Madawaska River
Information on planning a canoe trip down the Madawaska River.
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This is a fun river. The whitewater on this route is mostly all drop and pool, which means it's great for beginners. You won't find yourself swimming down long dangerous rapids if you fall in. If you fall in, it will all be over pretty fast. (The rapid, not your life, hopefully).
You can make this as long of a trip as you like, but after the take out a Griffith it gets wide and boring. We've heard, we've never actually paddled that section. There's a variety of put-ins, but you'll really only find official campsites past Palmer Rapids.
In the spring the upper section of the Madawaska is also runnable, but we've never done that part. We need to though.
Upper Madawaska
Whitney to near the town of Madawaska
Nights: There is one official campsite in the middle of it, but it's generally done as a 22km day trip.
Paddling distance: 22 km
Put-in: Upper Madawaska Canoe Launch
Take-out: Major Lake Road bridge
Shuttle distance: 29 km
Lower Madawaska
Aumonds Bay to Buck Bay (the fun stuff)
This little 11km run on the Madawaska has the most rapids to offer. We like to base camp and run it multiple times on a trip. There is a parking lot at the put-in and the take-out and a simple shuttle between the two. We've even used a bicycle for shuttling back to get the car before. The small road from the main road to both Amonds Bay and Buck Bay is tight and bumpy. Depending on the seasonal conditions, cars can get down those roads, but drive slowly and carefully and watch for deep ruts. (If you run into a deep rut your car can't get over, stop and fill it in with thick deadfall from the bush and carry on.)
Nights: It's a repeatable day-run, so as many as you like.
Paddling distance: 11 km
Shuttle distance: ~7.5 km
Aumonds Bay to Griffith
If you want to make more of a trip of it, paddling on to Griffith can make for a nice two night trip. There are a few nice sets of rapids after Buck Bay and one large portage. As you can see on the map below, the rapids do start to be more sparse after Buck Bay though.
Nights: 2
Paddling distance: 24 km
Shuttle distance: 42 km
Palmer Rapids to Griffith
If you just want to paddle a lot more, you can put in at a variety of places from Palmer Rapids down. There's great set of rapids right after the dam and more than one paddling organization run their training courses there. I (Tim) have only started this far up twice and it was very busy. It's a nice set of rapids, but I wouldn't say it's worth the extra 16 km of flat water paddling through cottage-land after it. If you launch around Palmer with your own cars, I don't really know where you'd park. There's Jessup's Campground on the south side of the river, which is a popular spot for day tripping paddlers that want to car-camp. We've always camped on river sites so I'm not certain how to book Jessup's. Another variation of this is Palmer to Buck Bay.
Nights: 2-3
Paddling distance: 31 km
Shuttle distance: 53 km
Water level data
The best water metre for all the paddleable areas is Madawaska Real-Time Hydrometric Data at Palmer Rapids
The Wilderness Canoe Association says, "Min: runnable down to 15 cms. Ideal: running: 30-60 cms is good, and runs to 100 are good but character of river changes to big features and less technical. Max: 225. At higher flows many rapids become less technical and fairly washed out."
Resources
Shuttle service: Paddler's Coop
Custom maps
Lower Madawaska
Upper Madawaska
Madawaska and Opeongo whitewater guide book
We highly recommend the classic guidebook for the Madawaska by George Drought. You can remove a lot of the guess work around what is runnable and what is not. It's available from The Friends of Algonquin Park site. It's got everything you need for this river. It's the kind of book you bring with you and use while you're scouting rapids. This book helped us get into whitewater since it took away all the amateur guess work on where to run and why, while still helping us develop the skills to later no longer need the book. If it's your first time, just don't go down the river without it.
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