We met Lisa DeHart (https://www.3minutesmaineguide.com/) and her husband Jeff at the West Gardiner Rod and Gun Club at 8am. After some on land discussion of poling, pole styles, and what makes a good poling canoe, we piled into Lisa and Jeff’s trucks and headed to the Cobboseecontee Stream, about 5 minutes away. We unloaded the boats and portaged them down a wide grassy trail, across a dam, and down another short trail to our launch spot.
Lisa gave us some more land based instructions before she hopped in her canoe to show us good poling technique. Before long, we were all in our boats getting the feel for poling! We started off in some slow moving water to get a sense of balance and steering the canoes with a pole. In the first 5 minutes, I got my pole lodged between two rocks and snapped it! Lisa and Jeff were not upset at all and told me it happens; that’s one of the reasons they supply everyone with two poles. After the short quickwater section, there was a flat pool for us to practice in, and Lisa and Jeff provided excellent instruction. Once we were a bit more comfortable, they had us practice poling up the quickwater we had just come down. This proved to be difficult for me, but eventually I got the hang of it.
We then poled back down to the pool and had lunch on a sandy beach. We traded stories of epic canoe trips, discussed our favorite gear, and chatted about tarp shelters as it started to rain gently (if you haven’t seen Lisa and Jeff’s tarp shelter presentation at the Maine Canoe Symposium, I highly recommend it). After the leisurely lunch, we paddled down to the next section of quickwater. We tied up the boats and went on shore to scout the section of river ahead. This section was a bit trickier with an S-curve through rocks and strainers. Lisa discussed how to read whitewater a bit before she got back in her boat and demonstrated how to run that section of water. Before long, we had all run that section of water, and we were working on poling it upstream. We played there for a couple hours before paddling/poling upstream back to the dam.
The class was scheduled to end at 1pm, but we were all having fun enjoying the relatively warm spring air and had no afternoon commitments, so we played a little longer. We finally got everything loaded and tied down around 3pm and headed back to the West Gardiner Rod and Gun Club.
It was a great class with great instructors and I would recommend Lisa to anyone looking to learn how to pole! MWGO hopes to make this a yearly spring class moving forward, so look out for information next spring to reserve your spot!