Packing for a single afternoon on the river is easy. Packing for several days, with everything you need riding in a boat that can flip, is a different craft entirely. Get it right and a multi-day trip feels effortless — warm nights, dry gear, food that lifts your spirits. Get it wrong and you'll spend three days cold, damp and rationing the one thing you forgot.
The art of it is balance. You want to carry enough to be comfortable and safe, but not so much that your boat sits low and sluggish in the water. After many trips down rivers like the Clinch, a few principles have earned their place every single time.
Keep It Dry, Keep It Sorted
On the water, dry bags are your best friends. Don't trust a single big one — if it fails, you lose everything. Instead, split your kit across several smaller bags and colour-code them: one for sleep gear, one for clothing, one for the kitchen, one for the things you want to reach during the day. Your sleeping bag and a complete change of warm clothes go in the most waterproof bag you own, double-sealed. Those two items are what keep a bad day from becoming a dangerous one.
Pack the heavy bags low and toward the centre of the boat to keep it stable, and lash everything in. A loose bag becomes a lost bag the moment you tip.
Dress in Layers, Plan for Wet
Rivers create their own weather, and valleys can swing from hot afternoons to cold, damp nights within hours. The answer is layering: a quick-dry base, an insulating mid-layer, and a waterproof shell that doubles as wind protection. Leave the cotton at home — once it's wet it stays wet and pulls heat from your body. Synthetics and wool dry fast and keep working even when damp.
Always pack one set of "camp clothes" that never touches the water. Slipping into something warm and dry at the end of a paddling day is a small luxury that does wonders for morale, and it's a genuine safety margin if you take an unexpected swim.
The Things People Always Forget
Some items get left behind so often they're worth a special mention. A proper first-aid kit, sized for the length of your trip and the distance from help. A reliable water filter or purification tablets, because you can't carry several days of drinking water. A headlamp with spare batteries — fumbling around camp in the dark gets old fast. Sun protection, even on cloudy days, since water reflects light straight back up at you.
And one more: a small repair kit with duct tape, cord and a multi-tool. On a multi-day trip something always needs fixing, and the difference between a minor annoyance and a trip-ending problem is often a strip of tape and a bit of ingenuity. Pack thoughtfully, test your system on a short overnight first, and the river will feel less like a logistics exercise and more like the escape it's meant to be.
