Guadalupe River
Texas's most famous float river, dam-fed and cold below Canyon Lake, with the classic tube runs at River Road, Horseshoe Loop, and Gruene.
Today’s read
This read is the lower Guad, the tailwater below Canyon Dam (the River Road / Horseshoe reach), the water the float scene runs on.
The lower Guad, flow history & what's normal
The upper Guad, the river above Canyon Lake
Above the lake the Guadalupe is a different river: rain-fed and free-flowing past Kerrville, Comfort, and Guadalupe River State Park. This gage at Spring Branch, the last stop before Canyon Lake, is the best single read on the natural river: droughts show raw here, and so do the floods, including the deadly July 2025 flood that swept the upper basin. The lake absorbs all of that and turns it into the steady, cold release the lower river floats on.
All gauges on the Guadalupe
About the Guadalupe
The Guadalupe rises in the Hill Country west of Kerrville and runs east through Comfort into Canyon Lake. Everything above the lake is rain-fed and flashy; the float scene everyone knows lives below Canyon Dam, where the river runs on the lake's release, cold, clear tailwater whose flow changes when the dam's outflow changes, not when it rains.
The first reach below the dam is River Road and Horseshoe Loop, the classic Hill Country tube run. The premium trip is 1st Crossing to Gruene: a long, all-day float with 4–5 rapids and the prettiest water on the river, the biggest rapids on the Guadalupe are below 1st Crossing. Outfitters run it at roughly 200 cfs of dam release and up, and at high water it becomes a guided-only rafting run with rapids up to Class III.
By Gruene, spring inflow between the dam and town lifts the flow above the bare dam release, so the Gruene gage usually reads higher than the release at Sattler. Gruene is the postcard stretch, the historic dance hall, the biggest cluster of outfitters, and the bottom of the long run.
A note on what "good" means here: the Guadalupe's prime is around 300 cfs, plenty of push for the long runs while still friendly for a family float. 400+ is the river at full send: awesome water, but fast enough that it's better left to confident floaters than small kids. In wetter cycles the river held those flows for years at a time; Central Texas has been in drought for over a decade, so today's low releases are a drought baseline, floatable, often pleasant, but not the river at its best. We say so instead of grading a drought trickle an A.
Float stretches we track
Safety on the Guadalupe
- ⚠ Low-head dams along River Road are deadly even at comfortable flows, know where they are and portage.
- ⚠ The Gruene low-water bridge is extremely dangerous at high flow. Exit the river above Gruene Rapid; do not approach the bridge.
- ⚠ At high water the 1st Crossing→Gruene section becomes guided-only, with rapids running up to Class III.
- ⚠ The tailwater below Canyon Dam stays cold year-round, a long swim in it is no joke even in August.
Season by season
- •Summer: the float season runs on the dam release. Watch the Sattler gage, outfitters need roughly 200 cfs to run the long sections.
- •Spring and fall: rain in the upper basin fills Canyon Lake and can push releases up; the best flows often follow wet springs.
- •Winter: the cold tailwater below the dam is a stocked rainbow-trout fishery, one of the few year-round trout waters in Texas.
Outfitters on the Guadalupe River
- Rockin' R River Rides
- Whitewater Sports
- River Sports Tubes
- Little Ponderosa River Outfitters
- Shanty Tubes
Along the river
New Braunfels · Gruene · Sattler · Canyon Lake · Comfort · Kerrville