Trip Report: Canoeing Maine’s Allagash River During a Season of Low Water

After stuffing a few days worth of camping gear into dry bags, we got onto the road to our put-in inside the North Woods territory—a 60-mile journey that took a little over two hours due to a route of slow-going gravel roads. Pulling up to the check-in gate, we registered our party and started down the loose and uneven logging roads.

Leading the train, Dave’s truck and trailer kicked up clouds of dust from the dehydrated earth, filling our windshield with a brown fog while tall pines on either side of the road flanked us in the sideviews. The occasional brake lights punched through, sometimes growing large quickly and signaling “take cover!” as French-Canadian loggers screamed down the forest road, carrying stacked loads of freshly cut timbers.

At the edge of Umsaskis Lake, we found our put-in and observed the quick current we’d be launching into, caused by the lake’s narrowing back into the Allagash River. There’s nothing quite like trial by fire, and we were ready for the cookout. We partnered up into paddling pairs, split up the communal gear among the boats, and launched our canoes for our first day on the water. As a devout believer that crosswinds and headwinds are the only wind that exists, and my dogma was validated as every oar stroke pushed our fully-loaded 17-foot Old Town Discovery through the pesky oncoming wind.

For the first hour or so, surveying the rare wilderness scenery took a back seat to navigation. The river’s gentle gradient required the bow rower to keep a close watch on hydraulics, spotting barely submerged rocks that might otherwise leave only a small ripple at more optimal water levels. This year, they became near-invisible obstacles. Kissing a rock with the canoe’s durable hull wasn’t of great worry, but a full hang-up would be a minor fiasco that'd take time to amend with a fully loaded, human-powered watercraft.

Round Pond

Once we got accustomed to the river's conditions and had our steering communications loosely codified, we had enough spare attention to take in the Allagash’s serene beauty. Early October in Maine’s North Woods typically means peak leaf peeping, but summer’s low rainfall had caused the region's deciduous trees to drop their leaves weeks prior, with minimal color shift taking place before the premature fall. Instead of vivid reds, oranges, and yellows, there'd been a lot of brown. Pulling my '90s era Contax G1 out of a dry bag while paddling isn’t something I’m well practiced at, so at least I didn’t miss out on too many on-the-water photo opps.

When you're canoe camping, campsite living hardly feels like roughing it, especially when compared to minimalist land-based pursuits like backpacking and bikepacking. With multiple hulls to fill with gear, we availed ourselves of full-size camp chairs, a long-handled axe, and extra portions of fresh food with large pans to cook it in. A healthy portion of Dave’s own moose sausage added welcomed calories and backcountry decadence to any morning scramble or dehydrated meal. The more canoes in your party, the easier it becomes to pile on one extra nice-to-have after another.

Our second day on the Allagash was the longest planned, covering 15 miles of river before reaching our eventual camp at Round Pond. The previous day’s winds had faded into a gentle breeze, but we faced a number of low-water riffles where our forward motion sputtered into the sound of smooth river rocks pressed beneath our hulls. Portaging over the Old Lock Dam halfway through the day let us engage a bit more lower body muscles that had been underutilized sitting in our canoes. Originally built to crib felled timber, the reamining structure creates a rocky, flat hazard without any semblance of a line to float over.

On the downriver side of the drop, I couldn’t help but pick apart the dam pool’s structure to identify the best holding water that might contain trophy brook trout. Northern Maine’s rivers, ponds, and lakes offer some of the best opportunities to catch brookies in their native habitats, where they can grow into the upper teens and even over the venerable twenty-inch-mark. Sadly, the state’s freshwater season closed just a week before my arrival. My rod was stowed back in my car's trunk.

On several intervals throughout the day, Dave would have us pause the float and he'd belt out cow moose crys on a birch bark moose call–a tactic he’s well practiced at. It was pure happenstance that our single moose encounter came not from one of his appeals, but when we came around a bend and intercepted an adolescent bull taking a drink at the edge of the river. I opted to remain silent and still rather than uncrinkle my dry bag to find my camera for an exposure that would show little more than a distant dark blob through its short 45mm lens. It’s times like this when experiencing the moment is much more valuable than the picture you'd try to make from it.

Our third and final day on the water was short but challenging, due to some choices made the day prior. Opting to push past our final exit to make our camp on the picturesque Round Pond meant we had to paddle a little over two miles upstream to get back to the Blanchette take out. As a parting gift of the North Woods, the wind returned at a direction that would have served as a nice tailwind—had we been continuing downstream. Taking it face-on and digging hard was the only way to receive it, but as the water shallowed and the current picked up speed exiting the riffles, hopping out and dragging the boats proved to be more productive. With our last efforts doled out in the final hour, we soon found ourselves back on dry land with wet legs.

Our shuttled vehicles pulled up and we began to deconstruct the processes required to bring us to this wilderness that so few visit, starting by unpacking our gear from the borrowed dry bags. Before loading up into the trucks, I took one last look at the river, thankful I wasn't still paddling up its currents, but knowing I would miss its tranquility. Someday I’ll be back to throw in a line, and with any luck, pull out one of its fabled fish.