Many of yall may have seen this picture of The Narrows on the Blanco River SE of Blanco. I'm fond of Hill Country Rivers and hiking to remote places and started doing some research on it. The land on both sides is private property and actively patrolled by LEOs. The only public access, and depending on who you ask the existence any public access is debatable, is to enter the river bed from a public road crossing (SH 407/Chimney Valley Rd) and travel the river bed to the Narrows. From reading some hiking reports it seems the local and county police aid the property owners by making parking around river crossings difficult. One of the accounts below describes quite a bit of harassment. I'm curious if anyone on Texags has made the trip. It sounds like an awesome place but I'm not sure it's worth the potential headaches. I imagine that depending on water levels it wouldn't be possible without the ability to put in a kayak etc. I think if I was to attempt this I would come from down stream at the Burnett Ranch Community Park.

http://www.texasriverbum.com/hike-and-hassled-to-the-narrows
http://www.texasriverbum.com/narrows
http://www.texasriverbum.com/the-dry-blanco

By the way the comments section of the trip reports are pretty amusing regarding the public access vs private property debate.

If the riverbed meets the navigable by statute definition, and you legally access it from a public ROW and stay in the legally defined riverbed the whole way, you should be fine.

I can understand the landowners trying to discourage and bluff people into not going out there, and being upset by actual trespassing.

It seems they have made a local ordinance against parking anywhere near the river crossing mentioned in the trip reports. I get being pissed off about people trespassing and leaving trash etc it just seems a bit overboard. I figure the kind of person willing and able to hike/kayak 5-7 miles and back is probably not the type to trash the place.

My old lady talks about that place often. Shes been there by knowing one of the property owners.

This is the same thing I encountered trying to find a place to access the Blanco in Wimberley a few weeks ago. No parking signs within a few hundreds yards of the river, so no viable place to park and walk in.

That is a neat looking spot. I don't blame the landowners for keeping people out of there. Most people I'm sure would respect it but someone would trash it.

I don't blame landowners for strictly enforcing trespassing but it seems like it has gone past that. In one of the trip reports the group did everything legal but still got law enforcement called on them.

So I grew up in an Episcopal Church and at least one of the landowners is Episcopal and has a retreat center just a mile from the Narrows. Our church would go every 6 months or so. We were always allowed access when we were staying there (in fact, I've never seen cops out there, but haven't been in 10+ years).

Did some googling and found this page: Safe For Work Link. There's a gentleman's name to contact for availability of the retreat center, but maybe you could arrange availability to the Narrows. No promises.

Went there in high school through a camp I attended in Burnet.

Awesome place if you can get in.

Figuring out how to get there went to the top of my priority list for next summer.

That fern is interesting. I have a few hundred acres in Blanco and I have some of that fern that grows inside a small passage in the rocks that goes underground. I've always thought that there might be a cave down there.

I'm overseas all summer but keep us posted on your success getting to the Narrows.

bookmyer said:

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That fern is interesting. I have a few hundred acres in Blanco and I have some of that fern that grows inside a small passage in the rocks that goes underground. I've always thought that there might be a cave down there.

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It's a maidenhair fern. They are common around seeps and springs in the Hill Country.

Haven't seen this posted anywhere but Blanco County made parking prohibited for the 5 miles of road nearest the hike in point.

http://www.blanconews.com/1722-chimney-valley-residents-voice-concerns-to-commissioners

From what I've read you could still come up from the south though there'd be a couple swims involved that way.