Dear APA Community,

After four and a half years as Executive Director, I've made the decision to step down at the end of this month.

I found packrafting while looking for guiding jobs in Alaska. A friend told me about "these inflatable boats you can hike into the backcountry with," and I was hooked on the idea before I'd even tried one. When I moved to Montana the following year, I couldn't find another packrafter within a hundred miles, so I turned to APA to build that community: first as a volunteer, then on the board, and by the spring of 2022, as the first-ever Executive Director. I never planned on packrafting becoming my career, but it has been for the better part of the last half-decade, and it's given me some great accomplishments and an ever-growing community of packrafters.

Together, we built a lot in that time. What started as an all-volunteer effort running on a $20,000 annual budget and a long list of ambitious goals grew into an organization with paid staff and year-round programming. We hosted several RoundUps, gatherings that have grown from a small meetup into an inspiration for several packrafting events across the globe each year. This year, we added a second APA RoundUp to the calendar, held in Maine. We launched an Ambassador program to bring more events to more packrafting communities across the country, with Ambassadors in Utah, Washington, Montana, and California.

Our Education and Safety Committee launched Be WaterWise, our free safety education series, which has now been watched over 250,000 times across two series. We've hosted three annual packrafting outings with Here Montana (an organization that increases outdoor access in rural Montana for diverse participants), sent the founder of Páah Áama Paddle Club (a culturally based paddlesport program for Karuk Native youth) to ACA instructor training, secured donated packrafts for both Here Montana and Páah Áama, supported ACA trainings for Mexico's growing packraft community, and joined NOLS in supporting the Packrafting Scholarship for the past two years to make backcountry packrafting more accessible to underserved communities.

We showed up for the rivers themselves too, building relationships with partners at the Wild and Scenic Rivers Coalition, American Rivers, and American Whitewater. We've added packrafter voices to Comprehensive River Management Plans for Canyonlands, the Flathead River, and the Buffalo River, and spoken out against countless attacks on public lands over the past two years. (You can speak up for the Roadless Rule by October 6 to help protect roadless areas here.) These attacks feel relentless these days, but all I can say is keep using your voice and calling your representatives and senators. The pressure works, even when it's hard to recognize in the moment. 

None of this work happens without you. Our members, donors, volunteers, and sponsors showed up for APA again and again, and I'm grateful for every bit of it.

I'm thrilled to tell you that Garrett Stimax will be stepping in as Interim Executive Director starting October 1. Garrett joined our board this spring after years in the packraft industry at Alpacka, and he's spent the last several months immersed in our work, helping run APA's first RoundUp in Maine. He knows this community well and cares deeply about it, and I'm confident APA is in good hands with him at the helm.

Thank you for trusting me with this role, and for building something worth being part of. I'll still be out there packrafting, and I hope to see you along the way, whether at a future RoundUp or randomly on a river. You can find me on RallyCrew, where I'd love to connect.

Happy packrafting,