packrafting | The Filson Journal

Desi Sherwood: Off the Grid

Finding your passion can be a lifelong journey for some, but as simple as walking out your front door for others. For guide Desi Sherwood, growing up immersed in the Alaskan wilderness surrounding his home in Girdwood, Alaska (population 3,000), he knew from a young age that his true love was being outdoors.

Filson in the Field: Packrafting the Remote Waters of Alaska

The state of Alaska tends to breed ideas larger than life. There is just something about the sheer amount of untrammeled wilderness there that seems to spark a fire in folks. So, when we decided we wanted to put some of our newest gear to the test, we reached out to some of our favorite guides for outing ideas. Eschewing more traditional adventures, we decided to spend five days exploring the rivers surrounding remote Chelatna lake just outside of Denali national park and preserve. This is the story of that trip.

Exploring Denali: a wild & rugged wilderness

Denali is a land that quite literally ebbs and flows with the seasons. Spring and summer snow melts down from mountains that climb to the roof of the Alaska Range and swell the Toklat, Savage, McKinley, Sanctuary, and other rivers that ripple across Denali. Harry Karstens, who became Denali’s first superintendent in 1921, was one of the early explorers who navigated the basins of frozen rivers and streams while delivering mail to distant roadhouses and checking up on desolate miners’ camps. More than 100 years later, the waterways of this rugged wilderness are now the playground of well-experienced pack rafters, self-reliant thrillseekers who inflate their portable craft to run a river, then pull the plug, pack it away, and hike over a mountain to reach another headwater.