This is a very long post. But, the adventure here was full week in duration, so it deserves a long post!
My grandfather, Stewart Coffin, is well know for making many beautiful wooden puzzles. Less well known is that he ran a fiberglass canoe and kayak manufacturing business for a few years before the puzzle business, and he moved to puzzles because early epoxies were pretty bad to work with. During his whole life, he has always loved adventure canoeing, logging an impressive series of voyages which can be read about here. He took my mom on some of these adventures when she was young, and my mom has kept the tradition alive with me.
Last year, we did a cool trip up in Baxter state park canoeing around Grand Lake Matagamon. This year, it was time to try a bigger adventure: the Allagash Wilderness Waterway. This series of lakes and rivers flows northwards, from about Baxter state park up roughly 100 miles to the Canadian border. Our eventual route would be 91 miles. We did this adventure in late August 2025 over the course of seven days. Better late than never to write this blog post. Here is our route, shown as a series of google maps dots. Maine is a big state, and this route traverses a decent chunk.
I put in for some vacation time at work and the plans were set. My mom was making most of the plans here, so I honestly didn’t really know what to expect on this adventure. Always a good time. As it was the end of August, the river would be low, and so we checked the USGS flow data for the river every day. My mom told me if the water was too low, there might be a lot of dragging the boats. I thought this sounded like fun, so we opted to proceed with some dragging. The members of the voyage would be me, my mom, and my mom’s friend Priscilla. I would be in the kayak, and the two of them would be in a canoe.
To actually do this adventure, step 1 was obtaining a kayak. I picked up a Wilderness Systems Tsunami 140 for about $250 on FB marketplace. I don’t have any roof racks, so I just rolled up some air mattresses as pads and then strapped the kayak down on top of them. This required a lot of straps but otherwise worked great.
A few days before we left, I happened to find a peach tree in the neighborhood with a bunch of perfectly ripe peaches hanging from it, and many already on the ground. Not wanting even more to go to waste, I filled my entire bike bag and my sweatshirt full of peaches. I took these on the trip and ate a peach or two every day. MMMMM!
What to bring on this trip? Being that this is a boating trip, it is possible to bring a lot more than you would for a backpacking trip. The effort to carry a pound down the river is not zero, but it sure is less than physically carrying it. Here is the gist of what I brought:
- My kayak, paddle, spray skirt, and life vest
- My tent, air mattress, and sleeping bag
- A tarp and trash bag
- 20′ paracord line
- Clothes for the week
- Swimsuit, which I wore every day (with boxers underneath)
- Flipflops, Crocs, and sneakers
- A book
- A waterproof disposable film camera
- A 3S Lipo, CPU fan with printed cone adapter to inflate my air mattress, 12V to 5V converter for charging my phone, and alligator clips. Gotta spice up the adventure somehow.
DAY 1: Telos Lake to Eagle Lake
The original plan was to head out early on Friday, August 22nd, drive the 8-ish hours, and hopefully get on the river late that day. But, we got a late start, so we camped somewhere in Maine pretty close to Baxter State Park. We woke up early and kept driving. We got our first look at moving water when we drove over the Penobscot on Telos road. Lots of Water!
We drove through the Telos Checkpoint and arrived at our put-in: the Chamberlain bridge.
Before launching, I noticed some interesting things scattered around the put-in lawn as decor. I’m pretty sure I have the same arbor press here in my shop, but the handle on mine is a lot straighter.
And we were off! The first leg was paddling nearly 10 miles down Telos lake to a small dam. Pretty amazing views.
About halfway though this paddling, my hands started to get blisters. Dang. Ow! I toughed it out for a bit, but then I realized I could use my socks as cushions for my hands around the paddle. This worked great and I didn’t get blisters for the rest of the trip. Also visible here in this picture is my map of the waterway, which I shoved into my life preserver. I got the map from the Telos checkpoint. This paper map somehow survived the whole trip despite being soaked a few times.
We stopped at a tiny island for lunch. My kayak almost slid off this island after I pulled it up. Lesson learned, always tie up your boat. I used my paracord to tie up the boat. Here is me on the island, probably eating a peach.
Not wanting the peaches to get moldy, I put them in an open bag right behind the seat of my kayak. Immediately available for snacking.
We continued onward. A few miles later, I pulled over at a beach to look at some cool rocks. For some fun I tried to bring a rock along and make an anchor out of it with my paracord. This nearly ended in disaster when the rock somehow got stuck on the bottom and I faced losing my paracord. But with a good yank, it came free. I hucked the rock into the water, never to be seen again. Notice my paddle-padding socks her on top of my life vest.
At this stage in the journey, our boats were heavily laden with food and fuel for the week. Here is mom’s canoe riding low. In the canoe was the stove and a cooler with some stuff which needed to be kept cold. The cooler ended up basically not working at all, and we ate this stuff as soon as we could. In my kayak I carried the fuel and a bunch of canned food shoved into wherever it would fit in the boat. I put my sleeping bag in my mom’s canoe, as it is a very bulky bag and does not compress much, and therefore did not fit in my kayak.
We arrived at the first dam. Apparently, Telos Lake originally flowed north, bringing precious logs towards Canada. This was unthinkable for the loggers in the region, as it would greatly reduce their profits. So, they changed the nature to more align with their vision for a brighter future, full of profit. This dam was created to make Telos Lake flow south, allowing logs to be brought south toward the US mainland, where they could be sold at higher prices.
We portaged over the dam.
We paddled down a small steam and I got my first taste of moving water.
We arrived at the Thoreau campsite late in the day. 13.85 miles of paddling, according to google earth. Not bad!
I set up my tent. I decided to try my tarp here, which was not worth the effort, but looked cool.
A great start.
DAY 2: STEAM TRAINS
We set off medium early from the Thoreau campsite with a goal in mind….. the steam trains.
Steam trains??????
Yep, that’s right- in the middle of northern Maine, there are two absolutely massive steam locomotives, standing peacefully in a clearing. Read about them here. The gist is, some absolutely insane people hauled two full-size standard gauge steam locomotives through the Maine north woods, along with several miles of track. Big boys set up real railroads instead of toy trains back in the day. This isolated railroad moved logs from the north-flowing Allagash River drainage basin into the south-flowing Penobscot river. The existence of these locomotives is pretty widely known, but given how remote this place is even today, thinking that they hauled in an entire full-sized railroad to this place is insane to me.
So, let’s go out and find it. Here is setting off from the Thoreau campsite. There were some cool little hills around the landscape, maybe next time we do this we can hike one.
Some cool photos with the film camera. CVS even provided a CD of the photos, so I didn’t even have to scan them. Here, we head northwest, towards the steam trains.
We paddled north along the western shore of Eagle Lake. I didn’t really know what we were looking for, but eventually found a large cut into the forest. There were also some oil stains on the water- I guess even 100 years later, some environmental contamination remains. Just a short scramble up the hill and we found what we were looking for! Here are some of the train cars:
And, the locomotives, with me for scale. These things are absolute behemoths. Most interestingly, the rails they rested upon were about half the size of rails I am used to, on the commuter rail. Apparently, derail events were extremely frequent on this railroad- after seeing the size of the rails, this is hardly surprising.
While I’m sure I could have spent hours here, we had a journey to continue on, and so we continued onwards. As we were leaving, I stumbled upon a train wheel in the lake. This place definitely has some weird mix of industrial past mixed with natural beauty.
We paddled north up Eagle lake. Next stop: Churchill dam. We hit some light rain, so I used my spray skirt to keep the rain off my legs. The spray skirt also kept a bit more warmth in the kayak.
Luckily, these ominous rain clouds mostly avoided us, more or less. Other than a bit of light rain, this paddling was really serene.
The serenity ended as the wind picked up past John’s Bridge, heading into Churchill lake. Pricilla deployed my mom’s tent’s ground tarp as a sail, and I attached my paracord line to the back of the canoe. Using this rig in the high winds, we sailed at a dangerous speed down Churchill lake. We got to Churchill Dam with time to spare.
We made 15.4 miles this day. Not bad.
DAY 3: Churchill Depot
At Churchill Dam, the rangers post a weather forecast. Unfortunately, this weather forecast predicted a day full of thunderstorms. So, we opted to stay put for the day. It ended up not raining much, but I’m glad we stayed, because we got to check out the super cool museum at Churchill Depot. This museum had all sorts of cool stuff and I spent several hours there. Memorable items include antique wooden boats, a coin from the 1800s, a totally rebuilt dump cart used to construct the original dams, a cart from the original tramway, some cool old wooden canoe paddles, and other artifacts from a time long past. I would highly suggest staying at least a few hours there.
Outside the museum they also had what appeared to be a single-cylinder gas engine. In the museum it said that much of the power for the site was originally generated with a hydro turbine at the dam- more on this later. I guess maybe they used this engine when there was no water.
Here is our campsite at Churchill Dam. At all the campsites on the waterway, there is a picnic table with a crossbeam. A tarp can be draped over this crossbeam to make a nice shelter. Due to the rain, we set up the tarp this day. I also attached my paddle to the crossbeam perpendicular to the tarp beam, which gave us a bunch more head room.
Unfortunately, I also learned on this day that my tent was not 100% waterproof. This is hardly surprising, as I got it off the side of the road in “grad student city,” or north Cambridge. Water seemed to pool in certain places on the rain fly, and then slowly leak though the seams. Maybe I need to treat the rain tarp with some sort of hydrophobic stuff. I hung up my sleeping bag to dry under the tarp. I put my trash bag over the top of my tent, and tightened the rain tarp as best I could. This mostly solved the issue.
As mentioned before, I read in the museum that the Churchill depot once generated its own hydroelectric or hydromechanical power from the dam. I figured this equipment was long gone, as the dam had been replaced in 1997. However, during a firewood search through the woods, I stumbled across the turbine! It was in surprisingly good shape. This thing probably has another hundred years of life in it.
The sunset here was also magical. Despite having gone nowhere, this day was particularly memorable.
DAY 4: Chase Rapids.
The Chase Rapids. Austin’s first whitewater. Definitely getting right to it!
We still had a decent amount of foodstuffs left, and no one packed particularly lightly anyways. I’d never even been whitewater canoeing or kayaking, so doing doing class 2 rapids with a boat full of stuff would have likely resulted in me going for an unplanned swim and losing all my stuff down the river. Luckily, for a small fee, the Churchill dam staff will portage your things down around the worst of the rapids, making the trip easier and safer. We opted to do this, and in retrospect, this was a really good idea, as I found out later how much less maneuverable my boat was with all the stuff in it. I got no pictures of running the rapids, as I was busy trying not to meet my doom on the rocks. But we had a lot of fun. We got through the rapids without incident.
After the rapids, the river became wider and slowed, eventually reaching Umsaskis lake. I got to try a novel sailing technique, where I split my kayak paddle and put the two halves into the trashbag I brought. This worked quite well and I was able to get a bit of a boost sailing northwest across Umsaskis lake.
The only photo I got the whole day was when we arrived at our campsite for the night: Lost Popple. After the day’s excitement, we slept very well. Distance traveled: 17.9 miles!
Sadly no pictures, but the stars here were absolutely amazing. I stuck my head out of my tent and just looked at them for a while.
DAY 5: Lost Popple to Five Finger Brook North
We awoke at Lost Popple to some picturesque fog on the water. Wow!
Me playing in the fog.
The first excitement of the day took place a mile into our journey, at the Lock Dam. Many years prior, this dam broke, leaving a pile of dam debris in the river. Most importantly, the busted dam was constructed of log cribbing held together with iron spikes. A warning sign at Churchill depot read something to the effect of, “absolutely do not try to go over this dam in your boat, many a canoe has been impaled on the large number of iron spikes lurking just under water.” So, wary of the danger, we portaged all our things around the dam. But, I decided to have some fun and try to use my paracord line to ‘line” my empty kayak over a water flow in the dam rubble. With no weight in it, the danger of punctures on my sturdy ABS kayak was minimal. I had read about doing this in my grandpa’s book. The plan was, tie my kayak to my paracord, walk out into the center of the river with the kayak, align the kayak to the water flow, slowly allow the line to play out until the kayak was below the dam, and then walk to the side, and the kayak would follow. Then I would walk down the shoreline and rejoin my boat, safely below the spikes. The first half of this plan worked, with my boat making it over the dam and to open water without a hitch. Then, I tried to walk to shore, and found that my paracord line somehow had gotten sucked under something and was stuck. I tried to free it, but I was in about 2’ of fast flowing water known to have metal spikes in it, so I was not too keen to spend a bunch of time fishing around underwater for whatever the line was stuck on. Eventually I motioned to my mom that I was stuck. She moved into position and I dropped the paracord and the kayak went free. My mom jumped into the kayak and paddled it to shore with her hands, yay. Disaster averted. Lesson learned- keep the paracord out of the water. I think longer paracord would have helped here too. Always a fun time.
Here is the view looking back upstream towards the remains of the Lock Dam.
We continued onward. The river became wider and the flow slowed. This made spotting the rocks more challenging, as rocks make less of a signature swirl in the slower water. So, even though the progress was slower, the rocks kept me on my toes. I eventually realized that the rocks made tiny ripples in the water, but that the ripples were usually about five feet downstream of the rock- so you had to turn far in advance. My mom, standing in the canoe, could see further ahead, so I usually followed her lead. Some rock swirls are visible here.
One point of note here was my kayak rudder. I specifically searched for a kayak equipped with a rudder, as I thought it would be nice to have. The rudder can also be retracted with some convenient paracord lines on the right side of the kayak. The rudder turned out to be extremely useful for paddling in the open water, and even more useful to make tight turns around rocks. Although the kayak had lost about 20lbs of food and fuel at this point in the journey, a 14′ kayak is still relatively hard to maneuver without a rudder. The issue is, if you hit a rock and get stuck while the rudder is deployed, you end up weathervaning around the rock and probably flipping over. I’m sure all the guidebooks say something to the effect of ‘retract the rudder immediately if you can even smell rocks,’ but I chose to do as much ruddering as possible and retract the rudder as quickly as I could only if I actually got stuck on a rock. This worked fine as long as I was on my toes. I had to think quickly quickly and retract the rudder once or twice, but I probably saved some paint by maneuvering around the rocks better, so I’m glad I did this.
We eventually made it to Round Pond, where we stopped at the tower trail. After an hour or so of hiking, we arrived at, you guessed it… a tower. This was a pretty rickety looking tower but of course we climbed it. No waivers, no safety harnesses- this is definitely not Massachusetts.
The views from the top of this tower were pretty incredible. Here is the view looking north, where we are headed. Visible is the “Musquacook Deadwater,” where Musquacook stream joins the Allagash. I believe there is cell service at the top of this tower- but I chose to leave my phone in airplane mode to stay in the disconnected zen state.
We hiked back down and started paddling again, reaching the deadwater a few hours later. We looked back up and saw the tower! The tower is just barely visible in this photo.
The river kept its wider character, and the flow slowed. This made rock spotting difficult. Some ABS kayak plastic was definitely left behind, that’s for sure. We stopped to camp for the night at Five Finger Brook North. According to google maps, we made 20.5 miles this day, our best day yet. Here is our campsite. Note the five gallon buckets, which my mom used for non-canned food storage. This worked out great, because when we finished eating a bucket, we could just stack it into the next bucket.
DAY 6: Allagash Falls
We awoke to another day of fog on the water. By the time we got packed up it was mostly gone. Here is looking upriver. Time to get going!
Compared to the rapids, the river had doubled in width. This additional width lowered the depth of the water, which left a plethora of rocks and boulders to avoid. Upon further thinking, I believe the way the river works is that the width is set by the peak flow, not the average. So, as a river progresses, the drainage basin area continues to increase, and so large rain events carve an ever larger river. These temporary rain events leave a big river, but when there is no rain, the big river becomes quite shallow. Because we were running this at the end of August, the flow was quite low, so the river was well below the peak- so it was time to avoid the boulders. Any less water than we had, and the river probably would have not been navigable. Also, the slope of the land was less at this point, so I think that made the river even wider.
Also, the trees began to change. The conifer forest became spotted with larger deciduous trees.
We took a wrong turn down a side stream and had to push our kayaks over a small beaver dam. Lots of deciduous trees here too.
Finally, we arrived at the big spectacle: Allagash Falls!!! I estimated the flow was probably about 10 of the Ashland dam, and double the drop. Many kilowatts could be made….. but, definitely better to keep the nature pristine and turbine-free.
We continued down the river.
The river widened even more after the falls, exposing fields of boulders. It was quite a feat to navigate through them all. Some ABS was definitely left behind, but less than in days prior, as my navigation skill increased throughout the journey. Here is a photo looking upriver at a particularly cool field of boulders.
We stopped for the last night at Big Brook North campsite.
We stopped at about 4:50PM, which left a bit more time for another adventure. Unfortunately I got no photos of this, but before it got dark, I decided to wade up the river. After crossing a particularly deep section of chest-deep water, I got to a small island. I was able to wade probably a quarter mile up the river on this island. Something had clearly been dragged down this island, probably a tree during a high water event. Pretty cool. On this last night, I also used my 3S lipo air mattress inflater to make our campfire into a small inferno. Fun times.
Day 7: Final Day.
The final morning! It was particularly cold this night, I had to put on all my clothes to be able to sleep. I was sad this was the last day, but also happy to be headed home.
Down the river we go. This was mostly easy going, but we did hit one section of class two rapids. I was not expecting this at all, so I don’t think I even had my spray skirt on. Luckily, both vessels passed through the section of rapids without incident.
We passed Michaud Farm (apparently pronounced the French way, ‘Mishow’), which is where the river got suuuuper wide. With the river as wide as it was now, groundings became frequent. I noticed a flow pattern: the river was deep on either the left or right side, but then shallow in the middle. Time and time again, the deep channel on the left or right would end, leaving the water to flow over the shallow middle section. Grounding on this middle section was more or less guaranteed, although sometimes with a keen eye a passable channel could be flown down. The water in these shallow sections always flowed quite fast, and so a little extra speed boost could be gained. Either that, or a large grinding and crunching occurred, and more ABS was left behind… too bad. Unfortunately I forgot to take any pictures of these cool flow patterns. I did end up getting some mild blisters on my feet at this point from river walking so much in my crocs. Maybe I should have put on some bandaids. Crocs might not have been the ideal shoe for this, but they worked well enough.
Finally, we reached our pull-out.
We packed all our stuff in the car and headed home. Later, I looked it up, and we kayaked to only 9.5 miles from Canada. Pretty amazing. 92 miles! From here, it was a 2 hour drive back until we hit cell service- that’s how remote we were. It was about another 6 before we got back to Boston.
All in all, I would highly recommend the Allagash to anyone interested. A great week-long adventure.
