Buffalo River - Tyler Bend to Gilbert

Some friends and I took advantage of the incredibly warm February weekend we just had and went floating on the Buffalo.  We left one car at Gilbert and took two inflatable kayaks and a normal kayak up the road to Tyler Bend.  The gate to the main access area was closed, so we took the gravel road to the smaller put-in just upstream.  After unloading all our gear, five friends and an apprehensive puppy set sail on a sunny Sunday.  Though the water was incredibly cold, it was perfect in terms of quantity (limited scrapping, no dragging), clarity (very high), and color (brilliant light blue).  I don't want to bore you with all the details, but highlights of the ~3 hour float included: no one spilling into the the freezing water, lots of rocks being successfully skipped, our dog not being super scared for most of his first float, seeing lots of kingfishers and non-shy turtles, and having the river largely to ourselves; something unheard of for this stretch during warmer months of the year.

This section of the Buffalo is great because the shuttle between put-ins is short and you can pick between floats of almost any length between 1 and 6 miles by using different combinations of put-ins at Tyler Bend, Grinder's Ferry, Shine Eye, and Gilbert.

If you ever find yourself in the area during bad floating conditions, check out some of the trails at Tyler Bend.

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