Whitewater Packrafting Progression

This is the script I used to narrate this video  about how I focused skill development to get comfortable on whitewater I never thought I would run, asa naturally risk-averse person from Arizona. The video is where you should look for all the visuals, soI'm not going to put any effort into formatting this but figured i may as well share it here.

January 16th, 2026

When I bought my first packraft in early 2020, a deeply discounted decked Nirvana, I had basically no whitewater skillset. Like many people who start packrafting I was a hiker and canyoneer just looking for another way to move around the backcountry.

From the start, I was definitely interested in running rivers for the enjoyment of it, but I had no skills so I figured I would limit myself to class II. I also have a very risk averse personality. Some people I paddle with probably don't agree with this because they see me do things that scare them, but I think it's true. For example, I've had a mountain bike my whole life but have never gotten comfortable on black trails, and I skied 15 days before venturing onto my first blue square. I definitely didn't get into packrafting for the adrenaline or technical challenge. I also live in Arizona, not exactly a famous or friendly place to learn to paddle. But in summer of 2025 I paddled the Lower 5 on the NFP for my first class V section of river. Now, I wouldn't quite call myself a class V boater yet, but I've come a long way. On the nearby class IV section I was partying hard and a great paddler asked me if I had a kayak background, and “how'd I get so good”? My answer was a sarcastic "Man I've hardly even been on class IV before, I just read the Packraft Handbook and played on the Verde a bunch!”. I didn't know I was good. It got me thinking, how did I get here?

This isn't going to be a detailed skills guide. Those exist already in the form of books, instructional kayak videos, and courses taught by guides. I feel like I'm in a good position to tell a story of how this happened for me and what skills I found most important along the way.

I paddled infrequently in 2020 and early 2021, mostly because I didn't have a drysuit and struggled to find good places and conditions to packraft. I was discovering the hard truth that most easy rivers in the lower 48 have roads next to them. Then, while hiking along the Los Pinos river in Colorado during runoff, I saw some lovely flat meandering sections deep in the wilderness. So when I got out, I googled “Los Pinos River packraft” and found this video and found myself thinking: What. The. Fuck?

That video looked scary as hell to me, but it was also beautiful. And wilderness. It didn't take long for me to binge watch all of Jeff’s channel and realize that those three things were kind of a theme. Scary, beautiful, wilderness.

I didn't think I would ever run class V, or even class IV, but I began to see that wilderness and whitewater go hand in hand. At this time I also bought Luc Mehl’s new and excellent Packraft Handbook. This showed me that safety on all rivers can be increased through skill and preparation.

So I got psyched about practicing skills to prepare me for wilderness class III. The first skill I practiced avidly was self-rescue aka wet-re-entry. This is probably the point in my paddling career where I had the most privilege. Packrafts are generally easy for small people to move around, but self-rescue is way easier if you're tall like me. But I recommend practicing anyway. Being able to confidently self-rescue has allowed me to practice maneuvers without fear of failure. For years my paddling progression involved multiple hundreds of swims, and they were all great! I loved the feeling that crashing didn't have to hurt, it felt so contrary to mountain biking.

Then I ripped a foot long gash in my Nirvana. Luc had sold me on the importance of thigh straps, so I ordered an Alpacka Expedition which came in November. I also got a drysuit around this time. These two things completely changed packrafting from a leisure to something I could actually pursue year-round as a sport. I got a Gopro so I could film my adventures but what I didn't realize at the time was how much it would help me learn. Being able to review lines after I got off the river and compare techniques to footage from better paddlers was super helpful.

I began exploring the Verde more avidly, which is the closest thing I have to a backyard river. And I started practicing skills in earnest. For some unexplainable reason (perhaps being from Arizona), I was obsessed with the feeling of being on the water. 

Especially with thigh straps. I loved leaning the boat over and practicing bracing and skulling. This is totally doable with the Expedition but is even easier with the Mage and Valkyrie. When I first read about skulling in the handbook it sounded impossible to me, and when I first tried it it felt impossible, but I soon developed muscle memory for it. This is super useful in the long run because if you're side surfing you can instinctively levitate your bracing blade back to the surface.

I also taught myself to roll in my Expedition from Luc Mehl’s excellent video. He was so good at explaining the basics and mechanics that I nailed my first three attempts! But I quickly got sick of paying for the pool and tried to just refine my roll on the river. I wasn't able to get enough successful reps in, and my form started to go downhill.

In May of 2022 I took a packraft-specific swiftwater rescue course from some great instructors. We learned basic rope skills, got better at reading water, and did a lot of boat handling practice. Getting expert advice really helped set my paddling technique straight and I highly recommend it. I had no idea how much room for improvement I had even just in forward strokes! They're supposed to be vertical enough that you can see under your arm.

Prior to the course, I had already been catching eddies but felt kinda squirrelly doing it, especially when peeling out. Learning the proper, stepwise form for eddy turns from Dan was one of the best things to happen to my paddling. I think this could be learned from quality educational videos and lots of practice. Carving in and out of eddies is so much fun and forces you to practice multiple boat handling skills at once: forward stroke, lean, and brace. 

Another great teacher of hydraulics, bracing, and edge control is surfing. I've surfed at the whitewater park in a Durango a bit, but for a long time most surf features I found on the rivers I was paddling were small and awkward. Any surfing is better than none! I don't know Andrew Borden very well, but my understanding is he got good at packrafting super fast by dialing in his roll and being able to hit the surf wave in Missoula all the time.

Around this time I also started to learn to boof. It took me a long time to learn to boof ledges because most of my paddling was super shallow, but I tried a lot and boofed a lot of waves and loved it. Boofing is so useful for helping you skip through harder rapids. For example, here’s the opposite of a boof. Luckily packrafts are boof machines!

When Alpacka launched the Valkyrie I didn't think it was for me, but a year later I was even more hooked on whitewater and then I tried one. The V2 was a cool boat and is basically what opened up the door to me paddling class III with confidence and sampling class IV. When I first got it, I went to a pool session and did a ton of reps. “Wow, it's so easy to roll” I thought! Then I went back to trying to roll on the river, and once again my form got worse and worse…

Common advice to developing packrafters is “spend time in a kayak”. Kayaks make getting on edge a lot easier and force you to learn to control that power. By the time I bought my first kayak, a creekboat, I was like: “wow, I can kayak pretty good” because I had already spent time in the Valkyrie and refined my edge control. But to my dismay I still had a poor combat roll. This let me know I needed to work on my form. I didn't learn a lot. My friend Quinlan took the smarter route by getting a half-slice and dialing in his roll so he could play hard. Any type of play on the river gives you great feedback.

When I first borrowed a Valkyrie V3 I didn't even try to roll because I was so ashamed. But I was inspired as hell watching Will charge hard lines on the Salt with confidence, ear-dipping and combat rolling with style. I was desperate for a reliable roll. After hearing some more positive reviews, I knew I had to get one.

I also know I had to train. The winter of 25 was the driest I can remember, but I had a new boat and I was psyched! I hit the pool once a week like it was my gym, probably about ten times total. I remember my first outdoor outing with the V3 in Marble Canyon. I used to get such bad butterflies if I even thought about rolling because I had missed so many. But I had been practicing. I flipped over, and rolled up. Then I did it on my offside. Then I combat rolled twice in a row. The scrawny paddle I was using was no longer an excuse; I could roll fine.

My 2025 was off to a great start. I would go on to swim just one more time, in a surging, walled-in, room-of-doom style eddy in Rockwood. It was kind of a shitty swim! I should've tried harder to roll.

I wanted summer of 25 to be my “breakout season”, which I defined as having a mentality of “I can paddle class IV all the time, with confidence”. I raced my packraft at Meadowcamp and after 4 clean laps, had to combat roll. I had sold my old creekboat and got a half-slice so I could play harder. This just helped me learn to stay committed to the roll. I also had a lot of fun practicing stern squirts, the first skill I've learned that's not super useful for packrafting.

I went to the packraft roundup in Idaho and partied hard - not with the drinks, but on the river. I was having a great time.

Quinlan was trying to convince people to run the Lower 5 with him. I was nervous and hesitant, but I had heard about a group doing it last year and it was a subtle goal of mine as I came into the event. Some of the more experienced paddlers there helped boost my confidence, telling me they thought I could totally do it if I felt good about it. I decided to go have a scout.

We looked at the lines through the big rapids and I could see myself hitting them. I ended up paddling everything with style, but this was a learning experience for sure. I blew the line on Crunch, where I didn't get far enough left, got side surfed, got crunched, and rolled.

I don't regret running Lower 5, but I do ask myself some questions to debrief it, as I think we all should after all rivers. If I had missed that roll, was I prepared to try a few more times before swimming? Could I have paddled smarter and made the move to the left? Or maybe, should I have just stayed right? I still think about these questions and I think I'll just have to go have another look in 2026.

Ultimately I didn't get into packrafting so I could run dam released big water in the Idaho frontcountry. My heart is still strongly attached to the wilderness adventure potential. But, I’ve learned that whitewater makes me feel alive too, and there’s a lot of it deep in the backcountry. I’m glad I’ve gained paddling skill to pursue it more safely.