Awesome!

Haha, looking back on this video it's pretty clear why it got me. I think I'd be quite a bit more dialed there now. Fun to see progression.

1400, I usually put it in the description

@@landonsawaya yeah my bad, guess I missed that

53

@@landonsawaya Whoa!! That is a dang effort man, well done!

Footbridges 👍 but thanks!

I really don't think the top of my stern could've touched any stick, but I definitely considered it

It is not common. It is probably caused by some tiny obstruction in the zipper chain compromising it's integrity, although mine definitely wasn't leaking air prior to this

It's totally fine, I unzipped and rezipped it a few times and paddled 10 more miles

It happened very unexpectedly, there were no symptoms like leaking which might indicate an imperfection in the linkage of the chain. I assume it's because I had the boat at very high pressure and the pressure increased further upon collision with the log

Sounds gnarly! The water is dropping fast

@@landonsawaya That's Arizona way...

It sure is! Feels like a luxury around here...

Good fun. I'm finally certain that the class III ledge rapid is more difficult and consequential than that gnarly looking IV after it

Thanks, yeah we thought about Saturday, flow was better but weather seemed a little iffy. Do you mean the Sycamore Canyon Wilderness? I've definitely thought about it, seems really cool. I don't think hwy89 crosses it though?

That's right. We were prepared for them thanks to your video but it was clean

@@landonsawaya righteous! I did a quick lap yesterday (off the water about 11:30), and my bud and I wanted to see if we could find the old channel. We found it and were able to sneak through a fence of trees. The new channel on the right that y'all ran is much better.

Yeah. Is your point that swimming is more likely because rolling is unreliable at best? Or because many packrafters lack the skills to safely navigate? I've occasionally thought that they do have advantages on shallow rivers because 1. being fully committed to rolling [a kayak] can result in injury and 2. packraft swims are often less of a catastrophic yard sale than kayak swims. But I don't have kayak experience to back that up

@@landonsawaya Pinning a packraft is the safety issue. I think a creek boat would’ve bounced over that rock that got you. There’s no doubt that self rescue is easier and probably safer in a packraft, but not pinning. Swimming is always risky & to be avoided no matter the boat especially during flooding events like boatable flows on Oak Creek. Temporarily getting pinned does sometimes happen when creeking vs river running and I think on manky creek runs packrafts can get folks in trouble because they seem to lower the bar for skills needed to try whitewater paddling. As a kayaker & packrafter I’ve seen a big uptick in people stepping up to more consequential runs in packrafts lately. AZ has a lot of whitewater albeit briefly, and most of it has countless pin hazards. Would hate to see anyone get folded, that’s all.🙏🏼

I have relatively little of everything in the video to make it a watchable length, but I feel like I captured that first section well enough. We camped at Crazy Jug on night 1 and made it to Tapeats the next day, doing a side hike up towards the spring. The Saddle Canyon descent was easy enough with Grand Canyoneering beta. We found all of the drops to be downclimbable although some used a handline. Except for the final huge one that has an obvious and cool bypass. Only wading was mandatory no swimming. It is a long car shuttle and doesn't make since at all given that one could just do a closed loop from Indian Hollow and hit all the highlights besides Saddle. But it was worth it to us since we wanted to connect the line

I haven't, but it's on the top of my list for 2024. I've looked at some hiking options and I'm definitely interested, but I'm pretty invested in seeing the whole length of the river corridor as well so I'll probably do it first as a shuttled river trip Beasley-Horseshoe. Fwiw, I'd advise going earlier than that. Even last year with the best snowpack ever, runoff was completely over before May. In 2022 "Good" flows (>200) were more isolated and ended on the third day of April

@@landonsawayagood info on water levels, thanks. I was wondering if that might be too late. I’m all for extreme low flow…within reason. I’ve run some epically low whitewater this year here in the southeast, no punctures so far 😄. I’ll be in the NM/AZ area then with packraft in tow, fingers crossed. Hoping the wilderness section of the Gila has enough lube in April as well.

Yep! We did the first night on the San Fran. Launched at like 4pm haha. It sure is amazing there! Lots of birds! Hoping to go back and run the San Fran above Clifton

@@landonsawaya Agreed, I'd also like to check out the Blue River but access seems daunting that time of year.