So D’s bud Mike gets him into hammock camping several years before we hit the road. The reports were that hammock camping was comfortable, with the following caveat…you have to fiddle, adjust, level, refiddle, readjust, relevel, over and over! Then if everything came together, it was super!
This week, we camped at a major launch point for raft trips on the Rogue River. Coming from a canoe camping background our first thought was how much crap they were piling onto each raft. The 40 mile trip, for a single rafter, from what we observed, may require: (2) 5 gallon jerry cans of water, instead of a simple water filter, a 4 inch thick waterproof mattress, cot, tent, chair, bbq, a couple of coolers, and several bins of food and gear…well you get the idea (aka ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ as one rafter told us laughing)!
All of this is piled on the beach, then the real fun starts. It seems, from our observations, that everything from the pile, must, go into, and out of the raft at least 3 times before the raft is ready to launch! In, out, lashed down, unlashed, removed, replaced, lashed down.
The people who we spoke with who were “really, into rafting” would start the process the night before. They would get the raft all set up as noted above, then repeat it all over again in the morning. The key take away was, on a raft that could carry 4 to 6 people, a single person can bring as much as they could pile on. On a river without any portages, that may not be too bad…no weeks of canoeing on pb&j for this crowd! Perhaps they have the right idea!
