Assembly Instructions

Flying with Folding Boats

Mapping Out Your Next Trip

Packing & Securing Gear in a PakCanoe

Repair & Maintenance of Pakboats

Skin on Frame Boats

Surviving Mosquitoes & Black Flies

Pakboats FoldingCanoes

Mention folding canoes and rapids in the same breath and you're apt to make experienced canoeists shudder. Too bad, because these canoes are quite amazing.

I first saw folding canoes in action in 1992, on the Hood River in Canada's Northwest Territories. The Hood is extremely remote - access is by charter floatplane from Yellowknife, 300 air miles away. The Hood has scores of big rapids, some of which go on for miles. I was portaging my Royalex canoe around a particularly dicey Class III rapid (see the river rating scale on page 69) when I saw three forest green folding canoes head downriver. I just shook my head and said, "No way."

Seconds later, one canoe impaled a rock and began to fold around it. Suddenly, the hull let go and the craft continued on, literally twisting and bouncing off rocks as it snaked from channel to channel. I watched another canoe negotiate a 3-foot ledge, certain it would bite the bullet at the bottom. Wrong. It just bent upward (nearly in half) and climbed out of the wave trough. I don't think my Royalex canoe would have made it.

I put my pack down and watched the show. I was amazed at how capable these craft were in big water.

The crew put in below the rapid and we shared some tea and smiles. They were from Norway and though they had canoed other Arctic rivers, this was their first big trip with folding boats. Our crews continued to play tag downriver for two more days, and I watched them run more rapids we chose to portage around. I told them I would never again thumb my nose at folding canoes.

Pakboats/ScanSport, Inc. is the major (only?) producer of folding canoes in North America. It made the Mad River Escape folding canoes (no longer manufactured) that you may be familiar with. Pakboats range in size from 14 to 17 feet; weights run 38 to 53 pounds. The hulls are formed by a reinforced PVC skin held under tension by an interlocking framework of tubular aluminum. Assembly takes about forty minutes. The seats are adjustable to support sitting or kneeling, and rocker can be tuned to suit different paddling conditions. The disassembled canoe stores in a 35- by 17- by 13-inch bag. Prices are slightly less than what you would pay for a state-of-the-art Kevlar canoe.

Folding canoes set you free to follow your star in a way no hard-shelled canoe can.