Class II in Cheap, Vinyl Packrafts

There's a discussion over on the Backpackinglight.com website about what's available as a cheap boat for Class II packrafting.

The old, apparently discontinued Sevylor Trailboat was always too small and fragile. The other vinyl boats that could be bought for under $50 worked better, but were very fragile and needed tender care. But the fist hiking traverse of the Alaska Range (Tok to Lake Clark) in 1996 by Kevin Armstrong, Doug Woody and others was made with vinyl rafts. They floated the Nenana and the Stony Rivers among others with expedition-ish loads, too.

Many people completed Wilderness Classics in vinyl rafts including Dick Grifith in 1982, and others throughout the 80's and 90's.

Back in the 90's when only vinyl rafts and the wee Curtis Design boats and used Sherpa Rafts were all that was available, Barney Griffith (he made the first kayak descent of Devils Canyon of the Susitna, Talkeetna Canyon, and Canyon Creek in the 70's) often packrafted with his dad Dick in the Wilderness Classic. Barney told me that a good paddle was more important than the boat. When pressed for what he meant by "good", he said stiff so that you had control and could keep the vinyl boat or fragile little Curtis Design off sticks and rocks and out of holes.

Below is a video from Australia of people running Class II and III in inexpensive vinyl rafts. By the way, "lilo" is Aussie for air mattress.

Yarlung Tsangpo Link

My spare time, between lectures, paper-grading, and admin has been researching the region at the corner of Tibet, China, India, and Burma. This place looks quite amazing on Google Earth, particularly as the Tibet/China side has really good resolution and there are 1:200,000 scale maps available from the Russians. Plus, the Chinese tourists who travel through the Tibetan side seem much more savvy and willing and eager to post their photos on Google Earth, so you can get an idea of what it looks like. Spruce, hemlock, juniper, and birch in the lowlands and of course, my interest, are the supposed ice worms of the glaciers. Unfortunately the tourists have not yet posted a photo of a Tibetan ice worm.

Recently I stumbled on a video of an Outside Magazine movie here that's an incredible modern kayak expedition, even if 10 years old now. An international crew on 10,000 cfs Grand Canyon flows with a NZ West Coast gradient -- there's even a 70-100 foot waterfall that splits the river into an upper and lower gorge. These gnar gnar runners voices document their real respect for the Himlayan scale big water.

Worth watching all 45 minutes or so on-line. It's the movie of the trip that Peter Heller wrote about in Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet's Tsangpo River.

Watch more free documentaries

Recent Packrafting Links

Alastair Humphreys has a neat, short introductory piece on packrafts at a blog called Rohantime. It's probably the best brief introduction to what a packraft is and how to get into it that I have seen.

Meanwhile, there's Andy Skurka's big Alaska Trip in all its Ted Koeppel and Michael Brown glory in the March Issue of National Geographic Magazine and on-line here and a bit more here at NG Adventure on-line where Andy has a brief but interesting interview.

It's still winter here in AK, the time of map dreaming and scheming for the coming season of joy. So I'll leave you with these 1:200,000 Russian maps (free source) of an amazing corner of Tibet west of China, north of India and slightly NW of Myanmar, where I'd like to do a packraft loop and name it "Dharma Cycle".

This is not the Tibet of high, wind-blown plateaus and grasslands, but rather rivers and maritime glaciers with forests of spruce, pine, and what looks like cottonwood. It's a green and forested place, east of Namcha Barwa and the Tsangpo Gorge (headwaters of the Brahmaputra). It seems to be the most lush place in the Himalaya, perhaps because this elbow in the headwaters of the Brahmaputra are the nearest high peaks to the Indian Ocean and its summertime wet monsoon.

Skurka Grizzly Bear Encounter in Brooks Range

While crossing Gates of the Arctic National Park w/Andy Skurka on his big Alaskan adventure this past summer, we ran into a curious bear on the upper Nahtuk drainage. This was the same general area where Peggy and I had another bear encounter over 20 years ago.

At first the bear looked more predatory than curious. Andy was startled that it didn't just run away immediately, like all his other bear encounters over the last 4000 miles had ended. This bear really evaluated us.


As Skurka's usual method was to stand his ground and yell, "Go Away Bear", Andy did that, but the bear just reluctantly moved off the gravel bar and into the bushes. The wind was weak and blowing upstream, if I recall. And the bear was walking upstream toward us.

We sort of walked in a small radius half circle, Andy with his bear spray pulled to the ready, me with camera shooting over his shoulder to try and capture the tension of the moment -- and the bear walking in a larger radius half circle.


The bear just took its time, far more interested in our possibility as prey than as threat, it seemed to me. It felt much closer than the wide angle shot suggests.

The bear felt far closer than the telephoto shot shows, too!

One long, last look before slowly, almost disappointedly, the bear continued ambling upstream.


Andy Skurka with a good post-bear encounter adrenaline buzz going.
He's an adrenaline junky, too, I guess, just more of the low-dose, slow drip kind.

Spring Break?

Wish I could justify this trip over the coming Spring Break (instead of the 2012 one):



It's Ganey's Part I Instant Grand Canyon Classic. The Canyoneering start, the big inner gorge rapids, and the meal at Phantom Ranch just sort of high-grades the place.

That's enough for me. Wonder if it could be done on a Backcountry Permit?

And this by Tyler Johnson. He went down on a full raft trip and used packrafts as sattelite boats which is pretty common nowadays, I guess.



And our "old" one, which was also self supported. I think a week in the GC with a packraft is satisfying the way a Wilderness Classic in 4 days is. It's a satiating, full-body adventure:

Packraft Portaging

One of the great matches between the Franklin River and packrafting are the portages.

The Franklin is Class III, maybe Class III+ (which can be, yes, portaged easily), except for a handful of Class V to Class V+/VI drops.

Some of these un-runnable drops are a bit involved in their portages, with ropes, ledges, cliffs and scrambling through brush. These are the infamous Churn, Thunderush, Cauldron, and Pig's Trough. Even the less involved portages like Log Jam, Nasty Notch, upper Coruscades, Ole' Three Tiers, and Big Falls look like a pain for anybody with Class III skills and a hard-shell kayak or big, 12 foot+ raft.

Anyway there's really very little Class IV (and what there is seems highly dependent on water level), the kind of stuff that makes you feel like a wussy for not running it, but when you do, you swim and lose a paddle, or a boa,t or skin off your knuckles. I don't like to run Class IV with a week's worth of camping gear and food, so I'd portage that, too, if there was a bunch on the Franklin, but there isn't. Just miles and miles of great Class II and III and moving water though pretty gorges.

What tickles you, the packrafter, there on the Franklin -- the way walking miles on sore feet and then getting into your boat to paddle tickles you, like you're getting away with something in a clever way -- is that the terrifying cascades and waterfalls of the Franklin can be portaged.

In a weird way -- like the way it's summer down there when it's winter up here, and their swans are black and ours are white, and the sun goes across the sky from right to left there instead of left to right here -- on this river, what tickles you, the packrafter, is not getting in your boat, but getting out of it.

Here's how we rig for that:

A Grand Australian Canyon, The Franklin

Ten years ago I scared the bejeezus out of myself on the Franklin River.

Last week Bill Hatcher, Cody Roman and I ran it with flows varying from low water to high water and found it fantastic, truly one of the world's great packrafting adventures. It is longer and more pristine than anything else in the southern hemisphere south of the 40th parallel, including rivers in New Zealand and Patagonia. It runs through a 3.5 million acre World Heritage Area that stretches 2/3 of the way across western Tasmania. There is great variety and enough challenge to keep it interesting, but not so much as to guarantee an epic.

Essentially a pool-drop river with frequent rapids and stunning, sinuous reaches, the Franklin starts in the mountains of sharp, bare ridges and ends in lowlands pockmarked with limestone caves. Throughout grows thick temperate rainforest often cut with canyons and gorges. We took 5 days to go around 100 km and saw nobody else until the end when we caught a yacht to take us six hours to the nearest road.

The 100 km run in west central Tasmania has a long list of epics in its half century history. That history carries on today with its reputation for wildly-varying water levels, big rapids, and gnarly portages often set deep in sheer-walled canyons. Even the names -- “Nasty Notch”, “Irenabyss”, “Great Ravine”, “The Churn”, “Cauldron”, and “Pig’s Trough” -- suggest something sinister.

Like temperate rainforests around the world, there is not much bird or animal life in these thick, somber, and soggy woods. Not much to support the original Aborigines, even less for the escaped convicts of the 19th century who fled the forced work camps of Sarah Island, only to find themselves in an even more inhumane prison of brush, canyons, and starvation.

Named for Sir John Franklin, who traversed its wilderness with his wife Lady Jane while he was governor of Tasmania, five years before his disappearance in the Canadian high Arctic, the Franklin River was also the birthing ground of the powerful Green Party. Spearheaded by Senator Bob Brown, who pioneered the use of over-sized packrafts down the Franklin in the mid 70s and 80s with his partner Paul Smith – who said that their “duckies” made the life and death trips of the early Franklin pioneers into “exhilarating sport” – the battle for the Franklin wilderness showed how motivated Australia’s environmentalists could be. Today, over thirty years later, Bob Brown and the Green Party remain a potent force in Australian politics, although the current environmental battles fight over old growth eucalyptus forests in Tasmania and the 300+ foot giants growing there that are clear-felled for pulp.

In contrast to Brown and Smith's “rubber ducky”, the micro-duckies of today, Alpacka Rafts, are more nimble and easier to portage and seem to be the perfect craft for the river. It is possible to run the 100s of Class II and III rapids of the Franklin in a packraft carrying a week’s worth of food, while portaging the Class V drops and waiting out the swollen river during high water events in the numerous and spotless camps set high above the river. We felt that the easy waters might make a kayak a bit of overkill and the log portages might make big rafts a bit of work. Packrafts offered their usual forgiving fun in whitewater and light weight during portages. Carrying along the slim, informative guidebook by Griffith and Baxter, “The Ever Varying Flood”, offered us well-illustrated maps and descriptions.

We rode a bus from Hobart for about AU $55 each to the short Donaghy’s Lookout Trail. There we hiked down to the confluence of the Franklin and Collingwood, as the water level was too low the first day to start at the usual Collingwood Bridge. From the junction we paddled about 15 km in the afternoon to Descension Gorge. It rained all night and the next day, bringing the water level up and sending dozens of waterfalls into the river. The second day was flatter paddling than I’d remembered from 10 years ago when I scrawled on my map, “best packrafting in the world”, but we made good time to Camp Arcade.

The third day the river had risen over 1.5 meters at the large pool below our camp and when the river was constricted over drops and rapids we could really feel its push and the hydraulics’ suction.

We portaged the big rapids in the Great Ravine in sunshine, although I did try one of the Coruscades, losing my paddle in the aftermath. Sharp-eyed Bill spotted the paddle in an eddy and spared me from trying to paddle the big water with my Sawyer paddle, our spare.

Stymied by the high water at the put-in for Thunderush’s low portage I saw the nearest thing to panic in Bill’s normally cool and collected demeanor. Rome and I were willing to make a go of the four-foot drop piling into a wall and a hole, but Bill thought he saw the high portage on the other side.

A landslide and taken out a part of the high portage route and the Tasmanian Parks had done the rest, spending millions on helicopters and labor to remove the high portage track of bolted walkway out and carting it away. But the old cut through the forest remained and we scrambled up.

We scouted the high portage route's remnant of cut bolts and fixed ropes, using our own throwbags as handlines, then bivied below an overhang at the top of Thunderrush. Thankfully it didn’t rain and the water came down. The next morning we carried our camping gear over the portage and made a short rappel back to the water’s edge. High adventure!

The portages and rapids challenged us. Roman, still recovering from a lower back injury in the Grand Canyon three years ago, was surprised and encouraged to find that he could manage all the paddling and climbing and descending as well as he did. This trip may well be a turning point for him.

“I think packrafting is good for my back,” he said along the Thunderush High Portage, which was music to my ears.

Since middle school he and I have paddled packrafts together. As it breaks a father’s heart to see his son injured and unable to enjoy activities they have long shared, it’s wonderful to know that we will continue mixing water and land in wilderness.

We portaged the Cauldron on its long track and Ole Three Tiers but ran everything else down to the terrifying Pig’s Trough, portaging that, and paddling on to our camp at Newland Cascades, the nicest camp along the river. There, a series of shallow caves beneath a high overhang offers up a dry enclave, free of leeches and wet brush. There is a commanding view of the 400 meter long Newland Cascades and a waterfall across the river.

We dried out our gear and enjoyed young Roman’s amazing Jet Boil cookery: Indomie Mee Goreng instant ramen noodles with whole milk powder and peanut butter – tasty as something from your local Thai restaurant, truthfully.

Bill shot photos and Roman nursed a cold the next day as the rain waters upstream swelled the river by over a meter and a half. At 2 PM we finally shoved off and rode the flood downstream into the lowlands, past limestone walls and caves and waterfalls pouring from holes in the rock.

We ate our usual lunch of sardines and Cadbury chocolate in Rafter's Basin and a dinner of tasty cheese and milk biscuits above Double Falls, while rafted together in mid-river.

Twisted old Huon pine and young new recruits lined the banks where the river flooded past the bushes. It wasn’t raining, so we stayed warm. Double Falls was swollen to a single falls and Roman made a go at it but was flipped by a boil. We had a bit of a scare with an undercut wall at its lower end, where Cody Rome found he had to time his exit with the water’s surge.

Big Falls was a terrifyingly huge tongue disappearing into a maw of a hole. It took us 20 minutes to bushwhack around its left side.

With such high water we discovered that we could quite likely make it the 40 km out to Sir John Falls, where a yacht waited with another raft group of 3 rafts, 2 kayaks, and 11 people to make the 6 hour, AU $170/pax trip out to Strahan and the road.

We made it by 9:45 PM with just enough light to quell our trepidation of paddling the mighty Gordon in falling darkness.

The next day cruising down the lower Gordon and Macquarie Harbour we swapped stories with the rafters and swapped turns climbing to the crows-nest on the 65 foot ship. Thankfully the winds and waters were calm and we could enjoy the food served on board.

In Strahan Bill and Rome caught a ride with the rafters back to Hobart while I tried my luck thumbing a ride from the gas station. For a tankful of gas, I managed a ride with an Aussie and his American girlfriend, meeting Roman, Bill, and legendary climbers John Middendorf (of A5 fame) and Paul Pritchard at the New Sydney Hotel in downtown Hobart in time for a beer and a burger.

What a trip. Just what we'd been looking for: whitewater, and scenery, and an ideal application of the packraft. Better than my first down the Franklin, by far. Still, I look forward to my next Franklin packrafting adventure, as it's truly one of the great river trips of the world.

Franklin River Packrafting from Roman Dial on Vimeo.

More photos from Bill at his website (click "Franklin River Packrafting" under the "New Work" tab) and his blog.