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Packrafting, loosely defined, is boating with a small packable boat that can be carried easily to wherever you want to use it.  How does that separate packrafting from, say, carrying a full-size canoe up the trail?  Well, you might use:

• The Convenience Test: "A packraft is a boat small, light, and portable enough that you can personally carry or move it without significant exertion or special equipment." 
• The Bicycle Test: "A packraft, plus all necessary equipment, is a boat that can be carried while riding a bike around town."

Mari takes a wave in Hawaii.

Technically, packrafting & whitewater kayaking began simultaneously, when an intrepid caveman (CaveBoater!) floated down a primordial river on a primordial log.  However, this might not have passed the Convenience Test.  

But Seriously...

Although inflatable boats of some form have surely been used periodically throughout history, the limitations of premodern waterproofing and hull materials limited their utility.  Various cultures built sophisticated wood-and-bone framed boats with hide or bark hulls.  These craft are the direct ancestors of modern kayaks and canoes, and in a more peripheral sense the ancestors of modern packrafts as well.  Although air-retaining, they weren't exactly "inflatable."  We believe the packraft as soft-bodied boat given shape and structure by inflation appears in the historic record only after the advent of rubber as a hull-building material. 

The first full-fledged "packraft" we know of was a small rubber boat carried by the Jefferson Arctic Expedition.  Reputedly, this craft can still be viewed in a museum in Nova Scotia.  This boat is believed to have been used to explore the Franklin river of Tasmania.  Another packrafter recently revealed to our community a picture of Japanese reconnaissance units in WWII using single-man rubber rafts to stealthily move across water. Other light, simple rafts were developed as aviator survivor boats in the Second World War, and subsequently played a pivotal role in the birth of postwar packrafting.

Know of an earlier packraft?  Let us know!  It's extremely unlikely the "Jefferson Boat" was the first modern packraft, but it's the first one we know about.  If you've found evidence of an earlier packraft, we'd love to hear.  In fact, maybe there's a sketch of one in Leonardo DaVinci's codices.  After all, he did draw a theoretical helicopter and a functioning parachute...

Boats of a Feather: a pile of Alpackas and Sherpa, in the far North.

Roman Dial's book Packrafting! gives good coverage to the history of 20th century packrafting per se, including the invention & production of the Sherpa and Curtis Boats, the Australlian / New Zealand packrafting culture (which was not inconsequential at its height), and even the use in the latter half of this century of military survival rafts by intrepid packrafters.  Dial also covers the pioneering travels of Dick "Black-Ass" Griffith, who might be characterized as the godfather of modern North American packrafting. 

Both the Sherpa and the Curtis boats are worthy of accolades.  The Sherpa was a visionary craft, though limited by the materials technology available at the time.  The Curtis Boat remains a gold standard of aesthetic construction and light weight, weighing in at scarcely more than two pounds.  To the best of our knowledge, the Curtis remains the lightest inflatable raft ever commercially produced.  

The only packraft which both predates the Alpacka and continues to be commercially produced is the Sevylor Trail Boat, made by the Sevylor boat company.  The Sevylor is a small, lightly built, and very affordable boat not officially recommended by Sevylor for anything beyond very tame applications, but it can be great for those with very light usage demands.  Several of us at Alpacka started our packrafting careers in Sevylors.  

Recently, three new packrafts have come onto the market: the Flytepacker (by Flyeweight Designs), the Schmidt boat (a project we've informally named after its proprietor), and the NRS Pack Raft.  The Schmidt boat is closely modeled on the Curtis, whereas the Flytepacker is a more straight-tubed, fore-and-aft symmetric hull.  At least superficially, the NRS Pack Raft resembles a larger, heaver Flytepacker with an integrated seat.  We haven't examined any of these boats in detail and so don't have much in the way of direct commentary to offer.

Our boats, the Alpacka family of rafts, were designed as the "mud truck" complement to the lighter weight Curtis, Sherpa, and Sevylor boats, for boaters who wanted to take their rafts into rocky streams and remote environments.  Today, we feel they share a similar complimentary role to the newest packrafts on the market. 

And on the Lighter Side of Things...

Throughout the latter half of this century, numerous river guides & other assorted amphibians have taken a host of PVC inflatable pool toys, sharks, dinosaurs, and mini-rafts merrily over waterfalls and into rapids with names like "Satan's Gastrointestinal Distress."  A high incidence of beer-drinking has probably been associated with these pioneering endeavors.  Although not exemplary safety practice, these exploits hold a timeless and honored place in the spiritual evolution of small inflatable boating.

In fact, harkening back to the top of this page, a whole lot of those bearded, pony tailed, shirtless guides look an awful lot like cavemen...

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