The Packrafting Podcast

After losing a friend in a packrafting incident seven years ago, Luc was rattled to the core. It became a catalyst for a new chapter in his own packrafting journey, where he totally reassessed his own skillset and started learning more about safety. This led him to write The Packraft Handbook, which we focus on in this episode. Those of you who already have a copy of the book will enjoy the extra background on the book writing process and getting to know Luc on more of a personal level.

Annie shares some of her most memorable packrafting and bikerafting adventures in Scotland and Greenland. We hear about her encounters with muskoxen, quick sand on a glacier-fed river, and dealing with a sinking raft. We also talk about the dynamic of doing trips with a romantic partner.

Sarah lives in Alaska, where she finds joy in many outdoor activities, from wild ice skating to backcountry skiing and packrafting. She teaches mental-health informed online fitness programs for outdoors people. We go down many tangents in this episode, from the joys of bear encounters in the Brooks Range to some of her earlier packrafting mishaps. We talk about fear management in an outdoor setting, including her intentional approach to building confidence and nervous system capacity. She also openly talks about her challenges with fertility.

Jeffrey Creamer is a packrafter based in Colorado who loves designing creative whitewater expedition routes. His favourite trips combine hard whitewater with backcountry skiing or ski mountaineering, often in remote areas of the lower 48 where people don’t typically explore. In this episode we chat about many of his most memorable adventures, including a Bull Lake Creek trip and adapting the ‘Du’Mor’ packraft route to include several ski legs. We also talk about packrafting Upper Cherry Creek, a classic whitewater run in the Sierra Nevada. As a special bonus at the end of this episode I talk to Thor Tingey from Alpacka Raft. He shares a bit more about the history of design for their more technical boats and what’s so special about their new packraft, the Valkyrie.

In this episode we talk about Willem’s signature trip style, including how he plans his trips and what it is he enjoys most about multi-week adventures. We chat about some of his earlier trips in Scandinavia, Greenland, a packraft-assisted traverse of the South Island of New Zealand and a near-death experience during a four month traverse of Norway.

Willem’s written trip recounts and photographs have provided inspiration for people all over the world, with many packrafters following his routes. However, he has grappled with sharing online and in 2013 he stopped sharing GPS coordinates of his routes. We discuss some of the consequences of sharing detailed trip recounts, including environmental impacts in South Greenland and how the death of two Belgian packrafters last summer has impacted him.

In 2016 Willem was the recipient of the Golden Paddle Award from the American Packrafting Association.

Sheri Tingey started working in design in the outdoor industry in Jackson Hole when she was a young adult. It wasn’t until she was in her mid-50s that she founded Alpacka Raft with her son, Thor. After almost two decades battling chronic fatigue, Sheri was ready to get her teeth stuck into a new project. With somewhat serendipitous timing, Thor asked her to build him a boat. And so the vision of Alpacka Raft was born.

In this episode she shares some of the evolution of the outdoor gear industry in the USA, including the impact it had when companies went into mass production and manufacturing moved off-shore. She also talks about ‘Alaska Crazies’, the birth of modern-day packrafting in Alaska, and gives us an insight into the beginnings of a new sport and how the packrafting community has evolved over the past twenty years. The creators out there will also love her insight into her inspiration and design process.

Welcome to the second episode in the storytime series. Steve Fassbinder, known to most simply as “Doom” has been pushing the limits of human powered exploration for years.

His passionate pursuit of low-impact, human powered adventure has led him to adopt many creative styles of exploration, including being an early adopter of bike-rafting.

He is currently based in Mancos, Colorado where he and his partner Lizzy are busy setting up Scullbinder Ranch and running bikerafting tours in their backyard. In this episode of storytime he talks about a bike-rafting adventure in the Brooks Range of Alaska with John Bayley and Brett Davis. Over to you Doom!

Enjoy two short adventure stories, written and narrated by Andy Magness. His first story, Why Adventure Matters, is a personal essay on risk and parenting. His second piece was developed around the same time. It’s a true account of a father-son packrafting adventure on the Baptism River on the North shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota.

Avid ‘packraftineer’ Stanley Mulvany has spent decades exploring the rugged terrain of Fiordland and South Westland in New Zealand.