Sewing a Bridge to a New World

When Roman Dial, a notoriously creative adventurer, first saw a packraft in the 1980s, packrafting as it’s known today didn’t exist. Dial was competing in the one-hundred-fifty-mile Wilderness Classic adventure race across remote Alaska, and the twenty-two year old had to swim the glacial rivers that fractured the landscape. He and fellow racers made it, but barely. One of the other contenders nearly drowned. The rivers were treacherous—wide and cold barriers that bisected the spaces they longed to traverse. But of the ten people in the race, one guy, the “old guy,” had something up his sleeve.

“He pulled a vinyl, inflatable raft off his pack that he’d purchased at Kmart and forded the river,” Dial said. “That changed my whole view of what was possible. You could turn what used to be obstacles into highways.”

That transformation of problems into opportunities is how many modern-day packrafters define the sport. But the evolution from vinyl pool toy to lightweight boat capable