Patrik Orcutt 10.22.25
Welcome back to Part 4 of this multi-part piece I’m writing on my recent trip down the West Branch Penobscot River. If you have not already, I would highly recommend reading Parts 1-3 before diving into this one below. In Part One, I have covered the route we plan to take and some info on the participants in this trip. Part two covered the gear I brought and the history of the river, and part 3 was all about the first day.
This trip was not sponsored by anyone, but I would like to thank Old Town Canoe for getting me a Discovery 158 I used for this trip and Jetboil for hooking me up with Flash 1.0 Fast boil system to cook a lot of my meals and make my coffee.
Canoe Coverage on AllOutdoor
Morning at Roll Dam
As I was falling asleep the previous night, I remember thinking to myself how nice it was to be able to hear the water rushing over the rocks of the river and the crackling of the fire. It was truly relaxing after a long work week. When Ridge and I set up camp the previous night, it was obviously very dark, but we could hear the river right next to us. I unzipped my tent and ventured out to the river to see if there was any wildlife getting a morning drink. There was no wildlife, but I was delighted to see the sun had not crested over the trees yet, and there was a small amount of fog aloft the river. I stood there in the river for a few minutes and soaked in the calmness of this cool summer morning. For a moment, I felt at peace with the world and then realized I needed to make some coffee and breakfast.
Breakfast
By the time I had come back from the river, Ridge was already awake we got started on some breakfast. Ridge and I took very different approaches to food on this trip. I brought just what I needed, while he brought everything he could fit in a 27-gallon plastic tote and a small cooler. While I was trying to bring as little as possible in case we needed to conduct any unexpected portages, Ridge knew we would not need to worry about weight and brought all the good stuff to include bacon. So what did we have for breakfast that morning? Bacon, naturally. After breakfast, we packed up our campsites and loaded up the truck and headed to Lobster Stream.
Lobster Stream
Once we arrived at Lobster Stream, we were surprised to see there were multiple trucks and additional canoes getting ready to put in at the stream. This was surprising as we had seen virtually nobody else since leaving Caribou Checkpoint the previous day. Once we parked and began to offload our gear, one of the other guys came up to us and asked us how he was doing. We came to find out that these guys were in need of an air pump, as their truck already popped a tire, and their spare was looking pretty slack. Obviously, we were happy to help out, and Ridge hooked them up with his pump.
After we got all our gear situated and the canoes in the stream, we were ready to set off on this adventure. As mentioned before, Ridge and I had been talking about doing a trip like this for almost 6 months at this point, and it felt great to finally be doing it. Lobster Stream leads right into the Wes Branch Penobscot, and these waters were nice and calm. Just for reference, below you can see on the map where we put the canoes in on the bottom center of the map.
After getting on the river, I started tracking our trip with my Garmin watch to see what our pace was going to be like and if we would need to try and paddle any faster during the day. The flows from the river were very fast in the beginning, as were clocked our first mile in just over 15 minutes. This meant that if we kept this pace, we would be done with the entire trip in 5 hours, and that would put us way ahead of schedule. But as you can imagine, that definitely didn’t happen. This will conclude part 4 of the West Branch Penobscot River trip series. If you enjoyed this, please be on the lookout for part 5, where we visit notable camp sites and see many critters along the way.
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