their checkpoints,” Crabtree said. “[Making each checkpoint] attributed to their training, athleticism and dedication, but the water level and the speed of the water contributed to our success as well, which was a stroke of luck.”
