Flatwater Packraft - Winchester Wasteway

The Wasteway is a slow-moving stream, and we'll take a relaxed pace to enjoy this spectacular and unusual ecosystem and landscape.

If this is your first overnight packraft trip, please ask questions; if enough people have enough questions, we may have an informal, optional pre-trip meeting to go over gear and packing. We'll camp on the desert surface, likely on a sand dune, and it will be useful to have a tarp to put beneath your boat and gear to keep it clean and safe from pointy desert vegetation. An organization system such as Ikea bags will also be helpful to keep your gear consolidated and out of the sand at camp.

The Wasteway is for the most part a well-defined channel, but in a segment near the start it is famously difficult to distinguish the channel from numerous waterways that wander off into wetlands. We'll use Gaia or similar GPS-based navigation aids to make our way through this bit of challenging channel-finding.

Whether to wear a drysuit, wetsuit, or neither may depend on the weather and streamflow and will also depend on personal preference; we'll have that discussion nearer to the trip.

Note that we will exit the river at Road C; downstream of there the stream steepens and narrows, and has a waterfall with a mandatory portage. Our trip upstream of Road C will consist of Class I paddling suitable for the newer packrafter.

Meet at 9AM at the take-out where Road C dead-ends at the Winchester Wasteway. From there we'll consolidate cars and travel to the put-in at Dodson Road. A Discover Pass is required.

For those interested in  arriving Friday night, there is camping at nearby Potholes State Park, and I have in the past camped at the put-in at Dodson Road.