Penobscot Stories

I worked on the Penobscot River in Maine in 2004 and 2005. Ripogenous Gorge, the biggest whitewater stretch in Maine, the first mile of the commercial trip and the only section that you need a Level II guide license for, is commercially rafted from 1800 cfs to 4000 cfs. 2004 was a low water year, where we saw barely over 3000 twice. In 2005, a high water year, it was 3300 almost every day.

When I first scouted the rapid Exterminator, a rapid that is literally 100 yards from the put-in and one of the two Class V’s in the Gorge, I felt like we should run left of the big hole. I was told by trainers that everyone ran right (except at low water we could run the hole down the center….. “hey diddle diddle, straight down the middle” was the saying). Right was the standard line, any time we didn’t run the meat, for me for 2004, because I was taught to go that way.

In 2005, I scouted Exterminator again, since it was higher water, and again I though left. I ran left, smoothed it and decided that my scouting instincts were correct and that left was better. I later learned that left was the standard run until about 15 years ago when someone tried the right and liked it and the industry began running right all the time. That year we had team Penobscot, with Dean, Brian, Hillary and Arthur. I got Dean, Brian and Hillary to run left and they also liked it and started running it that way. Arthur ran left often, but not every day. I guess if I left a legacy in Maine it was that I got some of the industry to start running left again, after all those years.

There are a couple of stories related to this left line run. One day in 2005, we had a three boat trip. I was trip leader and Dean and Brian were the guides. Arthur was shooting video and was the manager of the outpost that year. We were staging at the put-in and Dean walked down to look at the water level posted at the dam. He came back with a look on his face I can’t describe, but when I asked what the level was he said “4300 cfs”. This was 300 over commercial cut-off. North Country and then PRO, two other outfitters, had put in just ahead of us. We saw PRO leaving the dam a few minutes before.

Arthur let me as trip leader make the decision of whether to run or not. The fact that our crews were all healthy strong adults and the fact that Dean, Brian and myself were a pretty solid crew, especially since we had dialed in the left line, were factors in my decision to go ahead and run. But the most important factor was having seen the other two outfitters putting in ahead of us at that level. Thinking about liability potential, if something happened we were not the only outfitter that put in at that high water.

We ran the trip and all three of us smoothed the left line at 4300 cfs. It was great!! When I got back I asked PRO how their run went at high water. They answered “good, but 3300 cfs was the same water that they had been seeing all year.” Turned out, the dam increased the flow from the time PRO put in to the time Dean looked at the gauge. All other outfitters that came after us did not run the gorge! We were the only ones to run at 4300!

So we continued to smooth the left line all season. One of our part time guides with much expereince, Pat, never felt comfortable running the left line. With his old school training and guiding for a number of years he had always taken the right line. One day a big group canceled and left only two guests on the trip. So I had the only guest boat and Pat decided he wanted to ride with me to check out the left line.

I had this 4 thwart boat with 2 guests and Pat at 3300 cfs on the Penobscot. I don’t usually like to blame guests for my screw ups and in this case I certainly was at fault for not adjusting to the circumstances, but I believe part of the reason for the carnage that was about to happen was the fact that the guy in the front right (his girlfriend was across on the left and Pat behind her), decided to put his paddle on his lap and take pictures with his waterproof camera, just as I needed an “all ahead” above the left line at the hole in Exterminator. So we turned sideways, hit too much of the hole and I had my only carnage at Exterminator in the 2 years I was there. All of us swam. Pat ended up in the eddy on the left above Mass Hole and with the sheer walls at Exterminator, his only option was to jump back in and swim the rest of the rapid. I got back in the raft just above Mass Hole and got the girl in and the guy (who was taking the pictures) swam the entire rapid along with Pat. Needless to say when I got Pat back in the boat, he made it very clear that he would never again be in a boat that was running the left line.