Klunk ‘n’ Float 2024: The Power of Tradition

It’s difficult for me not to think about traditions during the holidays. There are a few rituals that my brothers and I would likely all agree have become somewhat of a Christmas habit, such as baking strata sandwiches in the oven on Christmas morning, feasting on my mom’s cinnamon buns, or getting outside for a lazy New Year snowshoe or cross-country ski.

With the holidays behind me, I turned to consider other traditions that have become important to me. I believe experiences that become traditions, repeated throughout our lives, are some of the most memorable moments. There’s something about an ongoing string of activities that leaves a lasting impression and warm fuzzy feeling that a one-off experience doesn’t provide.

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It’s the last-minute overnighters with Emily to Texada Island, Sarah Point, and annual trips somewhere warm, usually Arizona, to escape another dreary winter in the Pacific Northwest. It’s eating a sweet treat on my birthday, riding bikes to my favorite swimming spot, or boarding a ferry and leaving town.

As we get older, adding new traditions into our lives gets harder. I think of the example of how when we’re kids, everything is new, and time moves slowly. As we get older, we experience less of what is new. Our environment changes less, we tend to learn fewer new skills, and most people don’t take on new hobbies. It’s no surprise that adding a new tradition to our calendar of birthdays, weddings, work deadlines, and fleeting vacations becomes that much more difficult.

Although I didn’t know it then, our inaugural Klunk ‘n’ Float trip has become a tradition. What started as a last-ditch, late-summer effort to connect inaccessible landmarks with vintage mountain bikes and packrafts has evolved into an annual escape from the mundane. Our route has changed each year, but we’ve created several unspoken rules to abide by: we must ride a vintage mountain bike, klunker, or something of the sort, our route has to include some unknown, and we must break out the packrafts. While not a rule per se, Justin, Nathan, and I have also made it a tradition to plan everything last minute.

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A Klunk Down Memory Lane

Our first Klunk ‘n’ Float was born from big dreams and bad ideas. The idea was to link sections of lake paddling with remote logging roads and one seemingly invisible trail. At some point in the planning process, we decided we’d ride vintage mountain bikes, forming the backbone of what Klunk’ n’ Float is all about. I wrote about our experience in the ninth issue of The Bikepacking Journal. To summarize, it was our attempt to hold onto our youthful selves while managing busy lives and schedules. I’m not sure whether that goal was accomplished.

The following summer, we were dead-set on planning something easier, as the previous trip kicked our asses in more ways than one. Unfortunately, our route was riddled with even more unknowns, as we failed to connect the blank space between two remote sub-alpine lakes in the qathet Regional District backcountry. We dragged ourselves and our 60-pound bikes up waterfalls and boulder fields, all for just a brief moment of relief before making the hard decision to turn around. If you’ve ever wondered what an apocalypse-proof bikepacking setup looks like, it probably has some old seven or eight-speed Shimano or Suntour derailleur bolted to it.

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Though we were missing a member from the first trip, several unspoken traditions carried over into the next. Pellet guns were swapped out for slingshots, hike-a-biking downhill for hours became waterfall climbing, and the spirit of a late summer attempt at an unknown route was all the encouragement we needed. Deep down, we all hoped that 2024 would be kinder to us, but in the name of tradition, that wasn’t an option.

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Klunk’ n’ Float Heads West

If there’s one thing we learned from the previous two trips, it’s that our packrafts are painstakingly slow on lakes. The inaugural float had us almost at our breaking point as we inched across the impossibly blustery Powell Lake toward our destination of Goat Island. The following year required less paddling, but aside from the views, it wasn’t necessarily the highlight of the route; scrambling up waterfalls to get there was. This time around, we were unanimous in the decision to find a river to paddle. With limited options in the qathet Regional District, we turned our gaze across the Strait of Georgia to Vancouver Island—specifically, the island’s self-proclaimed mountain bike capital, Cumberland.

Our route would form a loop around Comox Lake, just west of Cumberland. Our unknown was the Cruickshank River, fed by rain and glacial melts further inland, feeding into the lake. We found promising birdseye photos of the river online, with nothing more than small riffles in the water for rapids, but it was a river nonetheless. We decided to ride the gravel road around the backside of the lake to the mouth of the river, follow the river until we found a suitable put-in spot, and paddle back down to the lake to set up camp for the night.

Smaller traditions are often realized with enough repetition. As we rolled along Cruickshank Road, the river rolling calmly to our right, we pulled up near a small bridge with a rocky beach sandwiched between it and the water. With daylight already running low, we quickly decided this would be a suitable put-in spot for the rafts. We instinctively spread out on the beach, selecting spots close to the river but not close enough to get our feet wet prematurely. With most of my gear stuffed inside the raft’s inflated air chambers, I removed the front wheel of my bike and lashed the awkward package onto the bow. While we’re no experts, we’ve gone through this process enough times together to have developed a method that works. For our group, loading the rafts marks the beginning of a slow, demoralizing paddle on a windy lake, but this year, it meant a lovely float down the Cruickshank. Some traditions change.

Old Habits Die Hard

After pulling our boats up on the north side of the Cruickshank, deflating them, and then realizing the better camp spot was across the mouth of the river, we decided to ford across to greener pastures. If there’s a tradition all bikepackers can relate to, it’s the simple act of setting up camp after a long day of riding. We pitched our tents on a small point overlooking the beach and the north end of the lake. As with previous Klunk’ n’ Floats, we brought a few toys along, including Justin’s fishing rod and a trusty slingshot. We filled a lazy evening at camp with target practice, and we were all amazed when Justin managed to catch several small rainbow trout.

We each have our method of rolling our soggy packrafts up in the morning. Despite plenty of practice, the rafts always seem to roll up bigger the following day. We do our best to fasten them to creaky rear racks that somehow remain affixed to our bike’s braze-ons. There’s about a 50/50 chance that our racks, rafts, and panniers will stay put. It’s almost as if they want nothing to do with our trip, and I don’t blame them.

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The next unknown was a seldom-used connection between the logging road behind Comox Lake and the logging road at the top of Cumberland’s mountain bike trail system. The climb was only about six kilometers, but it shot up out of the lake over 800 meters. It turns out it was more of a rough ATV track than a trail or road, covered with loose, fist-sized rocks, which made the push up surprisingly slow and antagonizing. I’ve heard from multiple cyclists that people will sometimes ride down that connection, but deciding to hike-a-bike up the backside was a silly idea. I agree. Near the top, the mist engulfed any chance of a view, nudging us to keep moving.

Our previous trips have had lackluster finishes compared to the entire weekend. In a refreshing change of pace, this year’s route ended with a white-knuckle descent on some of Cumberland’s most popular singletrack. As we rolled up to one of the main staging areas at the top of the “Sobo no Michi” climb trail, a group of friends stared confusingly at our bikes. One of them asked, “Are you guys bikepacking?” Next, a girl asked, “How do I become friends with you guys?” We all laughed, turned our attention to the blue flow trail that would lead us toward town, and dropped in.

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As you’d expect, we received a hilarious range of reactions from other mountain bikers as we made our way through the maze of singletrack. There were many smiles and laughs and a few mountain bikers who were simply too cool to acknowledge what was happening. We don’t strap packrafts to our bikes for the attention it brings—there are far easier ways to do that—but it’s pretty hard to miss three loaded, rigid bikes making their way down singletrack that folks usually ride on $5,000+ carbon full-suspension mountain bikes. Aside from a flat that Justin quickly fixed on the trail, we returned to our vehicles relatively unscathed.

A Tradition is Born

I’m fortunate enough to tackle a dozen bikepacking trips every year. Most of these rides are in new places, pedaling new-to-me terrain and routes, and make for some of the most memorable moments. Planning and scouting new routes is one of my favorite parts about working at BIKEPACKING.com, but there’s still something about an annual, repeated ride that tickles me differently. Having something familiar to look forward to brings more comfort than the excitement of the complete unknown.

The Klunk’ n’ Float series has become a big part of our friendship. The trips themselves are short, often fleeting moments at the end of a long summer, but we constantly bring up past trips and scheming ideas for the next one. When talking to friends around town, our routes manage to find their way into the conversation with comments like: “You guys have been there, right?” or “Didn’t you drag bikes up there?” As strange as it sounds, it’s a part of my identity now, and I always look forward to the next one.

Klunk ‘n’ Float 2024 Video

I put my video editing skills to the test and put together a short edit from the trip. The video premiered at our local outdoor adventure film night, QRD Rad Reels, and it was by far the most abrasive edit. For those wondering, the song is “Concubine” by the band Converge.

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