Another new packrafter has arrived in Hokkaido.
Every time someone joins, the same feeling comes back: more people doesn’t just mean a bigger group — it means the field opens up exponentially.
Bikepacking with a packraft. River touring with camping. Add fishing, ridge traverses, headwater approaches, lake crossings across the next valley…
The combinations are endless. The possibilities don’t double — they multiply.
What makes packrafting so compelling isn’t that it’s another way to paddle a boat. It’s that it expands the range of what’s physically possible — where you can go, how you can move, what a journey can look like.
Ride a forest road on a bike, drop into a river. Paddle downstream, shoulder the boat, cross a ridge on foot. Use the current to connect one place to another. Travel where the movement itself becomes the trip.
Having people who share that sensibility — who understand what it means when river and trail and bike all fold into a single line on the map — that’s what raises the resolution of the field for everyone involved.
The Hokkaido Packrafting Study Group is not a guided tour service.
It’s a place to work through things together — from the very first time someone picks up a packraft, to the point where they can go out and navigate a field independently. Asking why, not just how. Trying things, getting things wrong, understanding what happened.
Gear. Rivers. Wind. Route planning. How to think about safety.
All of it, shared and worked through together, gradually expanding each person’s range of independent action.
Start with the people around you. And then, before long, the map of Hokkaido starts to look completely different.
That’s the kind of growth I want to keep nurturing — quietly, steadily, and for the long term.
First step: get the people around you into the packraft world.
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