CCA Goes Maine Stream: Allagash Wilderness Waterway, May 14-18

By John Snitzer

Alas, it was not to be. Maine had an unseasonably warm spell in April, melting the snow, and then a dry spell, and the St John, which was running 30,000 cfs a month before, had dropped to near canoe zero at 3000 cfs by departure day. We had a motel room dither and decided to switch to the Allagash, a trib of the St John that had ample water. The Allagash has an extensive chain of headwater lakes and is partially dam controlled, so it holds water well. Not our original target but the best stream available.

Day one started with a three-and-a-half-hour drive over dirt and broken slate North Maine Woods roads to Churchill Dam at the foot of Churchill Lake. This marks the end of the Allagash headwater lakes and the start of the Allagash River proper. After warming up in the tailwaters of the dam, we began immediately with Chase Rapids, miles of class 1-2 boulder rapids. This was a blast. The waters of the Allagash are clear but tea-brown from organic staining from forested wetlands. The dark water made the dark-stained rocks hard to see. There was a learning curve for reading rapids, with the complication that 17' and 20' Old Town Tripper Canoes are not nimble. 

The Maine Park Service rangers at Churchill Dam conveniently shuttled all our gear downstream in their truck to the bottom of the rapids, so we were able to run in unloaded boats. A mixed blessing. The empty boats were more maneuverable but also easily pushed sideways and spun by the building breezes. We loaded up gear at the bottom of Chase Rapids at Bissonette Bridge. Hint: although everyone calls it Bissonette Bridge, the former bridge was erased by the ice years ago. Unlearned paddlers have gone quite far downstream without their gear expecting to find a river crossing.

After a few days of rummaging around in cluttered rolltop dry bags looking for whatever, the wide-open, well-organized boxes made perfect sense.

Our loaded boats sat lower and handled much better in the wind. The balance of Day One was typical Allagash paddling, long sweeping bends with ripples and boulder bars in moving water through dense forest. The end of the day revealed a foe. We looked at and rejected one campground in favor of a better one maybe a half-mile downstream. But in that half-mile the river widened as it approached Umsaskis Lake and the breezes that had toyed with us in rapids became a stiff headwind. Kerrie and I could see the camp; we just couldn't get there, and a pause for any reason meant losing ground via inadvertent reverse attainment. Most boats soldiered on. We turned at the top of a small island to the more sheltered river right bank and took a longer but easier route to camp.

We had rudimentary communication with the real world via satellite and learned that the 15-20 mph winds of Day One were forecast to be 22 gusting to 35 on Day Two, followed by a few hours of rain and a cold snap. Chip and Lani are big believers in tradition. The traditional way of dealing with wind is an early start to accumulate miles before the wind picks up in the heat of the day, then to seek sheltering ridges and riverbanks to avoid the worst of it. This means breakfast shortly after 6:00 with the goal of getting on the water around 7:00. With no phone, I had no idea exactly what time it was. We all switched to sun time, waking near 5:00 and trying to stay awake after supper until dark around 8:00 p.m. The stars and the Northern Lights might have been fabulous, but we were all asleep. 

On the morning of windy Day Two, we had Umsaskis and Long Lakes, both directly into the forecast north or northwest wind. We started with a calm morning, and we had luck; the beefy winds never developed, and we were able to hug the shoreline and dodge what wind we had later. Flatwater turns back to river at the lower end of Long Lake, where water spills over a historic low-head dam, built of timbers spiked together with 18" iron pins. As the wood has decayed and washed away, the pins, invisible in the dark water, now stand proud and are ready to gouge a canoe hull. Chip and Lani usually line the canoes around this obstacle, but we all opted to paddle instead. It was a sweet little drop, but Chip later reported wistfully that every canoe had picked up some scrapes from the spikes. The predicted hours of rain turned out to be a few minor showers. We arrived at camp exhilarated by the good luck and the successful day.

Besides the 7:00 starts, Maine canoeing tradition clashed with modern whitewater paddling convention in other ways. Our guides could have stepped out of the L.L.Bean Catalog from 1967 with wool checked shirts and jackets and wellies, while we were all in drysuits, poly, neoprene booties, and crocs. The sartorial clash was obvious. Everyone had cold hands and faces, but Chip and Lani were obviously cold at the end of the trip and resorted to pile and down. Perhaps the thousands of dollars' worth of paddling gear was worthwhile. Hint: one piece of Maine technology we did adopt was the use of HotHands warmers to warm up ($8 at Cabela's for a package of 10 large). They are little packets that use some sort of iron oxidation reaction to produce heat for up to 18 hours and are most comfortable in jacket pockets, sleeping bags, etc. Read the label.

Camps along the Allagash are fine affairs. They are well-marked clearings in the woods or grassy areas on the slight bluffs over the river. Camp on river left if you want morning sun. Some have abundant evidence of the dense local moose population. They all have big stone fireplaces with cooking grates and picnic tables with a long horizontal pole overhead for supporting a tarp in wet weather. The tent sites are well worn into the pine needles and moss or the grass. There are outhouses. Bring TP. 

We were following a long history of camping along this river. Hiking opportunities are limited. There are no developed trails from the campsites past the route to the outhouse, and the young forest in the early part of the trip is impassably dense in patches. I took morning walks to watch the birds start their days and to admire the forest and the river. These were wanderings, not hikes. The woods opened more as we traveled. Typically, we arrived at camp in the early afternoon and had downtime until supper in the evening. This extra time was a pleasant opportunity to hang out and set up camp, with the limitation that we had to work to stay warm while being sedentary.

Later in the trip, we heard of two rescues on the river by the park service for hypothermia and lacerations due to a fall. There is no cell phone service anywhere on the Allagash, but both paddlers were able to activate satellite SOS devices (the hypothermic paddler just barely had enough energy and use of his freezing hands) and the rangers came to their rescue. 

Unlike the forecast of rain and fierce winds which did not come to pass, the forecast of cold was accurate. We had minor frost overnight and a cold early start the morning of Day Three. Cold temps plus even a minor headwind is a daunting combination. We had a fine day of paddling but a forecast of even colder temps for Day Four. 

Middle Allagash includes Round Pond, one of many Round Ponds in Maine (16?—not counting the Little Round Ponds), an open stretch with hiking and fishing. Above Round Pond we stopped on an island and picked fiddlehead ferns, which tasted just fine that night with garlic butter. We also stopped at an old logging area to see abandoned Lombards in the woods. Lombards were the first tracked vehicles in the world, steam-driven iron and steel progenitors of the modern snowmobile invented by Alvin Lombard to haul log sleds in the winter. Loggers built and iced down haul roads for them in the (formerly) abundant snow. Apparently, getting crushed by one was a frequent event a century ago. They are now great iron dinosaurs settled in among the trees.

What feels like a wilderness journey is actually a trip through a heavily manipulated landscape. This part of Maine was completely logged back in the day and the forest lining the banks is all third- or fourth-growth fir, white pine, northern white cedar, and spruce with a smattering of white birch and drifts of poplar or aspen on the slopes. I noted only one visible clear-cut, a few years old. But the forest more than 300 yards from the river's edge is still harvested in a 60-80-year rotation. The big alluvial fans created at the upstream ends of ponds and lakes have different trees and vegetation on their wetter, richer soils, including the only elm trees on the river. The riverbanks are lined with patches of alder and red twigged dogwood, which is brilliant scarlet in the bright low-angle light and well-pruned by the moose. The forest seemed to become older as we traveled downstream, with larger trees and a more developed herb layer on the forest floor.

We chose the timing of our trip, the first trip of the season for our outfitter, to take advantage of higher water levels (!!) and to beat the emergence of black flies. Reading about them online, where I found a black fly T-shirt with the legend "Black Fly—Defender of the Wilderness," they sounded fearsome. I saw two on my paddling jacket at a stop at the river gage on the last day, and we found one in the van on the trip back to Greenville, so technically we had black flies, but nothing like the swarms of bloodsucking predators we had heard about. 

The early season trip meant that it was still early spring in northern Maine, with tree leaves just emerging and early spring wildflowers blooming. The clumps of deep purple-red Trillium erectum were the stars of the herbaceous layer, among carpets of trout lily and Canada Mayflower. Kerrie later identified a white six-part flower as three-leaved goldthread, rare here but common in northern conifer forests. The ostrich ferns that were fully out here weeks before were just emerging fiddleheads there. 

We saw the iconic Northwoods wildlife, moose, standing around and looking irritated to see us. One female, standing and watching us paddle towards her, trotted across the river and up the left bank, disappearing into the woods. As we paddled past the island she had been near, we saw and heard a tiny calf bleating for mom. Our black bear encounter was a windshield sighting, so we only got partial credit. We had an eagle lead us downstream in leaps one day, much like the blue herons will do on streams here. At one camp we were entertained by a giant and curious snowshoe hare who hopped among the tents. And pairs of the elusive Canada Goose stood guard on the downstream end of cobble bar islands. Most sought after but not seen creature: Lani reported seeing at least one lynx most seasons on the river. 

Day Four was the cold day—condensation ice on the tent fly, a shivering breakfast, and cold face and hands to start the day. Paddling hard was desirable for warmth as much as distance. This was Type II Fun. Short snow squalls punctuated the clear cold morning with little balls of graupel that piled up on the gear bags and accumulated in the canoes. The first hint of a comfortable day came after we carried around Allagash Falls. We were in an amphitheater below the falls, warmed by the portage, sheltered from the wind and drenched in sunshine. It was wonderful—until the next snowstorm started a few minutes later.

Allagash Falls seemed like an unusual turn of events in the gentle cobble bar river. The river runs through glacial sediments with the landscape rounded over and the headwater lakes and the ponds in the drainage scraped out by ice sheets. Then suddenly, Allagash Falls was an abrupt ledge drop, a 30' +/- tumble over marine sedimentary rock, fine-grained sandstone, and slate. The rock fractures into big blocks and the river plunges through and around these blocks. A very splatty-looking rapid. The kayakers thought there would be a hint of a good line with sufficient water. Alan took objection, pointing out that the falls had never been run successfully, so perhaps we were dreaming. After a while it felt like we were describing imaginary runs just to wind him up. I found no YouTube videos so perhaps he is right. The slate erodes into beaches of flat rounded stones, ideal for skipping. We needed a crowd of nine-year-olds to start a competition. Alan, a former nine-year-old, demonstrated briefly. 

The evening of Day Four was the coldest yet, with paddlers sporting sleeping bags as evening wear while we waited for supper. Then, well fed but still chilled, we had another dither about the end of our trip. We had the option of taking out at Allagash Village, a small collection of houses surrounding the river just upstream from the confluence with the St John River, or running 10 miles down the St John after the confluence and taking out at St Francis. We had a discussion and the short run won out. Days of being cold and paddling in the wind, combined with the continued low flow in the St John, plus the fact that we were in Maine and other opportunities for recreation abounded, were persuasive. Our shuttle van was relocated via satellite communicator message, and satellite reservations were made for our motel. 

We paddled until lunchtime on the last stretch of our trip. After paddling north for five days, we were way up there, with Canada on the other side of the river and a grocery stop in Fort Kent, the beginning of US Route 1 (only 2370 miles to Key West). The drive back to Greenville took five hours and we finished the trip by eating river supper number six around the campfire at Chip and Lani's home.

TLDR. The Allagash is a fine canoe trip, with days of paddling and camping on a gentle class I-II river through wild country with little evidence of modern life. In five days of paddling on 65 miles of river we encountered only a handful of people fishing and only one other paddling group. The Round Pond area would be a good spot for a layover to hike, fish, or hang out. By putting in at Churchill Dam, we skipped the upper section of the waterway, which includes a chain of lakes—another 30 miles, reported to be beautiful. Allagash, Eagle, Churchill, and Chamberlain lakes are the largest. Some of the lakes feature views of Mt Katahdin to the south. They could be added to a trip for a few more paddling days. Info is abundant online.

Chip and Lani have led 340 trips down the river between them and run a very well-organized trip. Their meals are traditional campfire food—hot and hearty. I commend whoever invented the campfire reflector oven that Chip uses to make fabulous baked goods—banana nut bread, cornbread, blueberry muffins, sourdough bread. He recommends "North Woods Crepes," left over buttermilk pancakes with blueberry jam and peanut butter. Give them a call if you are interested in a classic family wilderness canoe trip. Note that early season trips often encounter vigorous weather and risk running into hordes of black flies.