A day as a ranger

By Matthew LaRoche
Allagash Wilderness 
Waterway Supervisor

We have a saying up on the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, “Rain, mud, sleet or snow — an Allagash ranger is on the go.” This saying certainly proved true in early August when I helped a couple of the rangers with a project at Little Allagash Falls.

It all started when I made an inspection of the campsites on Allagash Lake and Stream, earlier in the summer. The outhouse at Little Allagash Falls, one of the most remote locations on the waterway, was given the dubious distinction of being the worst outhouse on the waterway.

After the inspection, Jay Young, who is responsible for that campsite, started making plans to rebuild that outhouse. He met with me at my Greenville office, to ask me if I would help get the materials to the site the following Tuesday. I didn’t have anything pressing on my schedule for that day, so I somewhat reluctantly agreed to give him a hand. Am I ever glad I did, because I had a very exciting day on one of the most beautiful and challenging to-get-to locations on the entire waterway.

The night before our excursion, I went up to Chamberlain Bridge and stayed overnight with Chris Silsbee. We loaded Chris’s truck with a twenty-foot canoe, lumber, tools, and other supplies.

The next day, we left the ranger station at seven o’clock in the morning and headed for Johnson Pond. When we arrived at Johnson Pond, we carried the canoe and the several hundred pounds of materials down the 300-foot trail to the pond.

Chris and I paddled across Johnson Pond, to the narrow brook that flows into Upper Allagash Stream. Alder branches scraped at the sides of our 20-foot canoe as we made our way down the brook. We had to get out of the canoe on three different occasions to drag the watercraft over beaver dams. The beaver dams were actually beneficial, because they kept the water up high enough in the stream to actually float our heavily loaded canoe.

Once we entered Upper Allagash Stream, it was an easy paddle down to Allagash Lake. There is no dam on Allagash Lake which gives the lake a totally natural looking shoreline. We made our way across the lake to the outlet; if you look closely you can still see the remnants of an old log driving dam here. From the outlet down to Little Round Pond, there was never a dull moment.

There were sweepers to avoid, rocks to steer around, and turns to navigate. At one point on the stream, we had to duck under a large pine tree that had fallen all the way across the channel.

When we paddled into Little Round Pond, it was like entering a nature sanctuary. There were two loons on the pond with twin chicks, an osprey soaring overhead, and another large bird of prey sitting like a sentinel in a big pine tree keeping a watchful eye on the place.

It started to rain just as we ran the canoe up on the flat ledge above Little Allagash Falls — one of the most beautiful natural spots on the waterway!

After a quick lunch, Chris and I started in on the project. The first order of business was to level the outhouse. Just about the time that we needed an extra hand Jay showed up to help steady the privy as I cut off the box that it was sitting on. We soon had the building on two new level mud sills. After that, we took off the old roofing and installed a nice new clear fiberglass roof.

We were all pretty dirty and wet by the time we got the roof on, so we decided that Jay could finish the job another day without our help. We stored the new boards for the bench seat in the outhouse, packed up our tools, and headed down the stream to the takeout location.

There are three challenging ledge drops below the falls that we negotiated pretty well, given that we were both tired and wet. Chris is about 25 years younger than I am, but; I knew he was tired too, because he wasn’t moving the back of the canoe around the rocks as well as he was earlier in the day.

When we got back to our vehicles, it was 4 p.m. and I needed to be back in Greenville for a meeting the next day. It would be another long day in the Allagash, but I thoroughly enjoyed our adventure.

The Allagash Wilderness Waterway is managed by the Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry’s Bureau of Parks and Lands. For an information packet or general information on the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, go to www.maine.gov/allagash or call 941-4014.