Packrafting the Wood River (British Columbia)

[Luke Schmidt]

Companion forum thread to: Packrafting the Wood River (British Columbia)

A tale of extreme bushwhacking, intense whitewater packrafting, and a 5-day trek that turned into an 11-day epic on British Columbia’s Wood River.

[Adam Klags]

What kind of temps were you experiencing? Seems like you hiked in the dry suits a bit… maybe unintentionally… how was that? Were they hot and sweaty? I’m curious because I’ve never owned one but as an avid hiker/fishermen I’ve thought about how nice this would be in the winter and cold temps.

[Richard Nisley]

Great trip report! The text and video is quite thrilling.

[Bob Moulder]

Now THAT is a helluva story!

Glad you guys were able to self-extract and not hit “the button”. But I can see how the inReach saved your families an enormous amount of worry.

[Sam Haraldson]

Solid TR, fellas. The best trip we’ll never do again – – love it!

[Dale Wambaugh]

This trip was a good case for a waist pack with an AMK bivy space blanket, Orion fire starter flare (and other fire starting gear) and all the other essentials that would fit. Sounds like a.saw would have been handy.

<span style=”line-height: 1.8;”>You were one step from a very serious ending, several times! I’m gad you made it out okay. Thanks for telling the tale.</span>

[EJVC]

I felt sick just reading this report.  The part where you only had one pack and one raft was pretty horrifying.  Glad you survived to tell the tale.

I know the gorges weren’t on your maps, but are those gorges nowhere on any maps, or did your map preparation fail you, do you think? I mean, were there better maps to be had?

[Nico .]

Quite the tale!  Glad it all turned out alright.

The map vs reality discrepancy drives home an important lesson… The typical topo maps available for an area like this might be at a pretty broad contour interval… (like 40m intervals on the “MyTopo” imagery I used to take a look at the area after reading this trip report).  40-meter contours (~130′) leave a lot of room for “unknowns” out there on the ground waiting for your discovery.

Thanks for sharing.  I look forward to going back and watching the videos at a later time.

[Anonymous]

Grand, adventure, the kind where it gets real. You guys really kept your heads about you
when your butts were on the line. A truly compelling trip report. Thanks for sharing.

[Dale Wambaugh]

Luke sent a message and asked me to post these replies for him:

 

Luke Schmidt sent you a new message:

Subject: Reply

“Hey Dale, a software upgrade at BPL locked me out of posting so I’ll answer a couple questions people asked me about the Wood River article. If you don’t mind “cutting and pasting” it to a forum post for me that would be appreciated (Eric is away on a trip so he can’t fix things right now, not his fault).

Dale – You’re right a waist pack would have been a great idea. Actually I had one. I was a bit nervous it would get caught if I swam so I left it off. I had planned to at least put the InReach and firestarters in my pocket but I forgot. Next time I’m thinking of a waist pack or possibly a chest pack that will fit under my dry suit. That will hold the InReach, firestarters, flares etc. I might even try to squeeze in a small down vest.

Bob – A rescue outside a National Park might have been expensive so we had a motivation other then pride to self rescue. Once we found me gear we were safe, just miserably hungry. Funny you mention families. I’m a teacher so I was on a long road trip. My family had no idea what was going on. But it was good for Ben’s family to know. I didn’t really even tell my family what happened, they found out when Ben posted the pics on facebook.

Adam – We only hiked in our dry suits when we thought it was a short portage. And I kept mine on after losing my gear. I got pretty steamed up in mine hiking. I could see fishing in one but waders seem like a more economical idea. The rubber gaskets on the arms, neck and ankles are pretty tight.

EJVC – Google Maps available on Hillmap.com do offer a bit more detail, I didn’t know about them until after the trip. Even that didn’t show the actual gorge though. In hindsight we should have paid more attention to the gradient. A quick look at Hillmap.com shows that the river drops an average of 112 feet per mile between the lake and the beginning of the braids. That seems pretty fast. In the Yellowstone Ecosystem every river that I’m aware of that drops more then 50 ft. per mile has significant rapids. It looks even worse when you consider that the majority of that drop is over about 2-3 miles.

I know how to use digital tools better now but the big lesson is be careful “in reality.” The rate of the river’s drop should have been a warning sign but it only takes a small waterfall to ruin your day.

A note on the videos, Ben is slowly uploading the raw footage. A friend is making a more professional edit that Ben will post on his youtube channel at some point (most likely around spring break).

Thanks for the kind words guys, Anyone want to come on trip with me:) ”

[EJVC]

Luke, thanks for the reply, and for the information about the maps.  I was just thinking what lessons we can all learn from this!  I mean totally one waterfall can ruin your day but the gradient might have let you (or us in the future) know it wasn’t going to be smooth paddling, as you say.

Another thing I was thinking was that it sounds like the stand of wild blueberries really was a godsend.  I wondered what other types of wild food might have been available too… now that might be worthwhile looking into before going as well, I suppose you never know when you might get delayed (especially on a trip like this) and need extra sustenance.

One other thing that’s been niggling at me – why didn’t you guys sleep together (literally, I mean, like in the same shelter/bag/whatever that night before you found your gear?  Was there some reason you couldn’t share body warmth?

I really admire the two of you for working together as well as you did to come out of this scary situation.

[James Marco]

A hairy experience. You guys did well to survive. One misstep and someone might not have. A bad sprain or broken bone would have spelled disaster. Most bushwacking in the ADK’s is interlocked blowdowns. I spent a couple days bushwacking what I thought to be a runable river in the ADK’s. Again, rain really swelled the river making my plans useless.  I flipped just before a strainer after getting caught in a bad spot with no paddling room. I was lucky to kick free. It took two days to dry out AFTER I caught the boat/gear. The boat had a 12″ gash in it, lost my hat, AND, most importantly, my map. Only my drybag saved my bag and sleeping cloths. Everything else in the pack was wet. The boat was unrepairable till it dried out. Duct tape does not always work. I can almost “taste” your trip.

[Dean F.]

That… is an awesome tale.  I nearly died on the Stikine in 2007- and in fact one of my partners lost his whole kayak including a Hasselblad camera- so I feel your pain.  We hit an unusually late and sudden thaw so the river was running at 14 knots IIRC, but we had been planning the trip for a year and were too stupid to bail.

 

I suspect that kayak is still peregrinating about the Chukchi Sea…

[David Chenault]

Good article Luke, and very good on you and Ben for dealing with adversity so well.  Damn hard to be calm in such circumstances.

112 feet/mile is fricking steep.  The crux parts of the Selway in Idaho, for example, aren’t even half that.

[Josh Durston]

I loved reading this.  Even with everything that went wrong, would’ve been an amazing experience.

[Dan Gregerson]

Thanks for sharing this story Luke and awesome job staying calm and making good decisions when “thing went wrong” to survive.

You probably already know this, but for the general reader, a tip for starting a fire in a rain forest: peel the inner bark off a cedar tree (it’s the “enormous tree” Ben is standing next to in the picture on the Athabaska pass trail –they’re especially common in the NW rainforests). Slide a knife blade under the outer bark to ‘pop’ it off, then the inner bark peels off in long, thin, vertical strips. It’s so full of resin, it will stay lit in a pouring rain, long enough to cook dinner at least. Doesn’t even hurt the tree.

[Ben Brochu]

So I decided to that the plunge and get a premium subscription. Thanks Luke! Now checking to see if I can post since he’s locked out.

[Ben Brochu]

EJVC – We were in the same shelter (my BT-2), but since it was so incredibly wet and Luke was already wearing my down jacket (Montbell Alpine Light), using my down sleeping bag (Montbell Super Spiral #3) as a two person quilt would have left us both cold (at just above freezing temps) and the bag wet. Remember, we had no idea if/when it would stop raining or if we would find the other boat at that point. So keeping that bag dry was a priority. With the double vapour barrier system (drysuit and packraft), Luke felt warm enough when we went to sleep, but I think once his adrenaline wore off, he got pretty cold. We were still touching each other, that’s why I could feel the shivering. But I would totally cuddle him to save his life if needed :)

Dan, thanks for the cedar bark tip. There are no cedars where I live, so I didn’t know that.

[Luke Schmidt]

Dave – I do need to go back and map it out a bit more carefully. Its possible my mapping “cut” a few corners. Longer river mileage would equal less gradient. Even if you half it though that is still enough drop to be concerned about.

Dan – I actually thought about ceder bark but I might have used it wrong. Where I used to camp we had lots of ceders (or maybe junipers) with very thick flaky bark. It was great for starting a fire but we only used the outer bark,. We never carved deeper for LNT purposes and also because you could get more then enough to start a fire just by ripping a few handfuls off. The ceder trees I looked at had thinner, more crumbly outer bark and I didn’t think it would be much use. Maybe I should have been more aggressive about carving down to the inner bark?

I’ll definitely bring better fires starting gear next time but in our specific situation I’m not sure how much it would have helped. We did get a fire started but the actual warmth it provided was minimal. Next time I get into a situation like that I’ll wear a few more clothes. I’m also thinking of ideas like trying to keep a small down vest in a waterproof waist pack. Of course mostly I just try NOT to get into another situation where I lose my gear.

If we’d had my stove we could have pegged Ben’s tarp right to the ground and run the stove till it was out of fuel (probably 30 minutes worth) midway through the night to warm ourselves up a bit.

Thanks for the kind words. My account is finally working again.

[Brad Branan]

Great article Luke. Ingenious thinking on the way, too, with the bucket paddle. Seems like you had an usually difficult time with packrafts ripping. Are those Kokopellis less sturdy than others?

 

[Luke Schmidt]

I don’t think those rafts are any less durable then Alpackas.  Those were sharp rocks out there.  You can put a lot.more pressure in a Kokepelli raft. That extra stiffness is nice but it might have made the blow out worse.  In the future I’m going to inflate enough but maybe not as much.

 

[Ben Brochu]

To add to Luke’s response about the Kokopelli rafts, the fabric is 210D and double-coated, in contrast with Alpacka’s 70D single-coated fabric. That’s why it’s a much more rigid boat. So the fabric itself is considerably more durable, but because you can put way more pressure in it (and do it easily with the one way Boston valve) if you do puncture it at pressure (even a tiny one, especially with a 50lb pack tightly lashed to the front and pulling up on the tube fabric) you’re more likely to get a pressure rip. Which we did. It’s like poking an overinflated balloon vs. a softer one. The same is true of the Feathercraft boats, which I’ve also tore a two foot long gash in. However, the only reason our 210D tube fabric was exposed to the sharp rocks in this case was because we had so much weight on the front of the lower volume Nirvanas. Because of the extra weight, the bow was lower than it usually would be and both of our punctures were within 1/4 inch of the 840D floor fabric. I’ve shared this with Kokepelli and they have increase the floor coverage area for the 2016 Nirvana. So problem is fixed. I wouldn’t carry this much weight on the bow in whitewater again, as I had underestimated how much it affects the handling (hence the swimming.) My next boat will have the cargo zip and I think it’s by far the way to go if you need to run big water with lots of gear.

[Luke Schmidt]

I didn’t realize they had changed the floor.  Nice to know since i ordered a new one with the zipper.

Ben if you’d had a cargo zipper do you think you could have avoided the swim?

[Ben Brochu]

It wasn’t the boat’s fault, Luke.  Human error. I could have avoided the swim with the exact same set-up if I had a second chance at it. I should have practised with a loaded pack. It was my first time paddling any real water in that boat with a big pack on the front, and I just didn’t realize how badly it would grab the lateral wave. But a zip boat is definitely the way to go if you are carrying significant cargo in significant water. .

[James holden]

perhaps some ~200 wt fleece and synthetic poofayz … and a synthetic bag/quilt may have worked better under those conditions?

with synthetics you can go to sleep damp and wake up fairly dry …

the seals (ones that shoot you, not the cute ones you club) use synthetics for rewarming drills after immersions …

https://www.sitkagear.com/insight/a-navy-seal-rewarming-drill

;)

 

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