enlarge Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

A moose grazes near the Roach River. Our reporter and photographer saw no people during a canoe trip along the waterway, but surprised three moose.

enlarge Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

Staff Writer Tux Turkel paddles Third Roach Pond on the way to Medawisla Wilderness Camps, owned by the Appalachian Mountain Club. Few canoe these waters now, but the AMC hopes to make this and other areas of Maine’s 100-Mile Wilderness outdoor recreation destinations.

See detailed canoe route map Map source: Appalachian Mountain Club; Staff Graphic by Jeff Woodbury

ABOUT THIS SERIES

Sunday: The Appalachian Mountain Club has far-reaching plans to make thousands of acres of Maine woods into a national destination for backcountry recreation. Today: We canoe across three remote ponds, dragging our boat down a rocky river that rarely sees human footprints. Tuesday: A wrong turn takes us off a new 17-mile mountain bike trail as we explore a rocky route between two sporting camps. Wednesday: A plan to follow a proposed hiking route off the Appalachian Trail becomes a bush-whacking challenge to get off a mountain before dark. Read the Northern Exposure series

ABOUT OUR REPORTER AND PHOTOGRAPHER

TUX TURKEL is a staff writer who covers business issues, including tourism, energy and real estate. A graduate of Emerson College in Boston, he has won several state and regional awards for reporting and has worked at the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram for 27 years. In 1997, he and three other journalists reported the Forgotten Water series for the Maine Sunday Telegram, tracing the 130-mile Eastern Maine Canoe Trail from the New Brunswick border to the Penobscot River.

DEREK DAVIS has worked in photojournalism for 10 years, the past three at the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram. Previously he worked as a staff photographer for the Journal News in Westchester County, N.Y. He is a graduate of the University of New England in Biddeford.

Northern Exposure is a collaborative effort of the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, pressherald.com and News 8 WMTW. Tonight on News 8 WMTW at 6, Steve Minich examines plans for "nature-based tourism."

There's not enough water here to float a canoe. Certainly not our boat, crammed with 200 pounds of camping and camera gear.

For staff photographer Derek Davis and me, that meant dragging an aluminum canoe through ankle-deep water for a mile, over slippery rocks, fallen logs and beaver dams. Fighting a headwind that whipped up whitecaps on the ponds -- and failing to find a mapped campsite where we planned to spend the night -- just added to the excitement.

The trip was part of our exploration of the Roach Pond Tract, 30,000 acres of forest, mountains and remote waterways east of Greenville. The Appalachian Mountain Club has this parcel under contract and has begun promoting it as a wilderness paddling destination. It's part of the club's Maine Woods Initiative, an ambitious plan to create a national destination for adventure tourism and recreation in this region over the next century.

The route we took covers a new canoe trip laid out recently by the AMC. It was created by Shannon LeRoy, who now manages the club's camps and programs here after 13 years of running a sporting camp on Second Roach Pond. Only a handful of people have made this journey in the past dozen years, LeRoy told us.

Really. I guess dragging a boat down a riverbed, swatting mosquitoes and trying to keep from falling isn't everyone's idea of a good time.

Then again, the "Tour of the Waters Canoe Trip," as the AMC calls this route, brings the adventurous paddler through a truly wild place. We saw no one; we did surprise three moose in the middle of the day. Eight miles of paddling across three ponds and down the shallow but beautiful Roach River gave us a taste of what a canoe or kayak traveler seeking solitude and a backwoods experience can find.

We also learned that these waters aren't just for extreme trippers. At the west end of Second Roach Pond, at the AMC- owned Medawisla Wilderness Camps, families canoe across quieter places, finding adventures of their own.

A ROUTE RARELY TAKEN

We were headed for Medawisla, leaving from Fourth Roach Pond. Fourth Roach is a pristine pond with no camps and no roads leading to the shoreline. The AMC supplied us with a canoe, chained to a tree at the end of a long portage trail.

It had been raining when we left Portland in the morning, but as we approached Greenville, a fresh westerly breeze was shooing away the last of the clouds. The wind kept the bugs off, and I felt good lugging our gear to the put-in. Then I saw what that wind was doing to Fourth Roach.

I had taken a compass bearing meant to guide us across Fourth Roach and through the outlet leading to Third Roach Pond. That plan was blown away. The moment we launched, the wind hit us broadside. With Davis paddling hard, I steered the bow into the wind. We had to keep our heavily loaded boat from taking water over the gunwales.

Slowly, we zigged east. Then we picked our way along the rocky shore to find the narrow outlet, haul the boat over a beaver dam and enter Third Roach.

The route from there to the outlet of the Roach River was an easier paddle, largely into the wind and lacking the long fetch -- the distance over which a strong breeze stirs up water.

We arrived at the outlet to find it blocked by a sizable beaver dam. I've come to regard beaver dams as the toll plazas of wilderness canoe travel -- hard to avoid, and you've got to pay. This one, luckily, had a handy detour. On the north edge was a broad portage trail over an earthen berm, the remnants of a man-made dam once used to move timber into Second Roach. The old corduroy strips of logs used for the dam's base remain visible today.

Then the misery began.

NOT FOR THE FAINT-HEARTED

The wind was gone now, blocked...