Tremendous and Sheer, 43rd Day of Summer, 525 M.E. (Castor):  The Edwards Plateau of central Texas rises above the adjacent Gulf Coastal Plain along the Balcones Fault Escarpment. According to my old, battered copy of Nevin Fenneman's Physiography of the Eastern United States (1932), the Edwards Plateau, also known as Texas Hill Country, is underlain by the Wichita and Fredericksburg limestones. The Hill Country is notable for its karst topography and tall rugged hills. The landscape is further dissected by many rivers, including the Guadalupe, and the surrounding hills rise 400–500 feet above the surrounding valleys. Throughout the region, a thin layer of topsoil leaves rocks and boulders exposed, making the region very dry and prone to flash flooding, much like paved, urban environments. 

Kerr County (Texas) historian Joe Herring, Jr. notes that Camp Stewart was established in 1926 on the South Fork of the Guadalupe near the confluence with Cypress Creek. A year later, Camp Stewart became Camp Mystic for Girls. In the early days, Camp Mystic consisted of 1400 acres, and the girls were housed in 18 log cabins constructed from cypress logs cut on the camp's property. Today, the camp occupies 700 acres and has been in continuous use except for two years when the U.S. Army took it over during World War II to serve as a center for veterans to recover from war injuries.

The USGS maintains a stream gaging station on the Guadalupe River at Hunt, Texas, near Camp Mystic. Floods there are considered "major" if the stream gage exceeds 22 feet, which has happened three times (1978, 1986, and 2001) since 1966. However, the largest known flood occurred in 1932, before regular monitoring had begun. On July 2 of that year, the gage height reached 36.6 feet and the flow was 206,000 ft³/sec, equivalent to 2.34 Olympic-sized swimming pools every second.

Camp Mystic and other camps along the Guadalupe were hit hard by the 1932 flood. Buildings and property were washed away overnight.  Herring reports that new structures were subsequently built above the flood levels and many campers slept in tents instead of cabins that year, and viewed those accommodations not as a hardship, but as a great adventure.

According to Herring, another flood hit the Guadalupe in 1935, and though most camps had rebuilt above the flood plain, questions arose about the safety of camping along the Guadalupe and attendance at some camps had begun to suffer.

The flood that just occurred this year on the Guadalupe caused the gage at Hunt to rise to 37.5 feet on July 4, almost a foot higher than the 36.6 feet recorded in 1932. However, although the gage was higher this year, the reported discharge, or flow, at 4:35 am was 120,000 ft³/sec (1.36 Olympic-sized swimming pools per second), far less than the 206,000 ft³/sec reported for 1932. I suspect that the stream gage may have been changed or adjusted at some point after 1932 (this is not uncommon), as a higher river level (gage height) means greater discharge (river flow). 

Regardless of the discrepancies in the data, the 2025 flood is comparable to that of 1932. Tragically, this year's flood still managed to wash away campers and counselors at Camp Mystic, despite the buildings having been moved to above the 1932 flood level. This raises the question of whether the camp had reoccupied the lower elevations impacted by the earlier flood, or if new structures (barracks?) were constructed down in the floodplain, perhaps when the Army took over during WW II.