Powerplant Wave – Orono, ME

Just got back from Maine and found a sweet hole/wave right below the old Orono powerplant that feeds into the Penobscot. They’ve been diverting more water into it this year, making it plenty deep (minus one rock our sterns seemed to hit when getting wrecked) and has excellent eddy service. The best part though? The Enfield/Stillwater gauge from USGS is at about 7,000, bone dry as far as paddling goes for the Penobscot/Stillwater. Considering this wavehole is more fun than Typewriter (upstream in Old Town), it’s a pretty huge shock to have such deep waters and frothy foam.

Great for spins, blunts, loops, combat rolls (lots of them), getting window shaded, and and all around good time. The power plant does change flow pretty rapidly in small amounts as we found, it changes the play pretty considerably. These two pictures are basically the change in about two minutes from what I’d assume is an increase in flow which smoothed out the tiny wave feature in the middle, making the whole feature a wide ol’ hole.

I’ll leave it with a couple more pictures, but this is by far one of the best summer paddling around Orono. For those who know central maine, it’s probably one of the cleaner rodeo spots you’ll find up here and has the added bonus of running during incredibly dry weather. At least 5x better than Lower Gordon on the Mattawamkeag, without the awful eddy service and sketchy spots behind! There’s even a nice parking spot with an access trail if you take Mill St. (past Pat’s Pizza, which turns into Water St.).

Also of note is the recent construction of this spillway from the dam above the railroad trestle at the bottom the Stillwater. Looks plenty deep for a boof, but there’s that monster strainer that wouldn’t budge for us. They actually keep a ladder below one of the supports, so a two man operation could probably put in quickly before the dam caretaker can stop you. Entering from the top of the dam is probably a no-go, there’s two fins that divert water into it and are barely the width of a boat. Not worth getting killed for a spillway drop, eh?

Any questions on anything or for a few more pictures, drop me a line.