We’ve been huge fans of Deane Parkers film work since his first bike rafting adventure The Waiau Toa Odyssey back in 2017. Story telling plays such a huge role in the low term growth and health of our sport, inspiring people to get involved and firing up the imagination of what might be possible with packrafts.
When the owner of Packrafting Queenstown was the president of the Packrafting Association of New Zealand (PRANZ), he pushed hard to support Deane’s work to help spread these stories and create learning resources for our community. Sadly these efforts were shot down at the time…. but fast forward a few years Deane is now heavily involved in PRANZ and Packrafting Queenstown has taken to supporting Deane’s work independently.
We’ve helped train some of the collaborators and film makers who work with Deane, we’ve collaborated in workshops, promoted Packrafting at screenings of his films, worked on instructional content and tried to share Deane’s work at every opportunity.
Deane’s latest project, Following the Footsteps of River Runners, feels strangely apt for us to be stepping up as sponsors. We’ve been following Deane’s footsteps for years and listen to his sage advice as a veteran commercial rafting operator. Deane’s introduced thousands of people to the river and in this latest film, he follows the footsteps of those who’s inspired him… perhaps unaware of how inspiring Deane has been to the latest generation of packrafters.
We also have course graduates on this trip with him so plenty of skin in the game!
Anyways, sit back and enjoy this little taster of what looks to be an incredible offering from Deane Parker, again!
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