Category: St John River

We woke up early planning to make a few last-minute packing decisions and load the car and looked out the window to find a fresh inch of snow with a steady drizzle of sleet dumping down from the heavens. So, you know, exactly what you WANT to see when you’re about to embark on a month-long paddling excursion that starts several hours north of your current location.

Steve’s coworker Ben had gallantly volunteered to drop us off at the St John’s headwaters in Lac Frontiere, QC. (We suspect the only reason that was the case was because he had no idea how many bad jokes he’d be subjected to during the ride.) He pulled into the driveway and expressed reasonable skepticism at the wisdom of beginning a canoe trip in the snow; we laughed at him, hollered goodbye to Steve’s roommate Adam through a locked bathroom door, and piled into the fully-laden car for the trip north.

As we headed toward Canada, things appeared to improve and our spirits rose with the temperatures. The border crossing into Quebec was uneventful; the guard asked us (more than once) if we were aware of the current weather conditions, but when we assured him that we were, in fact, fully cognizant of the white stuff on the ground. We also let him know that we’d checked with customs at the points we’d be flirting with the border, and he waved us through without incident. This interaction was the first indication we had that Canadians are pretty accepting of people who want nothing more than to make themselves miserable in the woods.

Sadly, that was the last easy event of the day. Almost immediately the weather shifted and the remainder of the drive alternated between long stretches of eerie, dark, evenly-spaced reforested evergreen plots and open expanses of well-manicured farmland… all covered in snow. Not a small amount of snow, or even anything that would be within the normal (or slightly above normal) range for mid-April. We’re talking full-bore early-March-quality coverage. Snowmobiles ripped past periodically, and we saw more than a few folks out shoveling their driveways. The sleet continued to fall steadily and as Steve and Ben dozed off leaving me alone behind the wheel, I was left to mull over the series of questionable life choices that had brought me to this point.

I kept thinking “as long as the ice is out on the river, everything will be fine”. We’d looked at ice-out dates for the St John going back to the sixties, and since 1980 there were less than a dozen years when things hadn’t cleared out by the 17th of April. Since we figured we wouldn’t be on the water until the 18th, and because global warming is a thing, the odds should have been in our favor… right? We passed a series of small- to mid-sized rivers, all of which were ice-free and merrily babbling their way downstream. Surely we weren’t completely fucked.

And then we passed our first major river. It looked like the ice had gone out fairly recently… and the banks were lined with what can only be described as French Canadian icebergs. Huge, sediment-striped, car-sized blocks of ice- in some places leaning out over the river in a manner that would easily crush an entire canoe and its passengers if it cut loose at the right moment.

I woke Steve up and made him look at it. His reluctant reaction was that we should probably wait at least a day before getting on the water. Mine had been that maybe we should abort and go paddle the Potomac or the Susquehanna or something near the Mason Dixon line where it was, you know, A RIVER instead of A BRICK OF ICE, but whatever. We were already in Canada.

Lac Frontiere (both the town and the lake) is tiny, and the initial headwaters of the St John were in fact fully open, but they immediately opened up into a swamp that was blocked by a few hundred yards of very sketchy looking ice. We found a spot along the slash (the cleared strip along the international boundary) off a snowmobile trail where we could inconspicuously set up camp without getting run over by anyone participating in seasonally-appropriate outdoor activities and Ben left us and all our gear in a snowbank on the side of the highway. Miraculously, the sun came out, and that made hauling our fully-laden canoe a mile across the snow like a pair of poorly-built sled dogs a little less miserable.

We had just enough time to get camp set up before it started raining and got dark. We cooked our first rice side of the trip in the vestibule of the tent, had some celebratory swigs of scotch (we had packed two liters’ worth) and planned to get a closer look at the river first thing in the morning.

The river is still partially frozen, even just beyond the lake outlet (probably because it’s more swamp than river at that point), so we made ourselves comfortable in our little campsite on the slash to wait out the thaw.

There’s still three feet or so of snow, but it hasn’t gotten cold enough to freeze any of our water bottles; since this was forecasted to be the coldest part of the week we’re hoping to be fully underway by the 21st at the latest.

The obvious question here is “why didn’t you idiots just wait to leave Vermont until Friday, then?” Honestly, I think we’re both more content up here than we would have been sitting around in Stowe for four more days. We’re out of cell service, we have plenty of food (and scotch), and we’ve got a chance to catch up on all the sleep we’ve missed in the last few weeks while prepping for this trip. Plus we’re not spending any money out here in the woods, which is nice, and we have the joy of knowing we’re FINALLY underway… even if we haven’t actually paddled anywhere yet.

We got buzzed by a snowmobile while we were in the tent, but since they didn’t stop we figured either a) they weren’t border patrol, b) they didn’t see us, or c) they saw us but just didn’t care.

The coffee is hot, the company’s good, the tent is warm and dry. No regrets.

We had our first interaction with Border Patrol today, which was an interesting distraction from the fact that the ice hasn’t budged.

While we were having a leisurely midmorning coffee in our camp chairs in the sun, a pair of border patrol officers rolled in on snowmobiles from the Canadian side of the slash. Turns out the person who buzzed us yesterday had given a call to local (Canadian) PD to report what appeared to be a tent, in a snowbank, with a canoe hitched to a tree next to it. (Since we are, in fact, in a tent in a snowbank with a canoe in three feet of snow on a remote border location, the story checks out.) They were very friendly, if a little befuddled by our presence, and said since we were American we were fine as long as we remained on the US side of the slash and didn’t re-enter Canada illegally. We showed them all our gear, assured them that we weren’t completely out of our minds, and after taking down our info they wished us good luck and left us to our own devices.

Shortly after that the clouds rolled back in and threatened rain, so we climbed back in the tent to work on the scotch.

It snowed last night, so we stayed in the tent until about noon waiting for things to thaw out. Fortunately we brought some truly terrible mystery novels and a deck of cards and are very easily entertained.

The sun eventually came out and it warmed up considerably. The river still has an ice block on it but we had a lovely lunch in the sun (I got burned- no surprise there) and spent some time flailing around in the half-rotten corn snow along the slash throwing snowballs across the border.

Our big adventure for the day was getting water. Since we still can’t tell where the land ends and the river begins, I put on my life jacket and punched a hole in the ice with my rocks paddle so I could pump five gallons of water into our reservoir jug while Steve anchored me with a safety line from a patch of verified land. It was tedious but anticlimactic, although I did shove a massive ice sheet away from the bank with my paddle that coasted lazily downstream in a way only a 400lb death slab can do. We technically pumped water in Canada, which we didn’t feel great about given the previous day’s warning from Canadian border patrol, but it was a matter of “do we walk out on the ice and potentially fall through and drown in Maine” or “take the obviously safer choice in a gray area of international boundary” and I’d prefer not to die before we even begin paddling.

Things are much slushier, and we’re hoping maybe Sunday will be our departure day. We just don’t want to be on the water the same day the ice is actively going out, since that seems like a great way to get squashed.

Groups of snowmobilers started passing our tent fairly early, so we were up and about right off the bat in case border patrol came by again or we needed to explain to someone that we are actually fairly normal.

I have finished my terrible mystery novel. Steve is about 150 pages behind, so I don’t have new material for a bit.

We trekked down to the river, but despite clear skies and warm temperatures it’s still a sloppy ice block. Smaller, for sure, but still enough of one that we wouldn’t be able to break through it ourselves.

Part of the day was spent trekking out to a point of land where the river turned away from the border to see if maybe we could portage around the iced swamp and put in downriver. Forty minutes of postholing later… no dice. Ice-lined swamplands with no way of telling what’s solid and what’s not, and nowhere safe to launch a boat. Infuriatingly, the Canadian side of the river is snowless and there’s EVEN A GODDAMNED CANOE on the shore that’s clearly seeing some use out in the open marsh.

If the blockage melts enough, we MIGHT be able to leave midday tomorrow, but it’s looking more like we’ll be here through Monday.

On the bright side, the weather is sunny and pleasant and it’s delightful to sit outside the tent in the camp chairs. Steve has his pipe and his ridiculous captain’s hat and seems about as content as can be, so I’m trying to follow his lead and give fewer fucks about the situation.

We woke up to glorious, blazing full sun and figured it might finally be time to look into rigging the boat. We had everything splayed out on our “lawn” when Steve looked down the Maine line and said “We’ve got company”. Two US Border Patrol agents- one on a snowmobile, one on an ATV, both armed to the teeth- rolled into our camp and called out our names.

Generally I’m suspicious (and nervous) when federal agents know who I am before I introduce myself, but we got extremely lucky and these two gentlemen were SUPER nice. They explained that they’d heard about us from Canadian border patrol and had come out hoping to catch us before we took off down the river. Apparently, despite my conversation over a month prior with the Fort Kent customs folks (and the Canadian PD’s assertion the other day that we were fine as long as we stayed on US soil and checked in further down the line), the minute we pushed off on the river we would have been considered “entrants without inspection” and WOULD HAVE BEEN ARRESTED AND PUT IN FEDERAL PRISON AS SOON AS WE HIT A BORDER PATROL CROSSING. WTF.

We were horrified (I was also pretty pissed at myself for not taking more detailed notes and getting specific names during my logistical research) and were fully prepared to either a) have to call off the trip and hitchhike back to Vermont or b) beg. The border patrol guys weren’t entirely sure what to tell us, since we’d obviously put in the effort to do our homework on backcountry border crossings and were fully committed (read: sans vehicular transportation) to being in the Canadian/American wilderness for several weeks.

The “easiest” thing for us to do would be to get ourselves, the boat, and our gear to a US Customs Inspection Station to get cleared. (Ironically, we were camped thirty feet from what used to be one, but had been shut down years prior.) Since the next closest was SIXTY MILES AWAY by road, which posed some pretty obvious logistical challenges, the officers couldn’t give us a definitive plan of action and needed to check in with their superiors… which, given the total lack of cell service in a thirty mile radius, meant we had to stay put on the slash under threat of federal imprisonment while our new armed acquaintances drove back to base to figure out what to do with us.

Nothing ruins a day more than going from “let’s leave tomorrow!” to “you’re sort of almost illegal immigrants, please don’t do anything until we get back and also the river is still VERY much iced over like, ten miles from here”.

And so we waited. (Are you sensing a theme on this trip yet?) Steve did some pacing; we stared at the trees; I proved that I CAN lie down comfortably in the boat without removing the thwarts; I re-counted our food supply; and we threw around all of our options for continuing. (They mostly amounted to “go for a multi-day hike with all our shit down the side of a remote highway and put in from wherever we can get inspected”.) Our biggest fear was that they wouldn’t return within 24 hours and we’d have to choose whether to camp there indefinitely or make a call and go rogue.

Impressively, they were back about five hours later to report they’d called “pretty much damn near the president himself” and been granted special authority to inspect us themselves. (HELL. EFFING. YES.) They got photos of our boat, gear, and passports before getting a shot of the two of us to pass along the border so folks would know who to look for as we came through; they “made” Steve wear his stupid captain’s hat for this. He was understandably “devastated” and “mortified”.

Both of us feel WAY better now that we have an actual, federally-approved plan in place now- even if we know we’re going to have to wait ANOTHER day here waiting for the ice to go out. I’m already pretty freaking sunburned, and I’d really like to be on the water instead of parked in a snowbank.

I knew I’d gotten burned yesterday after being outside all day, even with a hat and long sleeves and sunglasses (damned snow, being all reflective). Steve had gotten a little scorched as well, and we both woke up completely wiped out. He was a little nauseous but more or less okay-ish… and I was completely wrecked. Pounding headache, fever, queasy, totally exhausted. I barely made it through the morning stroll to the river to confirm the continued presence of ice. (

We spent the day in the tent rehydrating. I didn’t do much more than sleep; Steve finished his book and then stuck his cold hands on my hot face while repeatedly asking if he could make tea for me.

The weather ought to be cooperative; we’ll be fully recovered from the sun; and the ice will be melted enough to get through. (Hopefully.)

Today was another “let’s hang out in the tent reading and trying not to get cooked by the sun” day. Thank the technology gods that an hour of music only drains a phone battery by 3%.

We’re going a little stir-crazy. The most exciting event of the day was that Steve decided to break out a clean pair of underpants.

Full sun and warm temperatures (maybe 40 degrees, so “warm” is relative) and we packed the gear, donned the dry suits, marveled at how much snow had melted out from around the tent, and shoved off just ever-so-slightly on the Canadian side of the aquatic border. Getting in the water took some doing and a lot of poking with a couple of sturdy sticks, and then we had to break through the ice block. It was almost entirely slush, so I hacked at it with my paddle, we reversed, we plowed in at full speed, repeat… and a few minutes later, we were on the way.

The Northwest Branch of the St John has a pretty good current this time of year, and since we don’t really know anything about the river save what we could parse out from Google Earth and the topo maps (i.e. not very much at all), we scooted from eddy to eddy trying to gauge each bend and riffle as best we could before committing.

We made it through two sets of small rapids within the first mile or two, probably a class I+ or II, with some good-sized standing waves and bigass MF-ing rocks. The spray deck performed admirably, and I was glad to be in a drysuit from the first wave. Both of us were absolutely ecstatic to be on the water and finally underway.

Then we heard water- BIG water. It was around a sharp curve to the right, so we couldn’t get a great look beyond one obvious VERY big rock on the inside of the curve, and since there was nowhere to pull out we made the call to hold left of center and run it.

…This was maybe not the best call.

As we rounded the bend, we plowed into what was easily a III+ rapid and would probably have been a solid IV if it had been longer. The river dropped about ten feet over the course of 20 yards between several HUGE boulders.

The stupidest part was that we came so damn close to making it through without even getting any water in the boat because it was such a short stretch. We easily cleared the first big rocks, bounced through the first two or three massive standing waves… and then clipped something.

Neither of us saw what it was, but either way the boat went out from under me so fast I barely had enough time to reflect on my life choices before it shoved me underwater. I popped back up, skidded off a rock, and within seconds both of us were swimming the upside-down boat to shore with paddles in hand.

It’s worth noting that Steve’s stupid captain’s hat both stayed on his head AND remained dry.

We coasted into an eddy and flipped the boat back over to assess the damage. Thanks to the spray deck, we only lost a loose Nalgene and a stuff sack of tie downs (my bad- it floated past me in the eddy and I failed to grab it before it sank because like a complete moron I reached for our giant bailing sponge first)… but the very tip of the bow was smashed to hell. It wasn’t anything bad enough to compromise the structural integrity of the boat; the protective end cap had been sheared off and while the float tank was no longer watertight, all the damage was well above the waterline. While it’ll probably be an easy repair once we’re back in civilization, it was pretty sobering and it completely soured Steve’s mood for the rest of the day

He did, however, find the “silver lining” to my rubber boot (which I lost while using it as a bailer) and waded back upriver to get some good photos of the rapid that dented his baby.

Shaken but righted, we got back in and made it about another half mile before we heard more big water. This time we managed to pull over; good thing, too. Fast water and more class III rapids awaited, complete with ice chunks sailing through as the lake behind us cleared out, and more of the same visible down the line at the next bend.

Portage it is! …Through a hellish mix of small scrubby evergreens, downed trees, and thigh-deep snow. It took us all afternoon to get the boat about 200 yards, which was the point when it started to rain and we figured screw it: we’re on the highest ground around and we can already say we probably can’t run the next batch of rapids.

We hung a couple lines, tromped out a place for the tent, and just barely got set up and under cover before it started coming down in earnest.

We’re FINALLY paddling… even if we only made it about three miles. So much for the “easy handful of miles” we were hoping for before the confluence. It looks like we’ll probably spend all day tomorrow portaging.

I feel like I need to give Steve some time alone with the canoe. And the scotch. 🙁

We woke up to intermittent rain, moderately warm (about 40 degree) temperatures, and a water level that had come up several feet… making the section of river we faced even less runnable. Good thing the only real plan we had for the day was to move the canoe down past the next set of rapids.

Or, as it turned out, just to pack down the trail so that portage would be a physical possibility.

There’s an overwhelming amount of moose poop everywhere (we haven’t seen bear poop, but we’re AGGRESSIVELY bear bagging just in case) and it took us the better part of the morning to plot the course to the next potential put-in. We DEFINITELY can’t run these rapids- especially in high water.

When we got back to camp for late lunch, the rain had picked up and we were both pretty much soaked. And tired. Postholing is exhausting, especially through Maine evergreen scrub in thigh-deep snow with running water underneath it. We debated moving the canoe just for something to do, but dragging it in the pouring rain sounded like a special level of hell even for us and with the water still rising it doesn’t look like we’re going anywhere soon so we called it a day.

Steve found a spot on yesterday’s portage trail where a posthole punch-through created the perfect set up for an ice toilet with our foam pads as insulation, and had himself a very leisurely poop. He was quite proud. (I was less impressed than he’d hoped.)