Paddle Up 3 on Bayou Fountain
The weather was great and the water was wonderful when BREC Outdoor Adventure came out with a group for a Paddle Up 3 on Bayou Fountain.
We always have a great time helping out at BREC Outdoor Adventure at paddling events, and we love bringing paddlers out to show off Bayou Fountain, our favorite local paddling waterway. Throw the two together, and we’ve got a veritable Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of a day.
After a bit of “percussive steering” near the beginning, everyone quickly got the hang of paddling their various kayaks, and we headed down the bayou on a day that was just made for paddling. We had a nice relaxing paddle downstream, complete with a stop to admire the Palmetto House. After a nice run to the Wall, we turned and headed back to the launch.
Everyone had a great time, and a few people even stuck around long enough to grab some PaddleBR souvenirs (pocket paddling maps, the usual fridge magnets, and the special paddle-events-only PaddleBR keyrings). Then it was home in time for lunch, a nap, and dreams of heading back to work on Ward Creek.
PaddleBR 
We paddled Bayou Fountain this past Saturday. Thanks for making this beauty accessible. Is there a time of year that kayaks can float under the Rackley Bridge?
Actually, time of year means nothing. It’s just whether we’ve had enough rain to raise the bayou for a few days. When last I did some statistics on the bayou levels, the previous 120 days turned out to show something like 85% of the time Bayou Fountain was passably below Rackley Bridge.
If you look at the Bayou Fountain at Bluebonnet USGS stream gauge, the bottom of Rackley Bridge corresponds to roughly 8.3′ (more or less, as Bluebonnet is a couple miles upstream). The bayou pops up to bridge level whenever we have a good 2-3″ Louisiana rain, but usually it’s back down pretty quickly. The last two weeks were a bit unusual, as the big rains on the 24th brought it up into the bridge, and then additional bumps on the 27th and 29th bounced it back up twice. That made about a solid week of not being able to paddle under instead of the usual day or two.
If you’re at the launch, the square corner post of the deck that drops down to meet the launch stairs is an unexpectedly convenient marker. The bottom of that post is a close analogue to the bottom of Rackley Bridge, so if it’s at least a couple stairs out of the water, you should likely be able to get under the bridge.
https://waterdata.usgs.gov/la/nwis/uv?cb_00065=on&period=7&site_no=07378810