Enchanted Stream

Posted 5/6/03 by Phil Urban on the MVP message board

This is meant as a little celebration/appreciation of a great day on the water.

We got some rain last week, in Maine, which set us up perfectly for some creeking this past weekend. Did the usual calling around and ended up with a party of six of us that have paddled together in different formulations for the last six years or so. I hadn't paddled with a couple of the guys for several years. We met up in the Forks at 8:45 AM and I live 3 hours from there so you can do the math. I didn't get enough sleep. The Forks is a cool town. Its an historic place set at the confluence of the Dead and the Kennebec. Benedict Arnold labored up the Dead with his troops and long boats on his way to Canada but these daze its a rafting/paddling Mecca. I always see old friends there that are in the same state of eager anticipation as me. Local folks that feel like old friends are still running shuttles and taking yer buck for that last cup of coffee before you hit the river. Its a cool place.

We set up a fairly complicated shuttle system (at least it seemed complicated with 6 guys contributing to the plan) I happily stepped out of that process. The plan was to catch two creeks with the second dumping into the Dead River that was running at a big 7000 cfs spring release. Somehow I had not paddled either of these creeks so I was going to catch two PFDs (personal first descents) in one day, as were two of the other guys. It was 60 degrees, the sun was shining, we had a great group, two new creeks were waiting; it was the very definition of a superb day about to unfold.

We loaded up the boats on the two vehicles waiting for us, grabbed some food, played with the happy Lab 'puppy', and threw stones at Tom as he tried to take a dump entirely too close to us. 20 minutes later we were at the putin for the appropriately named Enchanted Stream. This is the second stream you cross on the way into the Dead. I can't re

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