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Published: June 29th 2008
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Island Pond
A beautiful place in Vermont Well the last couple of days have truly been adventurous. After finishing the floating down the Nulhegan we hoped into the Connecticut river. There is a sweet class two wave during high water if you take the left off from where the river "forks" in three different directions. When I say forks I mean you can either go left, right, or straight. I've never seen a river do that before in my life. We took the left and got to run a nice class II wave. By the end of the day we had made it up a good chunk of the Amonoosuc to Groveton, NH. Now because of all the rain we had this last week the rivers were all flowing high and fast and it was tough making it up the Amonoosuc. Thankfully we were meeting Uncle Bob at Groveton so he could drop off Brett's wallet and passport he had left in Glover, VT. After a quick resupply Uncle Bob drove us up to Stark to miss most of the fast and rapid filled Amonoosuc, but the rest of the river was still flowing fast and strong. Luckily there are a lot of bends in that river that
we could hide from the current well paddling up.
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR PEOPLE PADDLING THE AMONOOSUC: Between Phillips Brook and the Cordwell campsite (where we stayed) there are three large blowdowns over the whole river. The silver maple blow downs can be navigated on river right by either pulling yourself through or by getting out to go around. The downed logs is a classic "pull over" or "portage around". Just figured some of the later paddlers might be interested in knowing this.
So after finishing the Amonoosuc we portaged to Rte. 16, saw the Androscroggin and rethought about going up it. The Androscroggin river is kind of like a guard dog in the way of getting to Maine and with all the rain the guard dog was angry and barking. Lots of fast water, no bends to hide behind and rapids...lots of rapids. So we started canoing towards "thirteen mile woods" where the water looked reasonably slower. On our way a nice fellow by the name of Brian gave us a ride in his truck all the way to Errol (the water was still flowing very fast through even the flat water)! We are VERY thankful for that
because that allowed us to put in above the Errol dam and actually paddle to Maine across Umbagog Lake!
I'ld like to give a little shout out actually to the Maine Public Land program and the conservation programs we have going on in Maine. They are awesome. There are some amazingly beautiful, pristine, undeveloped lakes and forests in Maine that are all accessible and free to the public with great camp sites and I have not seen another program like it anywhere in the state. The whole way to Rangley we got to stay on Maine Public Land campsites that were outfitted with picnic tables, out houses, fire rings, nice flat tenting areas. It was truly amazing. So if you are a Maine resident, please let your representatives and senators in the Maine legislation know that the program is amazing and that it should be continued.
We had a hell of a thunderstorm out on Black Point of North Richardson Lake, but it was later in the evening and we had hunkered down for the night. It was quite a show and we had decided to get up early to do some paddling when the lake was calm
(Black Point campsite is on the east shore of Upper Richardson and can get some pretty big waves). That day we paddled a good 25.5 miles to Rangley and were done by 3:30pm (all that upriver paddling must have paid off in the old muscle category)! So to celebrate, we gave the Shorty clan a call and went to Sarges Pub and Grill and feasted like there was no tomorrow. We got to talk with a bunch of cool people from Rangley who had a lot of questions about our boat on wheels and even got a free beer from a very cool woman, Merri Walker from Massachussetts! She rocks plain and simple!
A little note about Rangley. It is a cool town in the sense that it gets a lot of "through" traffic. It is off the AT and the NFCT so it gets it's fair share of through hikers and through paddlers and as far as I know may be the only town that has that special trait! So if you are a wilderness wanderer or are curious about long distance wilderness travel Rangley is not a bad place to go in the summer and pull some
scruffy looking guy or gal off to the side and ask them some questions about their journeys!
We've spent today preparing for the last leg of our trip through northern Maine, pruning down gear and stocking up on some food. So I'm off for some Z's before we put in the Dead River and ride it to Stratton. Not sure when I'll be able to post again as the populations of people and village centers really start to die off from here on out. But certainly you will hear from us when we reach Fort Kent!
Good luck to all the paddlers behind us. I hear there is a photographer from NY who is following this blog and paddling solo! Keep up the hard work buddy and I hope you get some great pictures. VT and NH can be real tough and frustrating, but ME is worth it man, ME is worth it.
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Thom T (Dad)
non-member comment
Too much slug info
Congrats on making it to Maine. I just read the many comments others posted about slugs. Wow. Way too much information, for me!