A moment I have been waiting for

Mike Curiak has a packraft.

Curiak is someone whose biking is inextricably linked to water.

I know of him best as a snowbike expeditioneer, having likely made more trips (maybe a dozen?) from Anchorage to Nome on the Iditarod trail than anyone else without a snowmachine or dog team. He's also into riding chunk in the desert SW (water and deserts are linked by definition).

So now he has a packraft, the 2011 model, which is the dream boat come true. The big boat that can do it all: flatwater and whitewater, big loads and no loads.

I smell an epic adventure in the works.

That is, maybe Mike will come up for the other soft substrate fatbiking: big beaches and icy bays.

First Run of the Season Video

Paul Schauer's video of early season 6 Mile run. There are a couple clips of my New Boat in action amongst all the hardshells.

2011 Alpacka Llama -- Getting it wet and icy

My new Llama showed up on Thursday, just in time, as the AK Boating season is open – at least partially.

A bunch of us went down 6 Mile’s 2nd and 3rd Canyons yesterday (Paul Schauer, Timmy J, John Combs, Travis Spalding, Jeff Shelton). Running at 250 cfs or so, it felt like an exploratory creeking first descent a week earlier than we went last year.

As usual, the high competence, calm demeanor, yet humor and positive enthusiasm of Timmy J and Paul Schauer made the trip outstanding. Young Travis Spaulding and Jeff Shelton, second generation Alaskan adventurers, added to the spirit of exploration, especially with Jeff playboating in the icy stream, doing flips and tricks while wearing no shoes and only fleece socks. And of course, helicopter pilot Johnny "Carnage" added to the pile of smiles. It was one of the best days I have had paddling with a band of hardshells, mostly because of who filled those plastic boats. Paul posted photos, words and video on his blog.

Every corner was spooky as the creek flowed through a sub-canyon of sheer ice walls 3-10 feet high. We eddy-hopped much of the way down, often climbing 5-7 foot ice ledges to scout, then seal launching off those same ledges if clear ahead, or portaging and crossing ice bridges to seal launch below the ice dam. This doubled the time of the run -- a big group, many scouts and portages -- and worried the rest of our crew. They'd opted out of the Third Canyon due to winter play injuries and, fretting at our late arrival time, drove up and down the Hope Road looking for our bodies below.

Yea, the Third Canyon was pretty choked-up with potentially lethal ice bridges at every major rapid (top of Staircase, Suck Hole, Merry Go Round, Jaws, Junkyard Dog, and several more). In another couple weeks it should be clear, says Tim, who notes this was one of the earliest runs he's made. At one point, Johnny was scouting on river left when a dam partially collapsed, leaving a tunnel under the ice bridge on river right that we all then ducked under. It was magic.

But the big news is that the new boat is simply amazing. Best of last year's Witchcraft (i.e. long stern, pointy bow) w/best of old style boats (i.e. big tubes, bright colors, high volume, room for gear with attachment points). The Llama is super long, like 7 feet almost, but nearly as nimble as the old stubbies, and so much faster, straighter and more stable.

Old habits die slowly, and I had to take a blow to the ribs from an overhanging ice ledge to learn that I can’t do last second pirouettes to avoid things. But the speed, tracking, and especially wave ferrying and surfing are worth every micro-second loss of quick handling.

I’d like an even pointier bow, and have moved myself more central in the boat with old seats (old being pre-sewn-in, when they were just loose in the boat maybe vintage 2002-2004). I like the bow and stern to be level, and I like the high volume Llama (but am 5’ 11” and 170, so official Yak-size), so I attached my seat as far forward as I could. That means I took the back tabs on the seat and lashed them to the front tabs on the boat. I am eager to hear what the posse of new-style boat owners do with their seats.

Running Class III in the new design almost feels like cheating, it’s so stable. Luc once emailed me that a kayak was easier than a packraft, and I think the new bow and stern make it more kayak-like – it punches waves far better than a stubby and has more for-aft stability. Like a classic packraft (mine's a Llama) it retains its awesome lateral stability, something the Witchcraft of 2010 lacked.

I had Sheri put on a custom skirt which is super dry. It's a heavier fabric, almost like a tube fabric. I also had her make me a very short center opening, which is not something many would feel comfortable in, but I had no problem doing a wet exit followed by a self rescue and wet re-entry after a surfing flip. My boat's custom opening is about as big as a kayak cockpit. It’s a very short center opening with 4 inches of Velcro. But with the heavy fabric, short opening, and mando Velcro, even without thigh straps I could brace my knees on the deck. It worked so well I am considering glueing knee cups in as well as thigh straps.

The opening is so narrow that I can no longer swing my legs out to the side to get out. I also have to step right between the two lobes of the seat to get in. Like a kayak, I can not just hop in this boat. But the new cone-head butt is so stable that I just slide backwards and out onto it, then pull my legs out. To get in, I need a calm eddy, or a good platform to seal launch.

We did like ten seal entries yesterday, at least one that was about as tall as my paddle is long, and poised just 10 yards above an undercut ice wall. The new design pierced the water well, especially compared to an old stubby’s blunt entry, and its length and pointy stern gives it superb ferry ability. The long stern makes backwards boating much more consistent.

Like thigh straps and spray decks before it, the new design eases me in to another whitewater class (calling + and - classes) by technology alone. I think this year I'll be a solid Class IV boater, moving out of my solid Class III+ standing currently.

What’s even more exciting is the number of people here in ANC (maybe the center of the world for whitewater packrafting) who will have new boats and solid skills. Many of these new owners are kayakers looking at an upcoming low water season. They now have a new tool to match the conditions, a way to turn butt-scraping runs into something fun, and a way to ferret out some FD steep runs, as well.

Post Script: My second bike purchased in a year (and the second since my Mountain Klein purchase in 1986) is a 2x10, aluminum 9-Zero-7, and 80 mm Fat bike. This new bike and new boat are meant to match one another for some new "wild rides", the kind pioneered by Eric Parsons and Dylan Kentch. The fat bike is awesome and helping my rehab from ankle surgery. Wish that I'd bought one years ago although it would likely have interfered with my whitewater development.

How I wasted my Spring Break

In the mid 1980s XC ski legend Audun Endestadt claimed that it would be possible to ski the 30 miles and 14,000 vertical feet to the summit of 16,000 foot Mt Sanford in under 24 hours.

This was about the same time that Chuck Comstock schemed to win the Wilderness Classic using his kite to fly off the Stairway Icefall, Jon Underwood suggested we mtn bike a wilderness route in the White Mountains, and Carl Tobin said the Iditabike ought to be extended to McGrath.

Those were heady days and we dreamed up many possibilities that only now are realized by a new generation of adventurers.

For example, Luc Mehl and John Sykes have shown that summiting Mt Sanford in a day is possible, although I think they were simply training for the upcoming Winter Wilderness Classic. Their round trip to 15,000 feet was three days, and they weren't really racing as they had time to make a video and sleep on the way up.

While Luc and John were setting out to ski Mt. Sanford rt from the road in under 72 hours, I was reliving my past (about all I can do, anymore it seems) and contributing to the cloud's collective knowledge base by posting photos for Google Earth where there are none.

My Problem with Vinyl

John Harpole skiing/walking/rafting out from Kitchatna Spires, 1985.

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.

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