Gear Review: PakCanoe 170 from Mountain Life Magazine on Vimeo.
by Ned Morgan
When I first read about foldable PakBoats, I imagined something that would unfold like a pop-up book – ie, easily. The first time assembling my PakCanoe 170 took a little more sweat. Feeding the aluminum rods through the gunwale channels and aligning them with the gunwale terminators, arcing more rods along the bottom of the canoe just so, and installing the cross ribs took the better part of two hours of a sticky July afternoon. Without doubt, assembly will become easier with practice, and disassembly is a cinch.
You won’t want to assemble it every time you paddle – chances are it will end up on a roof rack just like a hardshell canoe. The advantage of a folding boat is still a big one if you’re doing fly-in paddling or train drops, or are generally space-challenged. The verdict after testing is that a folding canoe does not mean a diminution in performance. This lightweight 17-footer is meant for whitewater river expeditions, as its flexible hull (PVC skin and foam on aluminum frame) and inflatable side-tubes mean exceptional handling and buoyancy. We noticed a slight velocity loss during lake paddling in chop, as the hull absorbs impacts and shifts slightly, but the boat is stable in big water. By and large, you’ll forget you’re in a folding canoe until it comes time to fold it up. The PakCanoe is an intelligently designed boat that will fill the growing niche for far-flung adventure paddling.
