Below you’ll find the gear list. There are some important missing items.

“Essential” Items not carried

Sleeping bag and pad. We slept just 2.5 hours over 3.75 days, and most of our sleeping happened as cat naps between 5-15 minutes long. There was plenty of soft ground to lay down on, and given how tired we were it was not difficult to fall asleep.

Shelter. We never really slept, so we didn’t need a shelter. If it was raining when we wanted to sleep, we would have either (1) ignored that desire to sleep or (2) constructed a shelter with other things we were carrying (e.g. our packrafts and emergency blankets) and natural objects around us (e.g. trees and brush).

Personal Floatation Device (PFD). I was very comfortable on the Class I and II rivers we paddled and ferried across. The risk of flipping was acceptably low, i.e. it’s just very unlikely that I’m going to fall out of my boat in that type of current. That said, I recommend wearing a PFD whenever you’re on the water.

SPOT Satellite Messenger. The AMWC has mandatory pieces of gear — a packraft and a satellite phone, the latter of which makes the SPOT redundant in the event of an emergency.

Water purification. I knew I would not stop to purify any water on the course so I left the Aqua Mira behind. There was some swampy water in the first 40 miles that I wish I could have purified, but besides that the water was excellent (albeit often gritty with glacial silt).

Gear List

Download the gear list (right click and “Save As”)

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