Day 23 – Rapid River, ME, to Mooselookmeguntic Lake, ME

M-2016-9-12

Start: Cedar Stump Campground

End: Campsite #13 on Student Island in Mooselookmeguntic Lake, ME

On the Way:  Rapid River, Upper and Lower Richardson Lakes, Mooselookmeguntic Lake, Students Island

Miles: 16.5.  Milestone: 405.5!  Yes!

Map: 8

Doesn’t feel like much, miles-wise, but today’s progress included a bear of a portage and some serious against-the-wind-and-waves open water crossing.  Plus a weird campsite scenario this evening.

Portages are much worse, in my opinion, when the struggles of actually lugging your boat along the trail are compounded with uncertainty.  I usually try to scout ahead to get rid of the latter sensation, but when trying to make one trip out of the damn thing, it’s tricky.  Anyway, The Book said today’s portage was 3.2 miles, but it felt like 7 because of the bumpy roads and misleading turn-offs.

Carry Road was tough, but would have been a lot tougher if not for these handy boardwarks.  Image from the NFCT webpage.

Carry Road passed a series of cute little homesteads (along with some mysterious abandoned cars and farm equipment in the woods) along the Rapid River, as well as the not-so-cryptically named "Pond in the River."  I definitely want to head back to the whitewater of the Rapid River some day--it was three miles of drops and ledges!  Image via Rangely Lakes Heritage Trust.

After that, it was sweet, clear, fresh open water!  Dieter and I were able to cruise across the Richardson Lakes like the seaworthy vessels we are, although I feel pretty beat by it.  Time to try some BF cream tonight.  Ended up stopping at Students Island, which is lovely and apparently got its name from some Yale boys who roughed it here one summer in the 1850s, when this wasn’t actually a vacation area.  Go them.  It’s now managed by a Preserve/Trust that was some guy’s legacy to future canoeists, which also manages all the other campgrounds on Mooselemeguntic Lake.  I’d feel like a prize asshole stiffing this altruistic memorial trust out of my camping fee, so I’m staying at the closest site to the office that’s out of the wind and away from a hooligan bunch of Outward Bounders (on a Monday?  In Mid-September?).  That way, I can jet across and pay first thing in the morning.

Also, fun story, I realized I was here about a year ago with a MITOC canoe trip.  I’m blazing through the times we made on that trip, but to be fair, those were canoes, and many people on the trip tended to be—I learned this delightful word on that very trip—“lily-dippers.”  It was warm enough to swim then, and we passed the time waiting for the slow boats by jumping over the gunwales and practicing climbing back in.

My hammock pitch on Students Island, looking north out over Mooselemeguntic Lake.

One of the joys of hammock camping: every night's pitch feels like building a fort.  Got some nice lake breeze and a moonlight scene across the water all night.

Tomorrow, hopefully, I’ll blaze through the little town of Oquossoc (pronounced “Oh-kwiss-sick”) and be on to Rangely for a day in town!

Things Learned:

+ After letting it dry out for a couple days and attempting a power-up, Point and Shoot camera got too wet, I fear.  Hopefully the card’s still okay.  In the meantime, the seldom-charged cell phone camera will have to do.

+ Operation Bean Soak a success!  A little under-cooked, but 24 hours of soaking and a 7 minute boil made a delicious dried tomato, zucchini, bean, couscous, and olive oil dinner.  Like, real good.  Good enough to try to make it back in the Land of Readily-Available Groceries.

+ If the Jetboil ignitor is misbehaving (which it does more often than not), it’s real easy to light it with a lighter!

+ If you land in a campsite and the wind is blowing where your hammock is gonna be parked, make every effort to MOVE!  Last night was my coldest so far—not as uncomfortable as Lawyer’s Landing, but definitely the coldest, with the wind coming off of the Rapid River.  No sun, lots of wind, and rocks everywhere, giving the ground and surroundings a very high insulation value (R-value, as engineers call it).  NOPE.

Trail Magic: 

+ Met a guy fly fishing (and mountain biking—he had a clever PVC red holder rigged up) who offered me a sandwich and said I looked a lot less haggard than the last through-paddler he met.  Hurraaaay.

+ Saw a number of cute little camps along the Carry Road here, including one that belonged to the writer of We Took to the Woods, a famous memoir about her family’s time here.

[+ I later realized that the Through-Paddler first-hand account at the end of the official NFCT guidebook called out the Carry Road as the most frustrating portage of the trip.  I felt validated that someone else had as much trouble as I did…although my most frustrating portage by far was Mud Pond…]

Day 22 – Mollidgewock State Park, NH, to Rapid River, ME

U-2016-9-11 – 

Start: Mollidgewock St. Park, Osprey remote site.

End: Cedar Stump Campground, Campsite #5, right at the start of the Carry Road.

On the Way:  Androscoggin River, Errol, Umbagog Lake

Miles: 16.  Milestone 398.5.  Hooboy!

Map:  7, 8

Weather:  Thunderstorms in AM on Androscoggin, Windy but clear—mostly—through Errol to Umbagog Lake.

Map 8: Errol to Rangely, ME

Trail Overview

OUT OF NH!  New State, new map, and GOODBYE UPSTREAM nonsense!  I’m now on map 8/13, and state 5/5, and well into the 2^nd half of the mileage!  WHOO!

Last NFCT Kiosk of NH!

Today’s been full of little struggles.  I’m fine and happy and (mostly) warm for now, but tomorrow I’ll probably be feeling the cold and the muscle ache.

Started out right before a long segment of rapid-tracking on the Androscoggin.  Was jamming along on it just fine when a morning downpour started.  After hoping for rain for a week (what am I saying, I’ve been making horrible promises to fearsome pluvial deities this whole trip…), I’d be loath to sit and pout because of a little precipitation, but when I saw thunder and lightning, I begrudgingly parked under a hemlock and consoled myself with a Clif Bar and waiting.  It lasted about half an hour, then I departed again, rain still coming down, up the rapid.  Got to wave to a fleet of Boyscouts huddled under tarps at the next group campsite up the river, and line past a couple be-wadered fishermen who were similarly sitting out the rain.

Next to the State Park proper, the river flattened out—the true “hallelujah” moment—all the way to Errol, our first town in Maine.  Picked up some groceries in Errol, including a local zucchini for $1 that was a steamy addition to my ramen soup this evening.  There’s an odd little set of rapid right below the dam next to Errol, and an even weirder campground/outfitter/guide service right along the shore.  Hand-painted signs, wooden tent platforms propped on cinderblocks, and a broken canoe with “Respect the waters” painted on the side welcoming you in.  It’s a homey place, and with sites right alongside the rapid stretch of the river, you could theoretically run your little playboat up the access road and down the rapids all day, go to sleep, wake up, and do it again.  They also have a generous policy of offering free camping to Through-paddlers, and when I got in at 1300 and told them it was too early for me to stop today, they graciously offered me a site on the other side of the lake at Cedar Stump, a handful of sites they owned.  The two proprietors were Eric and Maggie, with a very friendly dog.  I must remember to send Northern Waters/Saco Bound a thank-you.

Camping at Cedar Stump when it's NOT as windy as the gates of a Frozen-over Hell.  Looks quite nice.  Image via Northern Water's site: http://beoutside.com/

It was a long, windy battle across Lake Umbagog, even more taxing than Champlain/Bitabawgok, although a fraction of the mileage.  I was ready for that site by the end.  Lots more lakes to come—Dieter das Sea Boot is in his element.

The peatlands and river out of Errol lead straight into Umbagog Lake.  The Trail then goes out the Northeast corner, up to the mouth of the Rapid River.  Via the NH Division of Forests and Lands.

Things Learned: 

+ My deckbag (a cheap PVC thing I picked up in Long Lake, NY) is kind of toast.  I’m trying to downsize its contents.

+ Picked up some dray navy beans in Errol, and going to give bean-soaking a try in a plastic water bottle.  Fiber and protein yesplease.

+ Getting real good at upstream rapid-tracking.  Here’s hoping that stops being useful real soon.

+ Camping in the wind = COLD!  I’m wearing all the clothes I have tonight and pitched as far back in the woods as I could venture without having dreams of The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.  The wind is still sucking my heat away…  In the future, if you come across a windy site, keep on lookin.

Trail Magic: 

+ Lots of incredulous faces as I travelled upriver past the Molliwodge camp sites…

+ Errol General Store man (where I bought a strange assortment of groceries) asked if I was camping and threw in a free pear.

+ Managed to surf on some of Lake Umbagog’s whitecaps!  It was surreal: this tiny, deep little lake had the biggest waves of the trip yet.

Day 21 – West Milan, NH, to Mollidgwock State Park, NH

S-2016-9-10 

Start: Cordwell Campsite

End: Mollidgwock St. Park, Osprey remote site.

On the Way:  Upper Ammonoosuc River, West Milan, Androscoggin River, Pontook Reservoir

Miles: 16.6.  Milestone 374.5.  HALFWAY!

Map: 7

A map of Mollidgewock State Park (which I've been mispelling this whole time).  From http://www.mappery.com/Mollidgewock-State-Park-map

Well, I goofed.  I read the map and the guidebook to understand that “Osprey” site, with the same naming scheme and labelling protocol as every other site on the map, was one of these glorious free first-come, first-served NFCT primitive sites, like those I’ve been enjoying ever since Old Forge.  Instead, I found out it was a remote site of Molliwodge State Park, a couple miles up the Andro, and it was already booked.  I intruded on a very nice older couple with their 25’ glamping trailer.  It was getting dark and the Andro was rushing—enough so that the only way to proceed upstream was to carefully line along the shore—but they very graciously agreed to let me pitch my hammock off to the side of the spacious site.  Things were made less awkward because they had several friends over to sit around the fire, play loud classic rock (no objections), and drink the husband’s homemade dessert wine.  They offered me a glass (real glass!).  It was pretty good: plenty sweet and nice and clear, which is always hard to do with homebrews.  This was sangria, but apple wine is apparently also one of his specialties.  Good use of a crop that most people seem to let rot on the tree around here.

This bunch only lives 14 miles down the road from here, yet still brings this monstrous camper out to sit in another patch of woods around another fire ring every now and again.  Goes to show the strong grasp of camp culture around here.  They were very cheery retired folks—can’t be doing too bad for themselves with this camping rig.  They commented on the abnormally high number of spiders around, which I’d also noticed.  They also tried to declare that anthropomorphic climate change wasn’t happening.  I played the good guest and politely ended the conversation, rather than whipping out my mentally-prepared set of data to the contrary.

Pontook Reservoir, where I'd love to launch a (downstream) journey on the Androscoggin in the future!

This morning I finally got off the Upper Ammo in Groveton (with a great convenience store with great Whoopie pies), did a ~4mi portage to the Androscoggin, only to find that this weekend is one of the last where they’re letting the dam out full-tilt for whitewater paddlers.  Took one look at the raging current below the dam, decided my strength was better used elsewhere, and portaged the rest of the 1.5 miles up to the Pontook Resevoir.  Most of the Androscoggin was nice, glassy and slow-moving and wide, littered with pulp logs under-hull from the days of driving all the virgin timber downriver.  (The last log drive here was quite late, in 1964!)  Some of the sections have some really wicked current, though, which required some careful lining.  Hence my desperation to stop here at Osprey: lining becomes kind of dangerous in anything except full light.

Here’s to lots more lining tomorrow, hopefully right out of NH and the end of this map!

Things Learned:

+ Gord’s general store (the start of the Upper Ammo/Andro portage) carried some topical muscle relaxant that I’ve taken to calling “boyfriend cream” in my mind.  As in, it replaces one of the chief reasons for toting a boyfriend along, which is restorative backrubs.  I can’t wait to try it out, although I hope it’s not scented enough to draw the bugs.

Trail Magic: 

+ Thought I had lost my camp shoes, but they were just crammed way back in the stern.  Would have been sad times—manageable, but sad.

+ Saw 2 weasel-like critters—maybe mink—crossing the road during the portage.