I never kayaked but was curious if it’s possible to kayak UP river?
Let me explain. I live on a fairly flat river, but it’s big enough to have several commercial dams on it. I know a viable commercial dam must have a flow of 6 mph or more, and using simple flow for kw rates my river has at least 4000 cfs.
But if I can only kayak downriver, it will get boring very quickly. Granted I can car upriver, put in and kayak back to my house, getting the car later with the wife, but being able to kayak in all directions would be nice.
In rapid areas I can portage up around them, but can you kayak up moving water? Maybe finding slack water on the Lee side of the shore?
The reason I ask is, I live on a river that gets its native Indian name from “connecting river”. Only a 600 foot portage was required to canoe between two massive river systems (the Kennebec and Penobscot Rivers here in Maine) But I was told the flows are now too strong from dams to kayak up them?
If I cannot kayak upriver I am not sure it would be worth getting a kayak? If I can only go down river I could only kayak the lower/lower Kennebec and that would get boring fast I would think. Going upriver opens the Penobscot River and others up to me…
I think there are some errors in your water speed - 6 mph sounds way too fast for a fat water river. And I’ve never heard of a minimum required water speed for dams.
Mot kayakers could do 2.5 - 3 mpg average. That is about the same as a walking pace. So long as the river speed is less than this you could paddle upstream.
I haven’t paddled the rivers in Maine so don’t know their character, but yes you can paddle against current. I’m not sure you would enjoy paddling against more than 3mph. The current will be fastest mid river and on outside bends. It will be slower near shore and over shallows. There are folks here that may be familiar with the rivers you want to paddle.
I just checked this site about the Penobscot River Padding Trail and there is info and maps etc. on the site.
Sure you can paddle upriver! It’s more work, but for a single paddler who doesn’t want to trouble someone to drop off and pick up, it’s an option.
The first time I paddled my kayak down a river was after paddling 4 miles up it. And boy, was it faster paddling 4 miles down. After that, I got a relative to drop me off and pick me up.
Paddling up river is fine, although you sometimes need to be quick with the paddle, but then when you turn around it feels like you’re biking in high gear as the paddle hooks up with the current and you propel forward. A kayak only has a few inches of draft, so it’s not completely sweeping you away. In rapids it is much more difficult, but the current near shore is usually less or almost still.
A hot tip – a longer kayak is more efficient in the water, and when you are paddling up current the length makes a very big difference.
Sure, Paddling upriver is possible. It can get to be a bit like work sometimes, but there are a few tricks that can be employed. Eddies are your friend and most rivers have them - the exception being some rivers that have been channelized, dredged to allow traffic by larger boats. As previously mentioned, staying toward the shallower waters and inside of turns helps, but eddy hopping is what really helps. Learning to do an upstream ferry can allow an upstream paddler to jump laterally from one eddy to another on opposite sides of the river or to mid-river eddies behind rocks or water-logged logs.
I used to do after-work paddles where I’d paddle upstream till it got late or I got tired enough so it seemed too laborious to continue without some sort of “mission” to justify the effort. I’d then take a break and relax on some island until it started to get dark (or even camp if I really needing to “get away from it all” for a while), after which time I’d do the easy cruise back to the put-in point and load up in the gloaming.
Nice way to relax after work with no shuttle required. In a way it might seem boring because it soon involves paddling the same stretch you paddled the day or week before, but Heraclitus is right - we never step (or paddle) in the same river twice. Each time you go out you’ll see different birds, wildlife, different weather, a different sunset, different winds, seasonal changes, a different moon, some days you might be of a mind to exercise, other days you might be paddling to relax. It gets like having different conversations with an old familiar friend.
And from what you said you may be dealing with dams. I’m assuming by your question you’re new to this. Of course the reservoir above a dam usually has no discernible current, so you get a break from the effort of upstream paddling after the portage around. But be careful around the dams. (Actually any man-made structures in a river - they can produce squirrely currents that someone new to paddling might find tricky.) When approaching a dam from below you’ll want to stay well away from the recirculating “keeper” that lives on the downstream side at the base of the dam. People, even some experienced ones, die in them: and keep well away from from the turbine intakes on the upstream side - it would be a really bad idea to slip on the bank and get sucked into a turbine.
I don’t mean to make anything sound really dangerous of scary - just keep your distance and enjoy the river.
It is one of the best ways to learn how to read water. And sometimes shuttling isn’t feasible. It is actually a lot of fun. You work hard to get up there, but that fast, easy return is so rewarding. You’ll appreciate that “easy ride” back to your starting point. You will know that you earned it. But keep in mind, the wider and shorter the boat the harder it will be.
Living in Pittsburgh, PA, I frequently paddle upstream and downstream on several major rivers (the Allegheny, Ohio, Monongahela and Youghiogheny all upstream feeders that eventually flow into the mighty Mississippi. They all have dams on them. The relative difficulty of paddling upstream depends entirely on what the gauge for a river tells me for that day about its flow rate and the height relative to “normal”. After several days of heavy rain or during early Spring snow melt, it can be a real struggle to paddle upstream. But most days I find little noticeable difficulty paddling upstream and heading upriver and then back downriver, or even the reverse, is always the easiest way to get miles in. And often I am paddling on sections from one dam to another. Dams control the level of a river to provide deeper pools for navigation and to even out flow. Usually it takes us about the same time to paddle upstream as downstream but in times of somewhat higher flow it can take twice as long to get upstream as usual and then half the usual time to get back to the takeout. This has happened a few times on a 10 mile flatwater stretch of the Yough I often paddle – a usual day trip is 3 hours each way but after a lot of rain it can take 6 hours to go upstream and after turning around we can pretty much just relax and let the current take us back to the car in 90 minutes or less.
I used to canoe this section of river and tributary years ago, but was told to ditch the canoe and get into kayaking, something I know NOTHING about.
Being on the river, I do see kayaks now and then, but honestly its not as often as I thought it would be when I moved here 2 years ago. I figured there would be quite a few and I have probably seen a dozen at most. (Always going down river).
I am probably wrong, it is just something I once heard, that most commercial dams that generate electricity need 6 mph flows.
The CFS equation I am more assured of as it how I always calculate river flows. I know NOTHING about paddling but river flows I do understand. I was always told it takes about 2 cfs to generate 1 KW. Like mine, it does not have a state monitored flow gauge, but with a 1.5 megawatt dam above me, I can determine its flow with simple math.
Since a megawatt is 1000 KW’s, it’s a 1500 KW dam. At 2 cfs for each KW, that is 3000 CFS being turbined. I know FERC requirements call for it to dispense 250 cfs into area wetlands, so that is 3250 cfs. After that its just a matter of determining how much water is spilling over the spillway, coming through downstream fishways, or how throttled back the turbine is. With a recent freshet, there is some spilling but not a huge amount, so today I am guessing with pretty good accuracy it is flowing about 4000 cfs.
The dam below me, that is 4 megawatts, so with spillage and fishways, that would be about 9000 cfs.
So why the discrepancy? Tributaries. I live at the confluence of a big stream but above another one. From that I can estimate that the river is flowing about 7000 cfs past my house.
But this is something any paddler can figure out. They can go to the FERC website and find the dam closest to where they want to paddle. By figuring out its megawatt output they can do the calculations and then try and judge how much it is underproducing for power, or spilling over the spillway. As major tributaries are gained going downriver, flows can be added as required. It is not exact, but can give a paddler an approximate flow rate.
As a kid I once was part of a support team for two guys in a 50 mile paddle race down the Penobscot River, so the paddle life is active on that river.
I do not live on that one. I live on another that connects the Penobscot River with the Kennebec River. If you look on a map of Maine you can see the three river systems take up about half of Maine. Maine is the EXACT size of Ireland just to give you a sense of scale.
I do not like to make a big deal of my ancestry as people abuse it for nefarious reasons sometimes, but I did find it very cool that years ago the river I live on was a huge waterway for American Indian’s. It seems there is a lot to explore by kayak… as long as I can paddle upriver.
Kennebec River
Penobscot River
Kenduskeag Stream
Black Stream
25 Mile Stream
15 Mile Stream
Sabasticook River
REALLY good advice given to me so far. This is getting exciting!
I like your handle Brokenbow. I have been an archer for decades. I hunt with a longbow and have made a couple of bows and many arrows over the years. I used cedar arrow as a handle on a NA flute site years ago when yahoo groups existed. I make and play those flutes. I haven’t paddled rivers in Maine. However, I have paddled to several islands in West Penobscot Bay off of Islesboro. I love the coast of Maine it is so different from the coast of south Florida where I grew up in the subtopics. I paddle both sea kayaks and canoes. Can’t really say which I like the best as they each have their utility and charm.
I should add that some folks pole canoes upriver. You might want to ask about doing that.
Just remember cold water kills so dress for immersion and wear a PFD. Spring is the killing season as the air is warm and the water fidget.
Forget about 6mph. Others have correctly stated that most kayak paddlers go 2.5-3 mph. Eddy hopping is your friend. Learn to read water. Use the lee shore.
I used to be a hydrologist and we gauged streams all the time calculate discharge. A simple way to gauge the velocity to use an orange (a piece of fruit). It will float and move at the speed of the current. Time how long it takes to go a known distance like 100 feet. Do this several times in the reach you want to paddle. An orange is highly visible.
If you live in Maine you have a wonderland of water to paddle. Don’t be afraid to travel. One of the benefits or canoes and kayaks is that they can be easily portaged around dams. Just stay clear of lowhead dams and diversion structures. Carry around them. Good luck.
I have never canoed in that part of Maine’s Penobscot Bay, but did a lot of sailing out there in my mariner days aboard a tugboat. I remember a wicked squall came up one day when moving a barge that was nearly sunk from the sudden change in weather, but we got it secured in time.
Another island called Criehaven, or on maps what is known as Ragged Island, which is the furthest inhabited island in Maine at 28 miles out, we had a cabin on and stayed there some. Mostly for my ex-wives lobstering family pulling crustaceans from the sea.
But atlas, no longer do I get much salt on my skin and instead live river-life, both working on one and living on another.
Good advice about poling and immersion suits. I get kind of compliant about river’s, but once heard the previous owner of this house, and her daughter drowned in the river out back, but I am not how true the story is.
So brokenbow where are you located on the penobscot.? The divide between the two watersheds is way up north on greenville lake. There are outlets from that lake that lead to the kennebec watershed (one is continous class III whitewater) and the other I’ve never explored but just make sure there is adequate flow releasing. There a couple of ways to portage from greenville lake over to the west branch of the penobscot. Pick up a maine gazeteer map book. I don’t mean that as an insult. It has landings marked and is a great resource for traveling the backroads and waterways of the kennebec and penobscot The kennebec gorge would be extremely difficult to attain and there are other places that would be difficult as well on the penobscot (ripogenus gorge) . Thousands of miles of paddling are available in maine, and that’s not counting the coast, enjoy!
I live on a flat water river, 1 mph, and people here either shuttle or paddle upstream then back.
Back in the day I used to paddle up a class 2 rapid when the water was high enough, resting in the eddies behind big rocks before pushing up the tongues. Fair warning though, paddling up rapids you hit a lot of rocks with the paddle blades and they don’t last long. I ended up getting a heavy duty paddle with aluminum inserts in the blade tips.
Btw hydro dams are built where there is a lot of CFM, a good drop, and high banks close together. Typically this turns out to be at the base of rapids which unfortunately get drowned.
Well, I guess it depends on how fast the river is flowing. We usually kayak up river, relishing the thought of an easy downriver drift. Going upriver while you are fresh. But, lol. We usually end up battling the wind which switches and decides to blow against us. Oh well, we have fun.
We just have 10.5 foot kayaks, mine is a dagger and I love it. Actually quite easy to paddle, but never as good as a longer boat. The size works for us for portability when camping.
Ok I must have been in a fog this morning- Greenville lake? Greenville is the town, moose head is the lake, I believe the largest in the state. Interesting to me it is fed by the moose river and the famed moose river circuit. Take the northeast or northwest carry to get to the west branch of the penobscot. I guess I’m allowed to forget. I just keep paddling more stuff and now have a hard time remembering what I paddled last year
I don’t live on the Penobscot… I live on the Sebasticook River and work on the Kennebec River.
In reading your reply, I suppose you could cross over between the two river systems somewhere in that part of Maine as that has some well-known paddling waterways. Tramway, Maine certainly is well-known for its previous history and ghost-town existence now, along with the Telos Cut and the resulting “Telos War” that made a whole river system run backwards so logs could be moved south to Bangor. Very interesting history up there… and great paddling.
But that was not how the American Indian’s canoed between the two river systems.
They used the Sebasticook River.
At Winslow they took the river along its northern branch to its headwaters in Stetson. From there they had a 600 foot portage to the Black Stream that took them to the Kenduskeag Stream in Herman, that took ultimately took them to the Penobscot in Bangor.
The interesting thing about this paddling trail is that it is still there. There are no dams impeding the Penobscot or Kennebec Rivers in those locations. And the Sebasticook River only has two hydroelectric dams, and both are small… in Benton, and in Pittsfield, both of which are easy portages. There are some teeny-tiny dams to go around in downtown Pittsfield, and in Newport, but they are just there to maintain the level in the lakes just to give you an idea of how tiny they are. And the Sabasticook River itself is very flat. It only has two hydroelectric dams because in 75 miles it only drops 600 feet in elevation… its FLAT!
(Note: I put all Maine town or city names in bold so people unfamiliar with this state would know to make it less confusing)
I was checking out your run on the gazeteer! the portage from pleasant lake to black stream could be done easily on the road, even wheelable depending on what road/route you picked, the real question is how boatable black stream is down to herman pond.? Are you willing to walk your boat down the streambed until you get enough flow? It looks small on the map and possibly seasonal? Plastic for a boat material could be your friend if you’re are out dragging the boat in streambeds. Black stream looks pretty small on the map.
I know a little bit about crossing watersheds in maine. Courtesy of the boyscouts and their high adventure program. I have crossed the tramway in the allagash, and have portaged around and also ran the telos cut (flow dependent) down webster stream into the east branch of the penobscot, I have also portaged at mud pond from the westbranch to the allagash, I even was fortunate enough to run the moose river circuit down on down to brassua and exit via the east outlet on moosehead and ended at indian pond (kennebec). watershed. So I’ve done a bit of zigzagging on maine waterways back in the 80s. However I never did the northeast or northwest carry from moosehead to the westbranch. Instead i was starting on the north or southbranch into the west branch. So many neat places to paddle in Maine!
