Tubing Adventures

Tubing is Texas summer. You sit in an inner tube, the river carries you, and the entire activity is doing nothing for two hours in cool water on a hundred-degree day. It is the cheapest good time in the Hill Country and it requires no skill at all - which is exactly why the one thing that matters is river conditions rather than technique.

Check the flow before you drive

This is the whole game, and most guides skip it. Texas rivers run on dam releases and rain, and the difference between a lovely float and a genuinely dangerous day is a number you can look up before you leave the house.

• Too low and you spend the afternoon dragging your tube across gravel. Kids hate this more than adults do.
• Too high and the river stops being a lazy float. Strainers, low branches and undercut banks are the actual hazard on a Hill Country river, not depth.
• After heavy rain, do not go. Flash flooding in the Hill Country is fast and it is the reason people die on these rivers.

USGS river gauges publish live flow for the Guadalupe, Comal, Frio and Llano, and every outfitter will tell you the current level if you call. Ask what they consider a good family level, not just whether they are open.

The rivers

The Comal in New Braunfels is the shortest, warmest and most controlled - spring-fed, constant temperature, about a two-hour float, and the most beginner-friendly water in the state. The Guadalupe is longer and more variable, and depends heavily on release from Canyon Lake. The Frio at Garner State Park is the prettiest and the coldest, and Garner is a whole day out rather than just a float. The Llano at South Llano River State Park is the quietest of the four.

Outside Texas: Mountain Fork River at Broken Bow is a cold, clear, dam-fed float, and Kauai Tubing Adventure floats old sugar plantation irrigation ditches, which is a genuinely strange and great thing to do with kids.

Practical things nobody tells you

• Water shoes are not optional. River bottoms are rock, and broken glass is a real thing at the popular access points.
• Rent a tube with a bottom for young kids. The classic donut lets small children slip straight through.
• Take a cooler tube and tie it on. Nothing floats away faster than an untethered drink.
• Nothing that cannot get wet, or get lost. Phones go in a waterproof pouch on a lanyard or stay in the car. Sunglasses need a strap.
• Life jackets for anyone who is not a confident swimmer, regardless of how calm it looks. Most outfitters provide them free.
• Sunscreen the tops of your feet. Six hours pointed at the sun is the single most common tubing sunburn.

Best time

June through Labor Day for the Texas rivers - the whole point is heat. Weekdays are dramatically quieter than weekends, and the Comal and Guadalupe get genuinely crowded on a July Saturday. Shuttles usually stop running in the late afternoon, so start earlier than you think.