Packrafting: A Way to the Wilderness - Brad Mieklejohn, American Packrafting Association

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Packrafting involves the use of lightweight, compact and portable boats to blend overland and on-the-water travel. Modern packrafts have evolved rapidly in the past decade to allow long, complex and technical trips to some of the world's most remote regions and innovative routes in front-country and backcountry areas. The portability of packrafts facilitates low-impact travel; packrafts require few of the typical boating "improvements" such boat ramps, boat launches, portage trails, or even trails. Because packrafters easily cross land and water boundaries, they present new challenges for river and land managers. Packrafts have been embraced as a useful management tool in some areas and banned outright in other areas. The American Packrafting Association formed in 2012 to organize the packrafting community on issues of access, conservation, education and packrafting safety. APA has been actively reaching out to educate river and land managers and help guide the management of packrafting. Our presentation will introduce the philosophies behind packrafting, and guide the audience on a packrafting trip from start to finish with imagery and video. We will briefly illuminate data about the rapidly growing packrafting industry and demographics. For river managers, we will suggest methods to integrate packrafting into the existing regulatory structure, as well as help them prepare for increased interest with packraft-specific safety guidelines and management strategies. For further information about packrafting, please visit the website of the American Packrafting Association at www.packraft.org.

Education Health & Medicine

PACKRAFTING
AWay to theWilderness
Brad Meiklejohn
President
American PackraftingAssociation

AMERICAN PACKRAFTING
ASSOCIATION
Mission:
We represent the packrafting community to promote conservation, safety, education
and access
Vision:
We help people experience safe, adventurous, and low-impact packrafting trips as a
means to enhance our existence, our freedom and our connection to the natural
world.

WWW.PACKRAFT.ORG
TRIP FORUM, GEAR REVIEWS, NEWS, ACTION ALERTS
SAFETY CODE, MEMBERSHIP
American PackraftingAssociation
3948 Hawthorne Lane
Wilson,Wyoming 83014
info@packraft.org
Facebook.comAmericanPackraftingAssociation
907 -947-6437

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