Intermediate Course Day 1--East Outlet, Kennebec

After an arduous drive up to The Forks, ME, (2 hours and 15 minutes from Newton, MA to the NH state line) we arose early to drive to the put-in for the East Outlet of the Kennebec River on Moosehead Lake over a one-lane logging road. We saw a deer on the road, but no moose.

I was surprised by how wide the river was at the put-in. After the group ran shuttle in my mom's van, which I borrowed for the trip because I was riding with Sohan, another student in the course, the group was instructed by Andy Novick to start doing some ferries, which would be the theme of the day. We were instructed to commit to the ferry by looking where we wanted to end up by having our whole bodies facing the destination. This helped a lot with maintaining the angle and not flipping over.

After a bunch of ferries in the shallow class I rapid, we started paddling upstream to to a more significant rapid under a railroad bridge. We did some more ferries here and a few including me attempted to do a very difficult attainment that involved eddy hopping from river right to river left, back to the right and under the bridge into a midriver eddy on the right and out into a wave train back to the left. The wave train was about five waves long and we then tried to attain each wave from the one immediately downstream. I only got up two waves past the bottom.

We broke into two groups here and continued on down the river, ferrying back and forth and catching many eddies. A short distance down the river a thunderstorm blew over, making me nervous because we were not really in a gorge. As the storm drew closer, we finally got out and walked downstream to scout a bigger rapid that was coming up. I selected a line and noted the location of some pourovers near the bottom. When I ran it though, I could not locate any of the landmarks that marked my line. I ended up running it straight through, not catching any eddies, so I decided to carry up and run it again. I did get one eddy that time.

We played in the wave train at the base of this rapid for a long time and had lunch. There was a diagonal wave that you could jet ferry across here, which was fun. I did a couple of stern squirts on one of the eddy lines, and managed to get up and stay up on a couple. I did swim after one of them, but I got kudos for attempting seven rolls before bailing.

We eventually continued on down, through some smaller rapids, with lots of rock that you could run agrond on (unpleasant). There were a few surfing waves, but I didn't really catch any of them.

There was one more big rapid before the trip ended with a two mile flatwater paddle on Indian Pond. We scouted again, and I ran a good line, catching some eddies on the way in to get a better view. We did some more ferries at the bottom and I swam again trying to peel out in the rapid to build momentum for the flatwater. I did some rolls on the flatwater to boost my confidence.

This was not one of my favorite rivers. All the shallow rocks and the flatwater paddling was too much of a price to pay for two nice rapids. I did think I improved my ferrying though.