{"id":35588,"date":"2025-03-19T08:00:22","date_gmt":"2025-03-19T15:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/community.nrs.com\/duct-tape\/?p=35588"},"modified":"2025-03-18T08:37:40","modified_gmt":"2025-03-18T15:37:40","slug":"suping-the-sandy-maines-hidden-gem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.nrs.com\/duct-tape\/2025\/03\/19\/suping-the-sandy-maines-hidden-gem\/","title":{"rendered":"SUPing the Sandy: Maine’s Hidden Gem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just east of Rangeley Lake and a bit south of the Saddleback Ski Area are the Sandy River Ponds, high up in the hills of Maine, and the headwaters of the Sandy River\u2014the start of our little adventure.<\/span><\/p>\n

Too skinny and boney to paddle out of the ponds, we took a short drive to the nearby Smalls Falls. A little way downstream we started our real journey: a source-to-sea SUP descent of Maine\u2019s Sandy River, exploring the western branch of the Upper Kennebec River watershed along with some of the most important and viable Atlantic salmon spawning habitat in the Northeast.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Sandy River joins the Kennebec a few miles south of Madison. Within a few short miles, the downstream flow is choked in Skowhegan by two dams, then two more in Waterville. From there it flows freely into the Gulf of Maine.<\/span><\/p>\n

The thing about any good adventure is you have to have a solid crew. Through random good fortune and some well-placed phone calls, we managed to field an all-star team. Matt Palmariello, Amy Borch, Eli Studer, Clark Tate, and me, Joe Klementovich. Matt is the local, our navigator and veteran paddler. Clark does safety checks and is the audio recorder to help tell our story. Amy brought the optimism and a solid dose of f***-around-and-find-out attitude. Eli, a first-time whitewater SUPer, packed in her superior chef skills and a carload of curiosity. And I brought a camera. We fit all of that on our inflatable SUPs along with food for four days.<\/span><\/p>\n

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One of the reasons for picking this stretch of water was to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Edwards Dam removal in 1999. We also wanted to help spread the word on the FERC relicensing public comment period for another dam on the lower part of the Kennebec. A report has recently been issued on the relicensing and it needs a lot of work. To read the report and contribute your voice to the next round of negotiations, hit this<\/span>\u00a0link<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dam removal works. It\u2019s working on the lower Kennebec, the Penobscot, St. Croix, the Klamath on the west coast, among others. Each case where dams have been removed, it\u2019s opened up spawning habitat for migratory fish (salmon, river herring, shad, American eels) and populations have since surged. Here in Maine, Atlantic salmon are slowly increasing in numbers with some dams being removed. But there are still too many dams for them to negotiate and successfully rebuild to previous numbers.<\/span><\/p>\n

But our little adventure was also about better understanding the Sandy River on a more intimate level.<\/span><\/p>\n