I wanted to find somewhere to just go packrafting after moving to St. Louis a year ago, and I stumbled across the Current River Challenge site on NPS website, and one more Google search led me here, realizing I had a chance to go claim an FKT.
I went unsupported, in that I went solo and carried everything start to finish.
I parked in the public lot on the other side of MO-19, loaded up my pack, and walked over to the trailhead. I carried my raft, paddle, lifejacket, patch kit, some gels, one bottle, and then I had a hand bottle. All in all, it was pretty light, but it made me question what else I bring with me packrafting when I am hiking rather than running. I loaded up the course map into my watch and hit start right as I hit the trailhead from the road, from where the one photo is taken of the sign.
I've never run in a heavy pack before, so that was awkward starting up the climb almost immediately. I found there was a little bit of a governor on how fast I could run without it being incredibly awkward, but I kept on rolling and the miles clicked away. The legs took a beating in the first few miles from the extra weight, but the reduced aerobic intensity compared to a normal hard effort trail run seemed to even things out. Somewhere relatively early, I took a nasty spill that claimed a nice chunk out of my palm that's going to make typing emails at work on Monday be fun.
I made it down to the river in Current River State Park and switched sports on my watch, then scrambled a bit to figure out where I could actually launch, so my "kayak" file on the watch includes all that time. All in all, that took about 10-11 minutes including inflating/rigging my Kokopelli Nirvana and I was off paddling down river. It was....slow. The gauge above Akers was at .94 feet, and I was scraping bottom on flatwater sections in my packraft at times. Thankfully I never had to get out and walk it, as part of my pack-lightening strategy was to just paddle barefoot. The paddle itself wasn't terribly eventful, and I have never figured out how to push the effort while paddling. I hit the ramp at Round Spring after 2:30:25 after starting, when then it got to be time to dry off and go get some food!
I'd like to try and come back either with better river conditions and/or give a self-supported option a shot, stashing a hard-sided craft in the woods just to see how quicklyit could be done.