Early on a gray, misty morning in mid-April I set out in an inflatable raft for an untamed, soaking ride down the Concord River in Lowell. Surprising even to locals like me, whitewater rafting on the Concord is the real deal, complete with class III and IV rapids (wetsuit required), verdant foliage and an abundance of native wildlife. The only indication that you are even in the city comes when passing through the red brick “canyon” walls of abandoned factories, those crumbling structures a testament to just how far the Concord has come on its journey toward being a wild river again. It’s Lowell like few have seen it.
The nearly three-hour outing includes two exhilarating runs down the river and ends with the raft rising up to bank level in an 1850s-era wooden lock chamber downtown, something you can’t experience anyplace else. Unique features abound along the way, including mortar-free stone bridges originally built for horse traffic, and a unique glimpse at the city’s lively Portuguese neighborhood, its friendly residents waving to the passing rafts.
Operated today by the Lowell Parks & Conservation Trust (LP & CT) in conjunction with Charlemont, Mass., adventure company Zoar Outdoor, the rafting trips on the Concord have been running every spring since 1985, when Wilmington outdoorsman Rick Barry, co-owner of the now-defunct local adventure company Wilderness Plus, came up with the idea.
Barry, a middle school geography teacher in Wilmington for the past 34 years, worked weekends and summers as a guide in Maine, but was looking for something more local. “Back in ’84, one of my buddies discovered by mistake that there were rapids on the Concord while kayaking. He ended up in a grove of trees,” Barry recalls, laughing. “We tried a test run in a raft and thought it was great. Nobody had even considered the Concord.”
Through the marketing efforts of Barry and his business partners, brother Jack, sister Kathy and friend Harvey Card, Lowell’s white-water trips caught the interest of the The Boston Globe, and were featured on “Evening Magazine,” then a nightly Boston television program. The media attention reached Steve Conant, co-founder of LP & CT, who was looking to publicize conservation efforts on the Concord, and of Bruce Lessels, Zoar Outdoor’s founder and president, and a member of the U.S. Whitewater Slalom Team. Training runs on the Concord began shortly after they learned of Barry’s efforts.
Conant and Barry soon formed a partnership, with the LP & CT assuming many of the administrative aspects of the rafting venture. “I spent every spring weekend for eight years shuffling people in trucks along the river,” Conant says. “My wife, Nancy, booked the reservations from our condo in Lowell.”
In the late 1990s, when Barry decided to put aside Wilderness Plus in favor of spending more time with his family, Conant partnered with Zoar Outdoor and Lessels, who had been kayaking on the Concord and knew the river’s potential.
Not for the faint of heart, the Concord offers rafters a series of exciting class III and IV rapids. Photos by Adrien Bisson.
Today, the ongoing success of Concord rafting is credited to the contributions of, and cooperation between, several entities. LP & CT handles the trips’ logistics; Zoar provides the equipment and guides; a function room at the UMass Lowell Inn and Conference Center serves as a meeting place for rafters; the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation allows the use of the wooden lock chamber, which it owns and maintains; LP & CT’s members volunteer, and Lowell’s Centennial Island Hydro Electric Company works with the Trust to keep the water flowing.
“Our partnership with [LP & CT] is unique,” Lessels says. “We rely on them and their relationships with all the other entities that make the trips possible.”
Because the flow of the Concord River is natural, not controlled by dam release like many other New England rivers, the success of rafting requires a good relationship between LP & CT and Centennial Island Hydro Electric, whose generating plant is on the river. Through an agreement with the Trust, Centennial voluntarily stops operations during periods of low flow, releasing water back into the river, essentially allowing rafting to happen when it otherwise could not.
Kevin Olson, co-owner of Centennial with his father, Jerry, notes, “We’ve had a relationship with all parties involved in rafting since 1988. We have a commitment to help make it work. What’s good for them is also good for us.”
Lowell’s rafting success also benefits from its location. For many, it’s considerably more convenient than driving to Maine or New Hampshire, and therefore it attracts a good number of customers from Greater Boston. “We get a lot of parents visiting local college kids,” says Jane Calvin, LP & CT’s executive director. “Most of our rafters have local ties.”
Old brick factories line the river and are, in places, the only reminder that one is in the city.
Profits generated by rafting fees go toward LP & CT’s environmental educational programs and conservation efforts on the Concord, including the construction of the new Concord River Greenway Park, a 1.75-mile trail linking the Concord’s Lawrence Street gate with Lowell’s downtown, bringing the beauty of the river to city residents every day. “You can see the good you’re doing when you ride by in the raft,” Calvin says. “The money you’re paying goes to support everything around you.”
In addition to all of this, and perhaps most importantly, whitewater rafting on the Concord is just plain fun. Not many thrill rides can compare to the sensation of careening over a rushing rapid, paddling furiously, water flying in all directions. This is especially true when passing city landmarks you’ve driven past hundreds of times, never realizing their full identities. It’s like seeing the river, and the city, for the first time, and that fosters a deeper appreciation of both.
A big part of the fun, it should be noted, is attributable to Zoar’s guides. Their professionalism and skills are top-notch, and they’re enjoyable to be around. Cracking jokes that put even the most nervous participants at ease, they are serious about safety and know the river well.
Kevin McMillan, director of guided programs at Zoar, has been leading rafting trips on the Concord for 11 years. He served as my guide, and says he looks forward to the Concord season every spring. “The river can be enormous and exhilarating at high water, and exciting and playful at low water,” he says. “Rafting through a beautiful scenic river in the middle of downtown Lowell is hysterical. Finishing a trip in a historic lock chamber, not to mention a national park, is pretty darn cool, too.”
In the sense that it’s thrilling both physically and mentally and, in many ways, is very much about discovery, rafting on the Concord in Lowell is a genuine adventure. Perhaps Lessels, Zoar’s president, says it best: “The essence of adventure is doing something out of the ordinary, and what is more out of the ordinary than rafting real rapids on an urban river?”
Rafting trips are offered on the Concord twice daily on weekends in April and May. Group trips are available on Fridays and Mondays. For booking information, visit www.ZoarOutdoor.com or call Lowell Parks & Conservation Trust at (978) 934-0030 or visit www.LowellLandTrust.org.
Wild in the City – Lowell’s Whitewater Rafting
The nearly three-hour outing includes two exhilarating runs down the river and ends with the raft rising up to bank level in an 1850s-era wooden lock chamber downtown, something you can’t experience anyplace else. Unique features abound along the way, including mortar-free stone bridges originally built for horse traffic, and a unique glimpse at the city’s lively Portuguese neighborhood, its friendly residents waving to the passing rafts.
Operated today by the Lowell Parks & Conservation Trust (LP & CT) in conjunction with Charlemont, Mass., adventure company Zoar Outdoor, the rafting trips on the Concord have been running every spring since 1985, when Wilmington outdoorsman Rick Barry, co-owner of the now-defunct local adventure company Wilderness Plus, came up with the idea.
Barry, a middle school geography teacher in Wilmington for the past 34 years, worked weekends and summers as a guide in Maine, but was looking for something more local. “Back in ’84, one of my buddies discovered by mistake that there were rapids on the Concord while kayaking. He ended up in a grove of trees,” Barry recalls, laughing. “We tried a test run in a raft and thought it was great. Nobody had even considered the Concord.”
Through the marketing efforts of Barry and his business partners, brother Jack, sister Kathy and friend Harvey Card, Lowell’s white-water trips caught the interest of the The Boston Globe, and were featured on “Evening Magazine,” then a nightly Boston television program. The media attention reached Steve Conant, co-founder of LP & CT, who was looking to publicize conservation efforts on the Concord, and of Bruce Lessels, Zoar Outdoor’s founder and president, and a member of the U.S. Whitewater Slalom Team. Training runs on the Concord began shortly after they learned of Barry’s efforts.
Conant and Barry soon formed a partnership, with the LP & CT assuming many of the administrative aspects of the rafting venture. “I spent every spring weekend for eight years shuffling people in trucks along the river,” Conant says. “My wife, Nancy, booked the reservations from our condo in Lowell.”
In the late 1990s, when Barry decided to put aside Wilderness Plus in favor of spending more time with his family, Conant partnered with Zoar Outdoor and Lessels, who had been kayaking on the Concord and knew the river’s potential.
Not for the faint of heart, the Concord offers rafters a series of exciting class III and IV rapids. Photos by Adrien Bisson.
Today, the ongoing success of Concord rafting is credited to the contributions of, and cooperation between, several entities. LP & CT handles the trips’ logistics; Zoar provides the equipment and guides; a function room at the UMass Lowell Inn and Conference Center serves as a meeting place for rafters; the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation allows the use of the wooden lock chamber, which it owns and maintains; LP & CT’s members volunteer, and Lowell’s Centennial Island Hydro Electric Company works with the Trust to keep the water flowing.
“Our partnership with [LP & CT] is unique,” Lessels says. “We rely on them and their relationships with all the other entities that make the trips possible.”
Because the flow of the Concord River is natural, not controlled by dam release like many other New England rivers, the success of rafting requires a good relationship between LP & CT and Centennial Island Hydro Electric, whose generating plant is on the river. Through an agreement with the Trust, Centennial voluntarily stops operations during periods of low flow, releasing water back into the river, essentially allowing rafting to happen when it otherwise could not.
Kevin Olson, co-owner of Centennial with his father, Jerry, notes, “We’ve had a relationship with all parties involved in rafting since 1988. We have a commitment to help make it work. What’s good for them is also good for us.”
Lowell’s rafting success also benefits from its location. For many, it’s considerably more convenient than driving to Maine or New Hampshire, and therefore it attracts a good number of customers from Greater Boston. “We get a lot of parents visiting local college kids,” says Jane Calvin, LP & CT’s executive director. “Most of our rafters have local ties.”
Old brick factories line the river and are, in places, the only reminder that one is in the city.
Profits generated by rafting fees go toward LP & CT’s environmental educational programs and conservation efforts on the Concord, including the construction of the new Concord River Greenway Park, a 1.75-mile trail linking the Concord’s Lawrence Street gate with Lowell’s downtown, bringing the beauty of the river to city residents every day. “You can see the good you’re doing when you ride by in the raft,” Calvin says. “The money you’re paying goes to support everything around you.”
In addition to all of this, and perhaps most importantly, whitewater rafting on the Concord is just plain fun. Not many thrill rides can compare to the sensation of careening over a rushing rapid, paddling furiously, water flying in all directions. This is especially true when passing city landmarks you’ve driven past hundreds of times, never realizing their full identities. It’s like seeing the river, and the city, for the first time, and that fosters a deeper appreciation of both.
A big part of the fun, it should be noted, is attributable to Zoar’s guides. Their professionalism and skills are top-notch, and they’re enjoyable to be around. Cracking jokes that put even the most nervous participants at ease, they are serious about safety and know the river well.
Kevin McMillan, director of guided programs at Zoar, has been leading rafting trips on the Concord for 11 years. He served as my guide, and says he looks forward to the Concord season every spring. “The river can be enormous and exhilarating at high water, and exciting and playful at low water,” he says. “Rafting through a beautiful scenic river in the middle of downtown Lowell is hysterical. Finishing a trip in a historic lock chamber, not to mention a national park, is pretty darn cool, too.”
In the sense that it’s thrilling both physically and mentally and, in many ways, is very much about discovery, rafting on the Concord in Lowell is a genuine adventure. Perhaps Lessels, Zoar’s president, says it best: “The essence of adventure is doing something out of the ordinary, and what is more out of the ordinary than rafting real rapids on an urban river?”
Rafting trips are offered on the Concord twice daily on weekends in April and May. Group trips are available on Fridays and Mondays. For booking information, visit www.ZoarOutdoor.com or call Lowell Parks & Conservation Trust at (978) 934-0030 or visit www.LowellLandTrust.org.