Ten Pound Packraft

That's been the limit some of us set as a max weight on a packraft. And now I am there.

My 2011 Llama came heavy, with its extra heavy duty spray deck, made from fabric nearly as beefy as the tubes, plus a fat four inches of velcro down its tall waist-wrap. It arrived weighing around 7 pounds.

Then I added a thick poly-pro line to the bow and stern so I don't get separated from my boat like this guy does. In the past, the "chicken line" went right round, but for creeking, just fixing the four front together with poly-pro and the back two seems both necessary and sufficient.

All last season it had beefy metal D-rings for thigh straps fore and aft, anchoring thick, padded Aire Deluxe Thigh Straps. I added sticky-back velcro stabond-glued on the inside tubes to hold an early 2000's style seat as a beefy backrest. This brought it up to over eight pounds

And most recently, in anticipation of creeking on long slides and big drops back East, I added a cut-to fit 1/2 inch closed cell foam lining, a 12" x 12" minicell pad under the stock seat and an 8"x8" foot pad.

The next mod may well be replacing the thigh straps with knee cups, which may take it back down again.

Europe Dreaming

Silly Season Dreaming like Mountain Biking in Slovenia:

This slow motion techie downhill riding looks appealing to me:

That would be wonderful.

Peggy wants to go to Italy and Greece to trail walk, eat, drink and soak up the sun. And Scandinavia would be great for packrafting. All those train+packrafting trips, too. But my summer is filling up fast, and will try to get to Tibet's SE corner for ice worming in August.

Then there's the Wilderness Classic in July, and while Timmy J. is considering teaming with me and Luc admitting it'd be fun to join the two of us to paddle the Class III and IV for maybe half the route from "Valdez to McCarthy" (not literally, but figuratively -- the most innovative course in a decade), I fear (1) that I'll burn Tim out on "training runs" beforehand and (2) Luc will realize that the paddling route, while adventuresome, may not be winning.

So then there's June, Peggy's birthday month and the best month for wilderness travel in Alaska (did I say that?). And she's got a beautiful new aluminum Fatback (makes my 907 look ugly), so we have some beach ride in mind. Not sure where, but it will likely include beach combing, maybe even a Bob to cart all the treasures.

Brings us to May, a good time for creeking in AK and maybe hiking in the Chugach and Kenai and putting the two together for a season of first descents. It's time. Enough running the same old stuff, trying to prove packrafts are for real boaters. It's time to find and link some wilderness FD's, no planes, no helicopters, but Class IV-V wilderness runs with 10-15 mile walk-ins. Maybe the new Witchcrafts, which Alpacka is sending Timmy for trial and error, will make that happen.

I'm not getting any younger: just slower, weaker, blinder, dumber, more achy and in further awe of Dick Griffith. He was 55 when I met him thirty years ago and in that thirty years since he's done as much as most of us old enough to be his children or grandchildren. By the time I am 55 I will likely be done with this stuff. Instead, I'll be planting bonsai, coding R, and maybe, painting watercolors.

Silly Season's Greetings

Silly in so many ways.

Running around in fresh snow over black ice.

Spending money on the wrong things for the right people.

Looking back. Feeling guilty, sometimes regretful, mostly thankful.

Looking ahead, excited, maybe. Older. Achier. More forgetful.

Sleepy, here in the darkness north of 61 degrees.

And overfed, maybe over-medicated, if you know what I mean.

My semester kicked me to the curb and then spit on me.

But. It's over, I'm alive. And addicted to "R", for the small handful of you who may know what that is and read posts here.

I have a lot of things to say but no time to say them, maybe no readers to hear them.

Not only have I been unable to blog, or meta-blog, but I have not been able to read anybody else's blogs really.

OK so I look at MC's photos now and then (how is he so good?), maybe peruse B&P's latest musings (liked that Dave C thought our bikenraft was the best trip of the year), see what my old Sherpa packraft is up to at Dirt and Dogs, check out blogpacking in Finland, of course, occasionally (which some how may have led to seeing a lone, crazy, Italian bikenrafted the Parsons/Kentch route making it a bit more of a trade route these days).

Hig sent me a link to his Malaspina pics. Awesome. While luc Mehl got the "Golden Paddle" award this year for documenting the most significant uses of a packraft in 2011, I must say that Hig continues to dream up trips I want to do even after he does them.

He wrote me about Malaspina,

"The route, with some minor refinement, should become a classic AK trek like Aniakchak. It's totally awesome to cross the ice to the ocean, and both the Samovar Hills and the coast end are incredible. And there's a lot to be missed if you stick to the beach. And the geo-geek stuff is intense. We're ruminating on designing a "how-to" kind of thing that includes info on the route, and also includes a series of photo-reoccupation points and other re-occupiable activities (e.g. plumping depth of growing glacial lakes) that would help illustrate the incredible change going on there. Would love to chat with you about this idea."

Hig and Erin's Wild Coast movie, "Journey on the Wild Coast", edited by Greg Chaney, won an award at Banff, which is cool and appropriate. The 30 min Banff version is good, particularly all the couple's talk. It's short on interactions with other people, people who must have been interesting, but it was their trip and the movie is a good complement to the book, as it was edited by Greg and his take on the trip is good. There is an Epic Eric cameo on their so-called "victory lap" around Unimak (maybe it was a hubris-hating bear that bit them in the boat, there, at the end), which adds a lot as well.

Apacka sent Tim Johnson and Luc some hyper-cool new Llamas. Cool in looks and function. They each have spray deck cowlings that function like a hardshell cockpit -- i.e. the spraydeck stays on your waist and comes off of your boat. Luc's is particularly colorful, apparently inspired color-wise by his wonderful Bird-Spelled-Backward video. We three are going to the steep creeks of NC in early January to test them out.

Yes, that silly season. Silly thinking of next year and all the wonderful possibilities.

Life is short and always getting shorter -- gotta try and live it well, which starts by dreaming.

What are you dreaming up?

Best Packrafting Video of the Year: Luc's edit of Paul on Bird

Luc Mehl's latest and best creation highlights his skills as cameraman/editor, Paul Schauer's as superb boatman, and the Alpacka packraft as a forgiving, fun craft:



Paul's season highlights is also so well crafted that I'd like to take up hardshelling, too:

Packrafting: The last four seasons

The biggest-hit packrafting video of all time is the "Alpacka Creek Descent" (above) by mediafeliz. The mediafeliz videos show young indestructible kids in indestructible boats (actually they popped seats and blew out spray decks). Artistic, playful, and inspiring, those videos likely encouraged Eric Parsons to make a handful of vids that included local Anchorage whitewater in packrafts. This was before Eric quit his engineering job to become Revelate Designs (a transition good for bike gear).

His videos showed what was to come: whitewater in decked boats.

Jeff Conaway was in many of those early Epic Eric videos and he was the one to show me how to switch modes on my first Pentax Optio camera and shoot video while we were on Ingram Creek with Paul Schauer in 2008. Soon after, Nathan Shoutis of mediafeliz used a mouth cam and together we shot much of "packrafts are real boats" on Ship Creek. Later I picked up more video of Brad Meiklejohn on Little Su and Thai Verzone, one of Alaska's first Class V boaters to embrace the packraft, on Bird and Canyon Creek.

Some claim that "packrafts are real boats" marked a turning point for the packraft image:

While the whitewater cadre swelled, packrafts retained their original implementation as a brush for making bold strokes in landscape performance art. Employing this classic application, Peggy and I went around the world with a packraft, spending some time with Forrest McCarthy and Amy in Wyoming and Utah, and using one packraft for two-person wilderness travel from the arctic, to the deserts, across the equator, to the other side of the world in Patagonia and Down Under, in NZ mountains and Aussie Outback.

Once home in Alaska, I enjoyed the explosion of classic Alaskan whitewater packrafting in 2009, spearheaded by Brad Meiklejohn. Thanks mostly to Brad, "Revolution 09" captured the highlights of that year when JT Lindholm, Luc Mehl, Tony Perelli, Becky King (all of Team Talkeetna), Thai Verzone and Gordy Vernon and others started running Class IV on a regular basis.

During the Fall of 2009 two more Class V hardshell boaters climbed into packrafts: Paul Schauer and Tim Johnson.

At the end of 2009, Cody Roman, who had been running Ship Creek and other Alaskan waters since 2003, but crippled up with a back injury from the Grand Canyon, looked to be out of boating. So I sold Tim Johnson the boat my son used to use, a blue Yak.

Within a week of owning it, Tim had installed thigh straps and Eskimo rolled it on an icy Bird Creek. Soon, all of Team Talkeetna and others like Toby Shwoerer and Matt Johnson had glued in thigh straps and learned to roll their boats in the pool.

In January 2010 I headed to New Zealand to meet with Timmy J for some West Coast whitewater. 2010 marked the real revolution as we all now felt more solidly connected to our boats. With Paul Schauer in a loaner Yak, we ran Disappointment and with Timmy J we ran the local stouts in low water conditions: Magic Mile, Upper Willow, and Upper Upper Bird. We felt like we were becoming real boaters.

Like Alpackas in early-2000s, spray decks in the mid-2000s, thigh straps in 2010 led to a quantum leap in packrafting. The disagreements we had with Alpacka over thigh straps suggested the theme for the best of 2010, "Sympathy for the Devil", but people were routinely Eskimo rolling now, and in combat situations. So while straps may have been a devil, we nearly all had them.

This year, packrafting has been far less intense for me.

Last year I put in like 60 days and made 35 videos, mostly all about whitewater, but some classic packrafting with Andrew Skurka, too. This year has been more cosmopolitan.

Cody Roman's back's been feeling better, and ever since we went hunting in the Brooks Range, he feels that it actually loosens it up (maybe it's just the adrenaline killing the pain), but we spent a few weeks in Tasmania and ran the Anne and Franklin Rivers with my old friend Bill Hatcher. Then I did a neat Lost Coast bike rafting adventure with Eric Parsons, Mike Curiak, Steve Fassbinder and Dylan Kentch in late June and in late July traverse of the Alaska Peninsula over Aniakchak with a cast of 15 (well documented at Luc's website). There was a smatter of creeking, but not much new (except E Fork of Iron Creek), and I missed video documentation of the two Whitewater Festivals (but Paul shot and edited them: Willow and Six Mile), each well attended by packrafters. Paul also made a vid of the super social early run down Six Mile (his take).

2011 has been a great year to be part of a neat group of adventurers discovering the possibilities of packrafting all around the state and the world.

The 2011 boats are yet another quantum step forward and with Go Pros and digital SLRs the packrafting explosion is both inspirational and sharable.

Anyway, I feel extremely fortunate to be in this place at this time with these people and these tools, toys, and techniques.

What will next year be like? I am eager to find out.

One thing I'd really like to see is everyone fix their Word software to spell "packraft" like "sailboat", not "pack raft" like "sail boat".

Upper Willow Video

Like a junky needing a fix and desperate for a source, I left a message on Timmy J's voicemail Friday afternoon:

"Timmy, do you know any kayakers who'd be up for Upper Willow tomorrow?"

Luc and Toby were interested if I could get more merriment in the form of more boaters. On the phone I told Thai that it was the best boating I'd done all summer, like the way Ship Creek used to feel back in the days before everyone knew that packrafts are real boats, and that he'd love the low flows and pool drops.

"OK, I'm in. Text me when and where."

Then I called Brad M, JT L and Joe McLaughlin, striking out with all three.

But Timmy came through, surprisingly passing up on the weekend's massive flows on Six Mile that the hard shell boaters were hitting again. Paul Schauer loaned him his 2011 red Llama.

So with Luc, Thai, and Timmy, two cameras, warm fall weather, around 225 cfs in Upper Willow and a little video from last Tuesday's romp on that creek with Tim, Trip, Johhny C, Matt P, and Bo I put this together -- it's worth watching twice to see Luc's combat roll and Thai's boof without thigh straps, as well as a real boater putting a red-colored, thigh-strapped 2011 Llama to the test.

After the run we did (only as far as just above Triple Drop), Timmy said, "You know, these new boats are awesome. So stable and fast. Harder to get airborne on a boof, but so nice on the landings. I'd leave my kayak behind and just take one of these to New Zealand. And putting a slab of minicell foam under the seat worked really well, you should try it."

So there you have it: packraft advice from a real boater.

"Bunny-hop, Boof, and Bushwhack"

If I were 25 -- instead of 50 -- and feeling the urge to start another blog, that's what I'd call it, "Bunny-hop, Boof, and Bushwhack"as I guess those three words represent three of my three favorite outdoor activities.

Jon Underwood took me out on his latest creations, the mtnbike trails at Kincaid and I had to tell him that those Hillside trails now get a B grade compared to the new Kincaid ones. They are sweetly banked and somehow seem longer and more varied as well as more technical. The fall colors spilling across the ground and the sweet smell of autumn in sun were great.

But an even better high than that was running Upper Willow with Tim Johnson, John Combs, and Matt Peters, three Alaskan kayakers who knew the worth of thigh-strapped packrafts and SE boaters Trip Kinney and Bo Wallace, who had yet to see first hand Timmy J boofing off the countless drops in there. All of these guys are super good/fun boaters and paddled with big smiles on their faces as they made their playful way down the boulder drops of Upper Willow.

Paddling with people who are having fun is contagious.

Tim, Luc, Tony and I had run Upper Willow last year, too, finishing super psyched. Last Fall was a real turning point in packrafting as a handful of us ended a full season of thigh straps with Upper Willow, Magic Mile, and Upper-Upper Bird. Hoping to get a repeat of that this year, too, but I'd be happy with two more runs down Willow, really. It's like the boof-master writes in "Alaska Whitewater" on page 198, "This is easily one of the best (and most serious) whitewater rivers in Alaska."


It's amazing to read what Embick wrote twenty years ago about Willow Creek's "Upper-Upper Canyon", giving it ZERO stars out of his five star rating (Happy River and Charley Rivers each get five -- so does Alsek and Kiagna). He wrote in his 1994 guidebook: "Class V+ or VI- with five portages; not really recommended except for kayakers of extreme skill, willing to accept a high degree of commitment and risk......Andrew Embick made a solo run on May 29, 1986, in a Dancer.....No one has been back since. There's a good chance no one will."

My how times -- and boats --have changed. Granted, we ran it at 250 cfs, but it gets run regularly by the boaters in ANC at 800+ cfs. And for a handful of packrafters, there are so far only two portages.

Anyway, it left me feeling so good with its deep canyon multiple drops and clean water that I couldn't sleep the night after and I can not wait to run it again.

"Hi there. My name is Roman and I have an addiction. And that addiction is low water creeking at 400 feet per mile!"

Hopefully this weekend.......A few pictures from Trip's SLR, above ("Pancake") and below ("Gazebo" look for Timmy buried in the second shot and boofing like a rock star in the last):






So far, all of the drops have been packrafted except "Triple Drop" and "Aqualung", and everything is good down to and including "Maxwell House."

I am hoping to learn to boof half as well as Timmy on this run before I am 55. Oh and the 2011 boat still shines on techie little creeks like this, too.

And thanks again to Trip for the photos and all that crew for the good times.