Camp Arcade Beach to the Corruscades: Packrafting the Franklin River, Tasmania

We had an interesting run today, less flat water. There was a bit of scrambling over fun large boulders and the rapids were not too technical. Bruce however, got trapped against a log, a reminder that one cannot be complacent in these waters.
Lachie's boat is just holding up with the repairs to the zipper. It leaks a bit of air - with a pump every 30 minutes we are getting by. He is so much happier back in his vessel than having to paddle the spare non self bailing raft: which had to be bailed out on every rapid traverse.
Portages here meant clambering over huge boulders. I quite enjoyed it, as it kind of brought back to my teen years going up and down canyons in the Blue Mountains. Though at times there were a few issues with that mind battle that seeks safety over bravado on some of the bigger drops.
We had an interesting high portage. We deflated our rafts, chambered on a high trail for about 1/2 hour and then reinflated on the other side for a 500m paddle to camp. Some paddlers had to do it in two trips due to the amount of gear they were carrying.
I was still feeling a bit so-so after last night's headache, though I felt much better paddling in my Sharkskin wet suit rather than the dry suit.  Just before this trip I purchased a one piece Sharkskin suit in preference to my neoprene wet suits as it is thinner and had good thermal properties. For this use case it was a great choice, I also proud that is made in Australia too. The quality and design is impressive. the photo below only shows a snippet of what it looks like - notice how I had to cover up against the sun with a buff, sunglasses and wrap cap (sadly lost at this waterfall after 35 years of use).
Dan had a set of laminate maps from Wilderness Guides of the river for us to look at. It was interesting to check them out at camp. They had a few annotations. It must of been fun to have the first run privilege to name the rapids and features. eg. Debacle Bend, The Crankle, Rafter's Race. Some probably descriptive of tragic or near tragic events. Dan has run the river numerous times both as a commercial rafter and packrafter and didn't need them personally, I am glad he had them for us to look at to get an idea of the upcoming features.
Our camp tonight was rather short on space. Lucky for us there were no commercial groups and only one other pair of packrafters to share it with. We are a real mix of people and are all getting on well with each other. Our occupations spread across software developer, CSIRO researcher, dentist, fly fisher, arborist and others.
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Location: Franklin River Rd, Southwest TAS 7116, Australia

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