Maine expedition provides ultimate training experience in traditional canoe skills

23 days on the St. John and Allagash rivers

 by Jim McMahon

Jack Mountain Bushcraft & Guide Service (www.jackmtn.com), based in Wolfeboro Falls, New Hampshire - known for providing the most comprehensive traditional wilderness living and travel courses available - has just released its 2005 Canoe Expedition and Guide Training Course, designed to train experienced guides and fishermen to become expert in traditional canoeing skills, and the preparation and leadership of canoeing expeditions.  For the experienced fishing guide, this is the ultimate course in learning traditional paddling and poling, expedition skills, and the craft of guiding, on two of America's premier northwoods wilderness rivers.  For the avid fisherman, it opens up a whole new level of experience for fishing those backwater northwoods streams.

"Canoeing has been the preferred method of spring, summer and fall travel in the northern forests for thousands of years," says Tim Smith, M.Ed., Registered Master Maine Guide, Registered New Hampshire hunting and fishing guide, and owner of Jack Mountain Bushcraft & Guide Service.  "The waterways were the lifeblood of early native peoples.  We use and teach the traditional methods of Maine guide canoeing because they work as well now as they have for centuries.  Our goal is training our students the skills for safe passage of people and gear."

Students receive intensive instruction on a wide variety of canoeing, camping and guiding curricula, including: 

• Planning, preparing, provisioning, packing, and putting on a wilderness trip
• Efficiently propelling a loaded 18 - 20 foot canoe with paddle and pole, both up and down rapids
• Tying useful and appropriate knots
• Using an axe, knife, and bow saw safely and effectively to gather, section and split firewood
• Lighting a fire under any conditions
• Cooking and baking over an open wood fire, using traditional cooking rigs, reflector ovens, Dutch ovens, and more
• Navigation with and without a map and compass
• Identifying edible and medicinal plants, as well as birds, and mammals
• Mammal tracking
• Learning to "read" a river while running various classes of whitewater - not play boating - but learning to see where the channels and rocks lie
• Tying a tumpline onto a wanigan and a canoe for ease of carrying  
• Making field-repairs on a wood/canvas canoe
• Rescuing people and gear after an upset
• Setting up canvas wall tents and tarps

The 2005 Canoe Expedition & Guide Training Course was specifically designed as a hands-on experience for those guides and serious fishermen who want to learn these techniques cold.  Too many guides have received their license by just reading literature sufficient to pass a written guide exam, with little or no experience in the bush.  This course will provide them, and any serious fishermen, with the necessary skills they need to lead a successful and safe canoeing expedition.

"Our students put their newfound skills into action while traversing the awesome St. John and Allagash rivers in northern Maine," states Smith.  "Throughout the trip, the instructors present real-life problem scenarios to be solved by the students, conditions that may come up in a guided expedition.  The St. John is the premier wilderness trip in the U.S., east of the Mississippi River.  The Allagash Wilderness Waterway is one of North America's best-known paddling destinations.  These rivers are home to bears, moose, deer, coyotes, bald eagles, beavers and muskrat.  Enormous white pines, spruces, firs and cedars line the rivers.  And the Northern Lights frequently light up the sky at night.  This is truly a pristine wilderness, and an ideal training ground to teach our student guides the necessary skills to survive."

Jack Mountain uses a fleet of boats, which includes two handmade 20-foot wood/canvas White guide canoes, and five 18-foot Prospector canoes, made of Royalex.  According to Smith, the Prospectors have been found to be the truest to the traditional hull designs.  Unlike most "modern" canoes, their design lends itself well to their program, being responsive to the paddle and pole, and able to carry a heavy load without drawing a lot of water.

"Our paddling style emphasizes the short stroke that was common amongst natives and French Voyageurs (fur traders), allowing them to cover vast distances while expending little effort," Smith continues.  "Poling and snubbing (poling downstream), while rarely seen these days, are a major part of our river technique, and allow us the freedom to maneuver up and downstream through all types of water.  It is a common sight to see our student guides, standing with pole in hand, as they descend a rapid, and also to see them traveling back up it."

Jack Mountain has provided their Canoe Expedition and Guide Training Course for several years now, with a growing number of guides that have completed it.  "There is a lot of flaky information out there on the bush, the way things supposedly should be done," says Jeff Butler, a hunting and fishing guide from New Brunswick, Canada, who took the Canoe Expedition and Guide Training Course with Jack Mountain last year.  "A lot of old wives tales really, that are not based on actual experience.  Jack Mountain is completely focused on teaching only relevant information, you learn only wilderness-proven techniques that you can use".

"I've never run rapids standing up in a canoe, and in a controlled way poled it down a river, and felt safe doing it," Butler says.  "When you are standing up you have a better field of view, you can see things better.  It's easier to maneuver the canoe.  There are a lot of places in the shallows of rivers that you can't get to with boats, but by poling I can bring my clients there.  I'm talking about wilderness fishing areas that are relatively inaccessible, that can only be reached by canoe.  In New Brunswick, all kinds of fishing occurs out of a canoe.  The rivers here get so low in the summer and fall, that the only way to get through the rapids is to use a canoe and pole.  Sometimes we only have six or eight inches of water, so a paddle is basically useless."

"When I came to Jack Mountain, my first thought was - What am I going to learn here that I don't already know?" continues Butler.  "I grew up in the mountains of Alberta, Canada, fly fishing for trout, and trapping for muskrat and mink.  My family has lived in the Northwest Territories for decades running dog teams and trapping.  I've always been around the wilderness.  But, in the first thirty minutes at Jack Mountain, I realized I didn't know as much as I thought.  This course has taught me a lot."

The 2005 Canoe Expedition and Guide Training Course is a 23-day experience running from May 7 to May 29.   Tuition is $2,450.

For more information on the 2005 Canoe Expedition and Guide Training Course, and other courses on traditional wilderness living and travel skills, please contact Tim Smith at Jack Mountain Bushcraft & Guide Service, P.O. Box 61, 267 Camp School Road, Wolfeboro Falls, NH, 03896; Phone/Fax: 603-569-6150; email tim@jackmtn.com ; or visit their web site at www.jackmtn.com

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Jim McMahon writes on outdoors and wilderness adventures. He has done considerable exploration of high-altitude lakes and rivers of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.