Wilderness Alaska has a 30 year tradition of inventive route selection. Trips during the first two decades of our history were principally arduous hikes Lately, most of our visitors seem more interested in ditching the backpack for the relative comforts and distance possible with boat travel. But there are only so many drainages that will float a big boat in a desert and most of those are now regularly traveled.
New technology offers a solution. Four pound pack rafts offer a blend of both hiking and boating. With pack rafts we can poke into unvisited corners of the arctic and still enjoy covering a lot of the map. With these small boats we are no longer limited by the constraints of water volume. We can reach out to the type of country we were discovering on our earlier hiking trips, without having to carry heavy packs the entire distance.
So what will these trips be like?
The boats are are both versatile and limiting. You might think of the trips as backpacking on air. We will pack as lightly as we would for a backpacking trip, (no homemade frozen lasagnas coming out on the 8th day). But on floating days your pack will be carried on the deck of the boat rather than strapped to your back (sounds good right?).
If you are comfortable in a canoe or sea kayak you will be not have a problem with a pack raft. Boating skills transfer, but there is a short orientation curve, paddling will be more like steering a cork than a canoe.
Participants should have good water sense and be reasonably comfortable in moving water. We will be getting wet during paddling but provided drysuits and helmets assure that you will be as safe and comfortable as possible. As fun as they are, we are using the pack rafts in moving water and that requires attention.
Types of Pack Raft Trips: We are planning two types of trips; downriver trips and portage trips.
Downriver trips are similar to our raft trips but with less overhead and on more remote drainages. We put-in and take-out on a single river. On these trips we will use the boats as our primary vehicle for point to point travel. Just as on canoe and raft trips there will be frequent time set aside for day hikes away from the drainage.
The portage trips allow for a more complex itinerary through more remote country. On these trips we split our time paddling and hiking with pack rafts across a couple watersheds.
As an example, on our June caribou migration trip begins at the headwaters of a low volume drainage that is wired into the caribou migration. After some day-hiking here we will paddle downstream 8 miles before deflating the boats and making a 7 mile portage to another caribou corridor in a different watershed. This valley has no airplane access and is well off the beaten path. We will re-inflate the boats and paddle out the mountains to the coastal plain. These trips, like the backpacking trips, will require more fitness and exertion than our standard downriver trips. On our rating scale they will be three mosquitoes.
Currently we have three portage trips in mind each appropriate for a different season and three down river trips. In most cases these trips are all 10 days long. Please call to discuss which trip might be best for you.
About the boats: please visit the Alpackaraft home page http://www.alpackaraft.com to learn more about the boats and the sport.
Photos© by Jim Jager
