Lakes

The Chinook is an ideal packraft for lake paddling. Its significantly faster than traditional packraft designs and offers outstanding tracking and wind performance, allowing to reach your destination more quickly and safely. The Cargo Fly internal storage allows you to keep your gear dry and center of gravity low for longer trips. Its perfect for trips where you are linking up multiple lakes via portages, especially longer portages and exploratory adventures that don't have well maintained canoe portage routes.

Rivers

The Chinook is the perfect expedition level flatwater river boat. The extra speed over traditional packrafts makes it easier to chew up miles and even keep up with hardshell kayaks and canoes. Yet, its still maneuverable enough to handle light whitewater sections. We recommend it for big Alaskan rivers like the Noatak, the Canadian backcountry, the Midwest and Northeast, and Scandanavia.

Protected Coastal Areas

The Chinook is a great boat for exploratory adventures in protected coastal areas. While not as fast or capable in open water as the Aleutian, its a better crossover boat if you want one boat to handle a river trip, a multi-lake adventure, and adventuring around in Glacier Bay. Its also the preferred choice for mixed terrain coastal trips combining distance paddling with hiking and portaging sections.

Chinook vs. Aleutian

The Chinook is lighter, more compact, and more packable than the Aleutian, making it our top recommendation for flatwater expedition-style river trips or lake adventures—think Lake Powell or the Canadian Shield—where weight truly matters and frequent portages are part of the journey.

The Aleutian is more of a travel sea kayak, built for open water, coastal exploration and paddlers who want to maximize speed on long rivers. Its tradeoff is that it’s longer and a few pounds heavier than the Chinook, which can be a deal breaker on self-supported routes with lots of carries and smaller rivers requiring more maneuverability.

Choose the Chinook for multi-day lightweight flatwater expeditions, or the Aleutian when you want sea-kayak performance with the packability of an inflatable.

Chinook vs. Zephyr

The Chinook and Zephyr share the same hull, so they offer similar tracking and speed on the water. The Chinook is expedition ready with a spray deck, Cargo Fly internal gear storage, and 3-point thigh straps, which makes it the preferred choice for any cold water or multi-day trip.

The Zephyr more of a day trip recreational kayak, making it ideal for warm water trips with the local paddling club, throwing it the car for a road trip, and bringing it along on your next tropical beach vacation. It’s perfect for paddlers who want to get out regularly or travel with a kayak—without dealing with roof racks or the bulk of a traditional boat.

Whitewater Deck

The Chinook comes standard with a Flatwater Spray Deck, which keeps the boat dry from rain, spray, and paddle drips. The Spray Deck features a large kayak style cockpit and includes a one-piece PEX skirt rim. Spray skirts sold separately.

Cargo Fly

A standard option on the Chinook, the Cargo Fly is the ultimate packraft gear storage solution. It features an airtight zipper installed in the stern of the boat to allow you to load your gear inside the tubes. The system provides drier and more secure gear storage and improved paddling performance due to a lower center of gravity. The Cargo Fly is perfect for expeditions, performance, and keeping your gear dry in any conditions.

Standard Internal Dry Bags may be purchased separately and are designed to work with the Cargo Fly system. The bags clip in place along each side of the tubes with a side release buckle and allow for better organization and weight balance than placing the contents of your pack loose inside the Cargo Fly. They also act as additional balanced air chambers to make it easier to get to shore in the event of a puncture.