Whitewater Rafting
Tours in Maine.

Allagash Canoe Trips is one of the longest-established outfitters on the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, running multi-day guided expeditions from Greenville, Maine into the heart of the north woods. The Allagash is a 92-mile chain of boreal lakes, ponds, thoroughfares, and the Allagash River itself, protected in 1966 as the first state-designated wild and scenic river system in the eastern United States. Trips typically launch at Telos or Chamberlain Lake and run downstream through Eagle, Churchill, and Umsaskis lakes to Allagash Falls and the village of Allagash near the Canadian border. Camping is at primitive Bureau of Parks and Lands sites along the corridor, with cooking over open fire. Wildlife along the route includes moose, loons, bald eagles, brook trout, and the occasional Canada lynx.

National Park Sea Kayak Tours runs guided sea kayak tours of the coastal waters surrounding Mount Desert Island and Acadia National Park from a base in downtown Bar Harbor. Routes work the protected harbors and coves on the western and southern sides of the island — Western Bay, Bartlett Narrows, and the lee shores of the Cranberry Isles — chosen daily based on wind and tide so trips stay in sheltered water. Paddlers see the pink granite shoreline that defines Acadia, harbor seals hauled out on ledges at low tide, harbor porpoises feeding in the rips, and bald eagles nesting along the spruce-fir headlands. Tours are limited to small groups with Maine Sea Kayak Guide Association certified guides, and Acadia's 47,000 protected acres provide the dramatic backdrop on every paddle.

Northern Outdoors operates the premier guided whitewater program in Maine from a base camp and resort at The Forks, where the Kennebec and Dead rivers meet. The Kennebec Gorge below Harris Station dam delivers 12 miles of class III-IV pool-drop whitewater on scheduled releases all summer, while the Dead River produces some of the longest continuous whitewater runs in the East — 16 miles of class III-IV — on roughly a dozen release dates per season. The Penobscot's West Branch through Ripogenus Gorge runs class V and is among the most demanding commercially run whitewater in the eastern United States, dropping past Mount Katahdin in Baxter State Park country. The resort base includes lodging, a brewpub, and snowmobile trail access in winter to the ITS-87 corridor.