Trip Reports

Alex has been inviting me on these trips for something like 2 years. Our schedules have never synched up. Finally, last week, we made it happen. 4 day trip down Ruby/Horsethief and Westwater.

Short of the long, the trip was brilliant. Awesome people, and one helluva camping system. It probably doesn’t fit my style very often, seeing as I’m a cheap-ace dirtbag, but these guys know how to roll in STYLE. Never eaten so good in my life, even at home (sorry mom). Might even give the Mapleton boys a run for the cooking money…

Back to the whitewater… When in Alaska, I purchased an Alpacka Packraft. They are these ultralight portable rafts, about 4.5 pounds, used for getting into wilderness rivers for floating. They aren’t exactly designed for big water. Nonetheless, I thought it’d be fun to give it a try on the more mellow sections of river, and get a better feel for the thing.

First couple of days go cruising by, just pleasant paddling. Day 4 starts out with some easy whitewater, so Alex convinces me I should give the rapids a shot. Turns out, the rapids are much bigger than I expected, but crazy fun. That is, until, you get to a big class 4 wave that have huge laterals that newbies don’t have a clue how to handle, and the little 4.5 pound pool-toy gets flipped over, sending Dan swimming down some nice boulder filled alleys of whitewater.

Alex swears I was only down for like 3-4 minutes. I don’t know how long it was, but I got my butt handed to me either way. Finally, I swam to another boat and got hauled out, just in time for Skull Rapid. Another guy plucked the boat out of the river, but the paddle… Let’s just say it served me well, and hope someone else will love it as I did…

Enough talk, here’s some video.

Packrafting Westwater from carpeybiggs on Vimeo.