We’re doing it!! :D
Rob and I headed out for a five day gear shakedown adventure on the Colorado River and the Kokopelli Trail. We started out lashing two fat bikes and all our gear onto/into our Alpacka Raft Forager 2-person packraft, and paddling it first down the beautiful flatwater of the Ruby-Horsethief section of the Colorado River, and then down the spunky Class 3 rapids of the Westwater Canyon.
We didn’t know exactly how this would go. Most people who use the Forager use canoe-style paddles, and Rob and I, being more used to kayaking, wanted to use kayak paddles for optimal (for us) power and navigation abilities. We ended up rigging thigh straps which were a great help in being able to lean and edge the boat, and our Lendal Cadence / Cadence X bent shaft breakdown 4-piece paddles were awesome for what we wanted to do.
Before going into the Westwater Canyon, we wanted to be sure that we would be able to flip our boat back upright with the bikes and wheels strapped aboard. We’d heard stories of others trying to do this and it being very difficult or impossible. I’m not sure what we did differently, but we had zero issues with this. Rob and I rigged up two flip lines in case we needed two of us to right the boat, then Rob went in for a test run. He had a drysuit and I didn’t for this trip, only a wetsuit and a dry top, so he took one for the team. The plan was for me to stand on shore with a throw bag in case things went south. Fortunately and somewhat surprisingly, Rob had zero trouble righting the boat on his own — even without the flip line! So we went for the Canyon.
Everything went incredibly well in the rapids. The boat handled great and smashed through the wave trains and fast eddy lines with no problem. We have SO much power with those paddles!
On one of the final rapids, we scouted and chose to take a more aggressive line just to see what would happen. We didn’t have optimal speed coming in, and our angle was just a bit off — sure enough, we smashed into a huge lateral curler wave next to a hole and over we went! The wave threw us over backwards and sideways and dumped us right into the big hole. We came up right away, I was right next to the boat and grabbed it. I looked around for Rob and he also had hold of the boat, so I let go and let Rob flip the boat upright while I floated through the waves. No problem and we had both jumped back into the boat within 10 seconds, while we were still in the rapids. Success!!! This made me feel SO much better about our trip — our chances of flipping at some point on our Himalayan trip is high, the water is big and fast, and knowing we have the ability to self-rescue without issue is confidence-inspiring.
Check out this fun 4-minute video I made of the packrafting portion of our trip. (Yes, you get to see our boat flip over as the GoPro goes underwater!) The music will probably make you laugh, especially if you listen to it 27 times in a row. When doing weird things such as this, it is important not to take oneself too seriously. ;)
Enjoy!!