4-Day Intermediate Bikeraft Course

Intermediate Bikerafting: A Course for Experienced Boaters & Cyclists

Course

Spend Day 1 of this course honing your bike-to-boat and boat-to-bike transitions on an Animas River micro-adventure. Then spend three burly days on the San Miguel and Dolores rivers and the Rim Rocker Trail. Expect big days, to carry a lot of water and to explore some remote canyon country.

What’s Included?

Includes open Alpacka Classics, PFD, helmet and paddle, all permits, camping, sanitation in the backcountry, two nights stay at Scullbinder Ranch and food (snacks, dehydrated breakfasts and dinners, lunches, coffee/tea, plus home-cooked dinner and breakfast during your stay at the Ranch).

Not Included

Adult beverages, drysuit. You must have a drysuit for this course, as the water is snow melt and quite cold. And you’ll be practicing self-rescue (aka wet re-entry skills) on day 1. You can rent one locally at 4CornersRiversports.com or with a 15% discount through BackcountryPackrafts.com (you’ll get the discount code once you pay your deposit).

Difficulty & Prerequisites

You must have previous packrafting experience or experience in a single-person watercraft. As well, you must have bikepacking experience in addition to backcountry camping and navigation skills to do this course. This is not a beginner course. You’ll be riding big miles and paddling hard for the full four days.

Price: $1695

Instructor: Steve Fassbinder is one of the country’s first Level 3 American Canoe Association Packraft Instructors, as well as a Level 3 Kayak Instructor. He is also certified in Advanced Swiftwater Safety and Wilderness First Responder. An early adopter of packrafting, he has guided for three years and done remote packrafting expeditions around the world for over a dozen years.

Full 2023 Bikerafting Course Schedule:

✓April 5-9—5-Day Become an Intermediate Bikerafter (Utah)
✓April 26-30—5-Day Learn River Bikerafting Skills
✓May 6-7—2-Day Learn Basic Bikerafting Skills – No Frills
✓May 11-14—4-Day Intermediate Bikeraft Course
✓June 1-4—4-Day Intermediate Bikeraft Course
✓June 21-25—5-Day River Bikerafting
✓July 1-2—2-Day Learn Basic River Bikerafting Skills – No Frills
✓July 7-9—3-Day Learn to Bikeraft on McPhee Reservoir
✓July 14-16—3-Day Learn to Bikeraft on McPhee Reservoir

Email us to sign up today, or visit our Calendar of Scheduled courses for more information.

Bikerafting 101: A Micro Adventure on the Animas River with Doom & Chris Burkard

Excerpt: Four Days of Rad

Read the full blog post here!

We started our 2022 busy season with a four-day bikerafting 101 course with some heavy hitter cyclists/adventurers in April.

These guys hit it hard out of the gate and did a four-day trip in what we normally do in five days. They spent their first full day honing basic packrafting skills on the Animas River, paddling a good amount of time in the City of Durango’s kayak play park. They learned to surf, catch eddies and read the river, and they practicing paddling skills, among other things…

Sweet Reels & Posts by the Crew

- ✓Chas (aka @notchas… “He could do standup,” says Patrick
- ✓Chris Burkard (aka @chrisburkard… thanks for making it happen!)
- ✓Thrainn (aka @thrainnko… Howdy partner. Welcome to the Wild West!)
- ✓Patrick Hendry (aka @worldsbetweenlines… the best Instagram handle ever)