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In mid-April my friend Kris and I found our way down an old, and steep, trail to near the base of Glen Canyon Dam at Page, AZ. This obscure trail (which all the locals know about but with very little internet information), and the subsequent 14 mile raft trip down the Colorado River was the driving force for me to purchase and build a DIYPackraft.
I received my DIYPackraft V3 kit the second week of December and studied the videos, laid out the pieces, and marked all the lines. I had to take a 2 week break over Christmas but as soon as all the company left I was back at in the garage building my raft in January. As we all do on our projects I made a few mistakes but my raft did not leak very much when all was said and done. I completed the project about the third week in January.
The winter ice stayed long on all the local ponds here in south-central Montana but by the first of April I was able to actually get my raft on a local pond to see how it handled. It was much better than I had anticipated.
Kris and I headed for Page, AZ for our little adventure the second week in April. The day we arrived we scouted the trail because, first of all, we had to find the trail head. That only took us about an hour and we managed our way down the difficult parts of the trail without any packs.
A couple days later, after having set up a private shuttle, we hauled our packs to the trail head. While I worked the car shuttle, Kris shuttled both packs down the steep trail, including a couple short rappels on a 45 degree slope. Kris’ pack was about 45 pounds and mine was about 53 pounds. Because we were going to spend at least one night on the river we had tents, sleeping bags, and food. My raft, paddle, PFD, and dry suit weight was about 18 pounds. We needed the dry suits because the river water flowing from Glen Canyon Dam is a cold, crystal clear 48F. If we capsized hypothermia would kick in pretty fast. The day time temperatures were about 65F.
We reached the river and, after a quick lunch, we inflated our rafts. At about ¾ full the rubber tube on my inflation bag blew out. I remembered that I had installed it without roughing up the outside of the rubber so there was very little mechanical advantage to hold the AquaSeal Seam Sealer. I finished the inflation by mouth and off we floated.
I am amazed at how well the DIYPackraft handled. There was only minor “weeble/wobble” in the bow as I paddled and keeping the craft straight was easy. I was obviously stern heavy because whenever I stopped paddling my boat would turn stern first downstream. I’ll have to work on better balancing the load (maybe lose some weight!).
The first day we floated about 6 miles in about 3 hours. There are no rapids on this section of the Colorado River and only one very small riffle so there was no chance of tipping from that. The biggest waves we encountered were the numerous tourist and fishing boats that roared past without the courtesy of slowing down to reduce their wake. In two days of rafting only one boat slowed as it went past us. Of course, for the wake waves we turned perpendicular and corked over them with ease. My raft handled them great.
We stopped at some well marked ancient petroglyphs on river left to get some photos and to take a break.
We camped for the night below Horseshoe Bend overlook on the Navajo Reservation and looked up at the hundreds of people as they looked down on us 800 feet below. They were actually out there to view the sunset from that beautiful location.
The next morning we put a few puffs of air in our rafts and set out at about 8:00 a.m. We floated the next 8 miles in about 4 ½ hours. Our trip culminated at Lee’s Ferry which is the boundary between Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and Grand Canyon National Park.
As mentioned, I really liked the way my raft handled and responded to the paddle. After about 3 hours I had some discomfort on the outside of my hips as they apparently are a bit wider than the inside of the boat (again, maybe I should lose some weight). I would also like to figure out a better back support. Even though I had a back band installed I was still unable to sit up straight so I just laid back on the aft bubble most of the trip. I think a small blow up bag, or gear back would alleviate that little problem.
Building the DIYPackraft was really fun and using it on the Colorado River made it all worthwhile.
Thanks, Matt, for the great product.
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