Packrafting into the Unknown in Alaska

In 2020 we researched a local Alaska creek, Ptarmigan Creek, which appeared to have enough water to packraft and found a black spot on Google Earth. What was in there? Would there be easy intermediate class III rapids or a raging class V torrent? We had no idea, so we decided to drop in and find out.
Packrafting Ptarmigan Creek on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula near Seward, Alaska turned out to be a manageable class III adventure, but when we first explored it and took our Alpacka Packrafts into the gorge, we had no idea. We found mostly class II rapids with two or three intermediate class drops. There were some wood strainers and an unrunnable class V gorge, but navigating around those proved to be relatively easy. This intermediate packraft float in the Alaska backcountry is well worth the effort and this video tells our story of our first time down.
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Chapters
00:00 - Intro
01:41 - Background
02:55 - The Approach
04:20- Dropping In
07:33 - The Lower Gorge
12:54- Epilogue
14:04 - Outro
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[@wendingourway]

I'm just happy to be the one that is watching!! lol Not something that I would even attempt...not even if I was way younger! Quite the incredible experience though!

[@AlaskaBrian]

Thank you! It ended up being fairly mellow but it easily could have gone a different way. Thanks for watching and for your comment

[@stigfloberghagenphotography]

Thats looks great.👍🙂 Never tried it myself

[@AlaskaBrian]

Thanks! Packrafting is a fun sport that makes sense in place like Alaska where there are not many roads

[@brianbeattyphotography]

looks like a fun outing! can't say that I'd venture into unknown territory though ha

[@AlaskaBrian]

Thanks! It was a great time. My tolerance for risk has dropped since having my daughter, but I really used to enjoy things like this where we ventured out having to rely only on our skill and ability to adapt to unexpected situations. Luckily, this one proved to be fairly mild. Thanks for watching and for the comment!

[@MichaelFreeman-gv8yq]

I think that a guy named Brian Teale was working on this back in the day. He was out of Valdez. Good to see that you are getting after it!

[@AlaskaBrian]

That's good to know! We'd heard rumors people had paddled it before and assumed it had since it is relatively accessible. But for us, since we could find no beta, it had that "first descent" feel, which is super fun. Thanks for watching and for the comment!