Home»All Photographs»1963.Aug-Grotonwood, Harvard, MIT Canoe Trip

For the first part of the summer of 1963 Nancy & I worked as waterfront directors and I slept in a covered wagon. At the end of July the Grotonwood Wilderness Program was inaugurated with an overnight hike up Mt. Washington (see group picture).
The big Wilderness Trip came in August and was for young Adults. The group was the largest I have ever guided (18) and required me to find larger than average campsites to accommodate the tents and people. With the exception of my brother Ron, friends Robert Phinney and Richard Philips, the rest of the group was made up of people from Harvard and MIT who had been chosen as an experiment to see how quickly small groups could bond in the wild. One of the students had scored the highest ever on the Harvard entrance exam.

The group met at Grotonwood where there were introductions, canoe tipping exercises, packing and a general discussion of the challenges the route would involve.


The trip, located in Northern Maine, involved two major portages, one over a part of Allagash Mountain to Allagash Lake (approx 4.5 miles), the other from Chamberlain Lake to Mud Pond to Umbazooksus Lake(approx 2 miles). The trip began on the west end of Caucomgomac Lake and went to Round Pond, over Allagash Mountain, down Allagash Stream (requiring a lot of getting wet negotiating the rocks and current), half of Chamberlain Lake, Umbuzooksus Lake (where we encountered Log Booms-rare today), to Graveyard Point at Chesuncook Village (at the time an abandoned logging village) on Chesuncook Lake, then up Caucomgomac Stream to our starting point at the other end of Caucomgomac Lake. We ate mostly dehydrated food from Chuck Wagon Foods. Complete meals came in small boxes that were said to be good for 25 years. This kind of food had been developed for Astronauts and was rare at the time. It was actually quite tasty and very convenient. We used to joke that they even provided dehydrated water--you just add water and serve. A postscript to this trip was a chance encounter at Ocean Park, ME around 2006. My friend, Bruce, went inside an antique store and picked up an old canoe paddle. The proprietor came over and they started talking about canoeing and kayaking. He told Bruce that he had once taken a canoe trip that was so special that when he got married he went back to the same place on his honeymoon. At that point Bruce asked if he had ever run across Bob Peek. "Bob Peek, he was the guide on the canoe trip I was talking about". With that Bruce told him to stay where he was and proceeded to fetch me just outside the door. When I came in he had a look of total disbelief on his face.