Packrafting through Scotland – the beginning

For a couple of years now I’ve been reading about packrafting and thinking of how to get into it, my friend Rob (who came on the January microadventure) has been banging on about it for ages. We made it up to Aviemore in November one year (2012?) hoping to do a packrafting course with backcountrybiking.co.uk but their insurance wouldn’t cover us at that time of year and we ended up going kayaking instead. We’re all getting older with other commitments intruding into our lives and maybe this spurred Rob around New Year to send an email declaring 2015 as the year of the packraft:

Lads – I think 2015 is going to be the year of the packraft.
What would be your appetite to try a week in Scotland in late April / early May? Starting in the West, making our way East….I’m open to doing either packrafting (walking and rafting) or even bike packing (cycling and rafting).
Nothing set in stone yet, just wondered whether this is something anyone would want to have a crack at.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5LuvLA4W08 – Packrafts in action, although I don’t plan on running any real hardcore whitewater

I answered the rallying call along with another friend of ours from uni, Quiller and we started to put together a plan. After a couple of afternoons looking through lots of maps, plotting bothy locations on Google Maps and Bing Maps and reading river guides we had a potential route. In hindsight this route was incredibly ambitious, it’s very easy to say we might as well knock off some Munros while we’re there, but these sorts of thoughts disappeared pretty much as soon as we tried on our fully loaded packs. We also massively underestimated just how severe the weather could get in the Highlands in April and we did not even attempt to get over the top of any Munros.

Rob got in touch with David Hine to ask for his view on our plans. David has some incredible trip reports on his blog and was a big inspiration in us actually getting this trip organised. He was very helpful and wrote Rob a long reply, which was generally supportive although sounded some sensible notes of caution:

Snow and ice in general can still be extensive during April in the Cairngorms…not that that’s a reason to change your plans, just be prepared for it,…that can also make some parts of the rivers more threatening….

So the plan was to leave work on Friday and get the overnight sleeper train to Corrour, walking from there to Ben Alder Bothy on the Saturday. Sunday we would head up towards Culra Bothy (annoyingly closed due to asbestos) and wild camp. Monday would take us to Dalwhinnie before on Tuesday getting a taxi / bus / train towards Loch Insh and then rafting into Aviemore. Wednesday we head south towards Braemar, getting there on Friday. Saturday we would meet up with my wife and her sister and raft along the Dee towards Balmoral before heading over to my parents at Aviemore. That was the plan, what we did deviated from that slightly, route map here.

The trip was fantastic. I will explain in later posts what made it fantastic and also what I would do in the future to make similar trips even more fantastic.

Taking a break after our first packrafting session