Packrafting: good for beginning boaters, not for beginning adventurers

[David Chenault]

When I put together the first draft of my Glacier and Bob Marshall packrafting guidebook last year I put in a paragraph in the introduction (such as it is) saying the packrafting is not for beginners, period. I did not elaborate on it there, and won't until the day comes when I decide to make that document a proper book. Given that that may never happen, I present the following.

Packrafting is a great tool for beginning boaters, for reasons which have been discussed in many places (including here) for close to a decade since Alpackas made it popularly accessible. Among other things, they're forgiving and lend themselves to good beginner waters (i.e. less powerful streams and rivers). Packrafting as a practice, however, is not a good match for beginning wilderness travelers.

The aforementioned virtues of ease of use lull unfamiliar boaters into a false sense of security. There are good reasons behind all those heavy foam PFDs, knives, helmets, throw ropes, and drysuits the normal boaters use. It's easy to get a boat and paddle, do some trips, find out how easy things can be, and get dangerous (to yourself) in a hurry.

Further exacerbating this is that packrafters will inevitably be drawn to wilderness waterways, and even in the sidecountry to creeks and rivers ignored by normal boaters. It's hard for a new boater to appreciate just how fast you can get in trouble with wood and foot entrapment (among other things), without either prior experience or some extra ordinary discretion.

Exacerbating all of the above even further is the inevitably tendency for wilderness packrafters to cut corners with safety gear. Inflatable and/or homemade PFDs may work just fine, but cannot be recommended to anyone, even though they will be implicitly by all the reports detailing their construction and use. So to with using just rain gear to save weight. This approach is firmly in the "just uncomfortable" realm for a long time, and slides over into "darn dangerous" very quickly. Again, the only way to get a sense for where the edge is is in the school of hard knocks.

In summary, packrafting is like any "technical" addition to backpacking (i.e. climbing, skiing, etc) in that it provides heightened opportunities for both reward and risk. While the backcountry versions of other activities are different than their frontcountry forms, in packrafting we see a further divergence. Frankly, advice from other boaters is not useful to the beginning packrafter. They're in the position of being fortunate enough to have a partner with packrafting experience, shelling out $$ to take a class, or jumping in and DIYing.

The later process is vastly better in every way if the person in question already has a honed sense of judgment, and risk and self-assessment, grounded in other multi-day backcountry activities. I've read a number of trip reports in the last few years where moderately experienced backpackers rented boats and set out on a packrafting trip, almost always under kind conditions (late summer) on a gentle river. They have a grand trip, and it's fun to read, but I worry from a distance that they were a lot closer to hazard than they may have realized.

So be careful out there.

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