Mountain Biking Montana Wyoming
7ãPackraft–Contemporary Prominent Users
Recent prominent users of packrafts include: Roman Dial (Alaska), Erin McKittrick and Bretwood Higman (Alaska), Brad Michaeljohn (Alaska), Forrest McCarthy (Wyoming and Yellowstone region), Tom Turiano (Wyoming, other areas), John Waterman, Ryan Jordan (hiker) (Rocky Mountains, Pacific Northwest), and Sam Perry & Nathan Shoutis (Western United States).
More recently, packrafting has become popular in Norway, the locale for an international Alpacka dealership. Packrafts have also been paddled elsewhere in Europe, in Mexico, Southeast Asia, New Zealand, Australia (including its Franklin River), as well as Patagonia and tropical South America.
In the U.S. outside of Alaska, back country packrafting is focused primarily in the more remote areas of the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem (Montana), Yellowstone Ecosystem (Montana and Wyoming), Olympic National Park (Washington), and Mount Rainier National Park (Washington), as well as for canyoneering in Utah and Arizona.
During the 1980s and 1990s Dial pioneered several full-length wilderness traverses of the Alaska Range, Brooks Range, Talkeetna Mountains, Wrangell Mountains, and other Alaskan ranges requiring use of packrafts. He is also noted for combining packrafts with mountain bike riding, glacier skiing, and mountain climbing.
Bretwood Higman and Erin McKittrick are well known in the packrafting community for their innovative expions that employ the use of packrafts for flatwater river, lake, and fjord travel, notably across the Kenai and Alaska Peninsulas.
McCarthy and Turiano have descended many of the backcountry rivers in the southern Yellowstone Ecosystem (including the upper Yellowstone River near its source), and Jordan has descended many of backcountry rivers in the northern Yellowstone Ecosystem including the Bob Marshall Wilderness and the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, Olympic National Park, Mount Rainier National Park, and the Frank Church Wilderness.
Sam Perry & Nathan Shoutis have documented descents of high-class whitewater in the US west coast areas, including Class V and possibly higher whitewater.
More recently, packrafting has become popular in Norway, the locale for an international Alpacka dealership. Packrafts have also been paddled elsewhere in Europe, in Mexico, Southeast Asia, New Zealand, Australia (including its Franklin River), as well as Patagonia and tropical South America.
In the U.S. outside of Alaska, back country packrafting is focused primarily in the more remote areas of the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem (Montana), Yellowstone Ecosystem (Montana and Wyoming), Olympic National Park (Washington), and Mount Rainier National Park (Washington), as well as for canyoneering in Utah and Arizona.
During the 1980s and 1990s Dial pioneered several full-length wilderness traverses of the Alaska Range, Brooks Range, Talkeetna Mountains, Wrangell Mountains, and other Alaskan ranges requiring use of packrafts. He is also noted for combining packrafts with mountain bike riding, glacier skiing, and mountain climbing.
Bretwood Higman and Erin McKittrick are well known in the packrafting community for their innovative expions that employ the use of packrafts for flatwater river, lake, and fjord travel, notably across the Kenai and Alaska Peninsulas.
McCarthy and Turiano have descended many of the backcountry rivers in the southern Yellowstone Ecosystem (including the upper Yellowstone River near its source), and Jordan has descended many of backcountry rivers in the northern Yellowstone Ecosystem including the Bob Marshall Wilderness and the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, Olympic National Park, Mount Rainier National Park, and the Frank Church Wilderness.
Sam Perry & Nathan Shoutis have documented descents of high-class whitewater in the US west coast areas, including Class V and possibly higher whitewater.
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