Mission Project

While more and more adventures are using them for wacky expeditions—Alaskan climber Roman Dial recently used one for an 800-mile traverse of the Alaska Range, and in 2005 five climbers used them to access 19-pitch Lotus Flower Tower in the Yukon Territory's Cirque of the Unclimbables—I was staring outside at March in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The Yampa River was still lined with ice, and people were still skate skiing the Nordic trails at Howelsen Hill. Where the heck could I use this thing?

Then the idea for my Mission Project hit: the first-ever skate ski/raft circumnavigation of Howelsen Hill. Dorky and paltry compared to the exploits of Dial and company, sure, but it'd be a first. I'd throw it in a drybag, with PFD and drysuit, strap a breakdown paddle to the outside, and set off skate skiing from my backdoor heading over Howelsen Hill to the Yampa River. There, I'd inflate it, tie the skis on and float four miles back to within a block of my home and hike back to my front porch—all within my four-hour hall pass window from taking care of the kids.

Itinerary filed with the appropriate authorities (my wife), I took off, skate-skiing southeast from my home over a nearby ridge. Once off the groomed Nordic trails (where I passed more than a few bewildered skate skiers wondering what the hell I was doing), I traversed off-piste down to the river.

I felt dorky inflating it next to a couple of early-season fishermen, and dorkier still fastening my skis atop it and climbing inside. It was like wearing a bathtub, with only my daughter's rubber ducky missing. The inventor, Sheri Tingey, a ski suit seamstress from Jackson, invented the craft in 2000 when her son, Thor, asked her to build a boat for a trip in the Brooks Range. This backyard expedition was far from the Brooks, but it was likely the first time anyone had floated the ice-lined river all year.

I bounced off a snowbank as if it was aufeis in the Arctic, and tested its three-inch draft with scrapes over cobblestones. An hour or two later I came to the whitewater clencher: punching Charlie's Hole by the town library. Though more weight up front would offer better counter-balance, I made it through fine to the gawks of fishermen and other bike-path passersby.

Circumnavigation accomplished, I took out, rolled up the raft, shouldered my skis, and hiked the two blocks home. In all, I had traveled a circle of about five miles, door to door. It was a far cry from the 24-hour packraft exploits being practiced by Andy Magness in New Zealand, and the 'round-the-world packraft trip being undertaken by Thai Verzone, but mission accomplished, it proved to me, at least, that packrafting is, indeed, opening up the world to exploration—even if it's only out your backdoor.