Archive for the ‘Canoeing’ Category

Day 4 On The Allagash

The nights grew warmer after our 40 degree evening at Umsaskis Thoroughfare. We slept late at Big Brook as we only had about nine miles to paddle to Allagash Village where we’d take out. Around 8:30 that morning a lone yellow kayak slipped below the bluff. We watch as she worked her way through McGargle Rocks. They would be our first challenge of the day.

Approaching McGargle Rocks

By 9:30 we were on the river and were quickly into McGargle Rocks. In years past logs driven down the river would often get caught on the rocks creating jams. When that would happen, river drivers would climb out on the logs to push them loose. It was a dangerous job and once the jam broke the men would often have to run across the rolling logs for their lives. McGargle Rocks was named after a driver whose luck ran out after breaking up a jam. He was killed when the jam broke.

We hugged the left shore, following the channel as we worked our way through the rocks. McGargle Rocks is a mix of quick water and shallow stone beds. One minute you might be running fast between rocks, only to find yourself suddenly beached on a rock bar. Chris did a nice job of taking us through.

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Day 3 On The Allagash River

Six summers ago when we first went into the woods, Chris was an 11-year-old who had complete faith in what his father was doing. Since that summer he has grown older and wiser. He’s gone from never having been in a canoe, to running rapids, from never having been in the woods, to finding his way at night in a pathless forest. He was once frightened by noises in the night. Now he roams the woods, fishing pole in hand at dusk seeking out spots to float his fly and coming back into camp after dark with his dinner already filleted. He has grown up and some of the most important lessons he has learned didn’t come from a book.

Over the past six summers he has assumed more responsibility. No longer do I make all the decisions. More and more I defer to him and we’re usually in agreement with his choices. Even when we’re not, I’ll go with his decision on something just to see how it turns out.

The point is that he is confident enough to make the decision in the first place. With the canoe rushing toward loud, splashing, white water, he’ll pick a course, quickly point it out and then lay into his paddle. There is never a chance to change your mind. You have to make a choice and then live with it. For the most part when it comes to the rivers and the woods, he makes good decisions.

Last year I thought might be our last summer together as he was growing up and would want to do other things. No, he made it clear; he wanted to go back to Maine.

Our third night on the river was another cold one. By 6 o’clock I was up cooking breakfast. I woke Chris at 6:30. It was chilly enough that we could see our breath in the still air. A big breakfast, hot coffee and hot chocolate and we were ready. We carried our gear down off the bluff to the canoe and pushed off the rocks from our Five Fingers campsite.

When we paddled the six and a half miles between Five Fingers and Michaud Farm three years earlier it was shallow and boney. We ended up dragging our canoe far too much. As we had expected the water was again low, but this time we did a much better job of following the channel.

Sign marking Cunliff Depot

About 10 o’clock we pulled our boat ashore at Cunliffe Depot on the east side of the river. The only marking visable today from the river of the once thriving depot is a small sign at the top of the bank. We pulled our canoe ashore and climbed the bank. Even though nature has reclaimed the site, there are still reminders of the past. Scattered and rusted old machine parts litter the ground. A walk to the right along wooded trail leads to a small log stream crossing. On the other side are the remains of Lombard Log Haulers.

Logs across a small stream at Cunliffe Depot

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Day 2 On The Allagash River

The north Maine woods were once the home of Native American tribes. It is believed they first appeared in the tundra-like environment left by the last Ice Age about 10,000 or more years ago.

Groups of Paleo Indians traveled through region between 12,000 to 9,000 years ago. A larger population during the Archaic period from10,000 to 4,000 years ago followed. These people were generally nomadic, using nets for fishing and stone or wood tools. Artifacts discovered from these periods include arrow and spearheads, scrappers, stone cutting tools, stone axes and gouges for woodworking.

The Ceramic Period from 3,000 to 500 years ago is named for the emergence of the use of pottery. This enabled cooking directly on the fire, rather than heating stones and placing them into a bark or wooden container. Archaeologists have found pottery in the Allagash region at least 2,000 years old.

The arrival of Europeans slowly forced most of the Indians to move away from the Allagash area. By the early 1800’s, after thousands of years of Native American occupation, the area was ripe for the lumberman’s axe.

As the story is told by historians at Maine’s Department of Conservation, about the time Maine became a state in1820, a businessman from Salem, Massachusetts, named David Pingree, inherited large tracts of land in the Allagash region. His keen eye for commerce eventually gazed upon the seemingly unending tracts of timber-covered land in the northern half of the state. Basing his new enterprise in Bangor, a town that hosted more than three hundred sawmills by the mid-1830s, Pingree, under the guidance of his partner Ebenezer Coe, began to profit handsomely from his operations, wresting mighty trees from the wilderness, running them down river to Bangor where they were milled into lumber and put aboard ships that could carry them wherever a market beckoned.

In 1837, the first of several financial panics struck the region, and though Bangor’s lumber interests suffered under competition from states to the west, Pingree expanded his holdings and pressed on. In time, he owned more than one million acres of Maine forestland, was the state’s largest taxpayer, and held more land than any other private entity in New England.

Before long depots or small villages associated with the lumber industry were scattered throughout the region. Farms sprouted to provided food and forage for the many villages and logging camps. At one point the 3.5 million acres that is the North Maine Woods today, supported seven softball teams among the villages that traveled the rivers and roads to play against one another.

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Day One Of Our 4-Day 53-Mile Canoe Trip

The thermometer read 44 degrees at 6 o’clock this morning on Cape Cod (September 21, 2010). It brought back memories from just over a month ago when Chris and I were camped along the Allagash Wilderness Waterway and the overnight temperature dropped to 40. When you’re in 40 degree sleeping bags, which are realistically more like 50 degree bags, it gets a bit uncomfortable. We had our mummy bags zipped over our heads, but it made little difference. By 5 o’clock we were up just so as to move around and try to get warm.

We were camped at a spot we had stayed at in 2007, the last time we paddled the Allagash. It is one of our favorites. The spot is called Sandy Point and is on the thoroughfare between Umsaskis Lake and Long Lake.

Our canoe at Umsaskis Thoroughfare

That morning, because of the temperature difference between the 40 degree air and the relatively warmer water, the fog was very thick. From the reeds on the sand beside our canoe, looking out over the water we could see about 20 feet. We were in no hurry, so we built a fire and started to warm-up. (more…)

Allagash Lake & Johnson Pond

Those cool August nights under a northern Maine sky lit by a breath-taking array of glittering stars had captivated us. The people of the North Country have a secret. They live in a magical place of tall trees, deep green forests, fickle crystal clear lakes and fast flowing rivers.

In 2008 Chris and I returned to the Allagash in August. This time we had found a place with no roads, a place accessible only by air, canoe or a long portage and again, a place where for the duration of our trip we knew we’d encounter more moose than people.

On a Monday morning we climbed into Katahdin Air’s Cessna 206 float plane on Ambajejus Lake eight miles northwest of Millinocket for our trip into Johnson Pond; a small body of water that offers a shallow, overgrown stream that leads to Allagash Stream and from there to Allagash Lake.

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A Ride On Eagle Lake

In August of 2007 my son Chris and I set off to canoe the Allagash Wilderness Waterway. We put in at Indian Stream; electing to bypass Chamberlain Lake for fear that we would begin our trip wind bound.

Chamberlain is the third largest lake in Maine and with a strong wind out of the northwest; the swells can reach a point that make canoe travel impossible. Some had been recorded as high as 15 feet on the lake. We were eager to get going and I didn’t want to sit out our first days stuck on shore.

I knew there was a very good possibility that we’d run into some big water as the lakes at the southern end of the waterway are big. Having skipped Telos and Chamberlain, we would only have Eagle, Churchill, Umsaskis and Long Lakes to deal with and planning early morning and evening paddles, I figured we’d be fine. We had spent a week on Lake Umbagog the year before dealing with rough water in preparation for Maine’s big lakes.

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