“I may not be the only one who’s done it,” admits Dr. David Hoerster, “but I can almost guarantee that I’m the oldest.” “It” is a 125-mile kayak trip from Telegraph to Kingsland – almost the entire navigable length of the Llano River. “And it’s longer than that by canoe or kayak,” Dr. Hoerster explains, pointing out that there’s a lot of back-and-forth across the river. “Sometimes, in really shallow water, you’ve got to get out and push the boat along.”
Dr. Hoerster first thought about making the trip two or three years ago (when he was only 54 or 55 years old), and the idea had been growing in his mind for quite some time. Some time this spring (he’s now 57), he mentioned the idea to his nephew, Davis Willman and family friend Andy Virdell, both college students. While neither was able to commit to making the whole trip, both liked the idea and agreed to start the trip with him near the historic Kimble County community of Telegraph.
Now, Dr. Hoerster is no stranger to the Llano River. His family was one of the earliest pioneer families in the area, and one of the most influential. He himself has lived in Llano all his life; he wasn’t very old when his father, Dr. Dan Hoerster, introduced him to the joys of fishing on the Llano River. Things were a little more relaxed back in the 50s, and Dr. Dan was well known to ranchers all around, so it was no big deal for the family of seven (three boys, two girls) to just go camping on the riverbank.
By the time he had reached junior high school age, David was an avid fisherman. He and his two younger brothers would often go fishing with their friends, the three Wallace boys, at the lake below the dam just upstream from Llano. When David was a junior in high school, he planned what he now calls his “first escapade,” where he, his brother, and two cousins, floated down the river in “beat up canoes” on a two-day trip to Kingsland. He remembers that they had no sunscreen, and were badly sunburned by the time they reached their destination, but it didn’t discourage him from making the same trip “at least 20 times” in the intervening years. As a matter of fact, he had explored the river as far west as White’s Crossing in Mason County. But this particular recent adventure took him farther west, and more than forty percent of the distance was new territory for the intrepid doctor.
Dr. Hoerster planned the trip carefully, and “trained lightly” for a couple of weeks before the trip. He chose as his starting point the southernmost low water crossing on Highway 377, just a couple of miles from the old Telegraph store. The trio put into the river on Tuesday afternoon (May 26), carrying a tent, a small Coleman cooker (“It will boil water in five minutes,” Dr. Hoerster explains), a small supply of water and dried foods, and one change of dry clothes to sleep in. They built a fire each night where they camped, usually on an island in the middle of the river.
The first leg of the trip, on the south branch of the river, passes through the beautiful scenery of the South Llano River State Park and 700 Springs, an area so beautiful that it was chosen for the filming of the 2007 movie, River’s End, produced by Glen Stephens and starring Barry Corbin. The weather was good and three kayakers were having a wonderful time. They stopped to camp the first night just upstream from Junction.
The scenery was still beautiful after they passed Junction and followed the river’s meandering path through the unspoiled Hill Country to the east, but the miles of paddling weren’t exactly easy. When Davis got out of the river at FM 1871 the third day, he was “almost worn out.” That night there was a thunderstorm, and the two remaining kayakers had to move their camp from a sand bar in the river up on to the river bank. Andy went as far as the Hwy 87 bridge (the starting point for the Great Castell Kayak Race just eight days later) before he (and the tent) had to leave the river.
Dr. Hoerster kept paddling. He knew he had to get to Castell that day to have any hope of completing the trip on Saturday, so it was a tremendous relief to come around a bend and see the church steeple reaching into the sky. He stopped in Castell for a barbecue sandwich before continuing on with his trip.
That night, Dr. Hoerster camped with just a thin backpacker’s “ground pack” on a rock below Schneider’s Slab, under the stars. He got started early the next morning (“a beautiful morning,” he recalls), figuring he had to make it to town by noon to stay on schedule. “I got frustrated once,” he remembers. “There were real hard rapids by the Slator Ranch.” But at 10:58, he could see the bridge in Llano. He used his cell phone to call his wife, Malinda, who met him in Llano with “a Subway sandwich and Gatorade.” He “gave her everything but the drinking water,” and was back in the river before 1 p.m.
The end was almost in sight, but Dr. Hoerster still had a pretty tight schedule. “I was still worried,” he says. “I knew I had to make it to the crossing (off Hwy 29 in eastern Llano County) by 4:30, so I kept paddling hard.”
He made it to the crossing at precisely 3:08, and knew that he could easily make it to Kingsland by nightfall. “I relaxed for the last 3 or 4 hours,” he remembers, smiling. “I swam and explored in some of my favorite spots, watched the wildlife, and just enjoyed the scenery.” He arrived at his destination, the Kingsland Slab, somewhere between 7 and 8 p.m. only to find that his cell phone battery was dead. Fortunately, he saw his friends, Ken and Jean Rostrum, driving across the slab, and was able to wave them down. “I must have looked bad,” he says. “They kept wanting to give me water, but all I needed was a cell phone. At that point, I could have kept on going quite a bit farther.”
It was a huge adventure, and Dr. Hoerster admits that it gave him “tremendous satisfaction” to successfully complete the trip. His adventure meant even more to him because of the memories that it rekindled in his mind. “I paddled by the first place my dad ever took me fishing,” he recalls. “Also, the last place I fished with him, and the first place I took my son to fish.” It reminded him, too, of times that “Malinda and I went canoeing when we were engaged.” It was a wonderful experience to be “immersed in God’s creation” along the mostly unspoiled river, and perhaps most of all, at 57 years old, “I can almost guarantee I’m the oldest” to travel the length of the Llano River by kayak. Congratulations to Dr. David Hoerster!