Bikerafting Courses

Bikerafting is a human-powered, multi-sport adventure activity whereby you use bikes and packrafts. You carry one on the other depending on the terrain you’re crossing. Regardless of the length of a trip—single-day explorations of your urban backyard or multi-day trips into the backcountry—if you ride a bicycle and then paddle a packraft across a waterway, while carrying that bike, you are bikerafting.

Over the past three decades, people have called this weird activity all kinds of things: nature biking, raft-packing, raft-bikepacking, pack-bike-packers, bike-packrafting, and, according to the father of Bikerafting, Roman Dial, “Hellbiking.” In recent years, consensus appears to have settled on the term “bikerafting.”

So people do carry motorcycles on packrafts and trail kayaks and other lightweight boats behind their bicycles these days. But most bikerafters don’t consider these bikerafting adventures. While their trips are badass, motorcycles are motorized machines. As well, kayaks and canoes, no matter how lightweight, at this time don’t compare to a five- to eight-pound packraft. Plus, they’re not rafts. People who bikeraft with road bikes and packrafts are bikerafters. They are, after all, embarking on a human-powered mode of transportation. Bikerafting does not only refer to backcountry travel.

For more information, check out our resources page or listen to our new podcast! And if you want to learn to bikeraft, you’ve come to the right place!