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The Unlikely Beginnings of Your Favorite Pack Raft Company

Alpacka Raft’s visionary founder, Sheri Tingey, shares her surprising, inspiring story.

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By Andy Cochrane

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At the age of three, when most kids are just learning how to count, Sheri Tingey started sewing doll clothes. By age 10, she was making most of her own clothing by hand, intent on creating better outfits than what existed at the store. Sewing, and to a larger extent bringing dreams to life, came naturally to her. But what stood out even more was her willingness to challenge the status quo.

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“I’m an entrepreneur by accident,” says Tingey, who’s half-century career as a designer has helped redefine what women are able to do in the outdoor industry. “If I have an interest, I go down the rabbit hole, often skipping meals and not sleeping. I get absorbed by my passions. Over the years a lot of people have doubted me or told me I couldn’t do something, but I just wouldn’t listen.”

Tingey’s journey has been full of challenges and setbacks, including years struggling with a chronic illness, moving into the Alaskan bush and raising a family, all while fighting the uphill battle of gender norms in a predominantly male space. It wasn’t until her mid-50s that she founded Alpacka Raft, now a household name in the whitewater world. This is her story.

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Early Days In Wyoming

In 1967, after graduating from the University of Oregon, Tingey moved from Oregon to Jackson, Wyoming, to be a ski bum. During her first winter, she realized that most ski clothing of the day wasn’t designed for movement, so she started sewing ski kits for herself and close friends. Her brand, Design By Sheri, caught on with word of mouth. Over the next 12 years it grew to seven full-time employees, “who skied all day and worked at night,” says Tingey.

“Over the years a lot of people have doubted me or told me I couldn’t do something, but I just wouldn’t listen.”

“I was lucky that I didn’t make a lot of big mistakes,” she recalls. “I don’t think anything we did was brilliant in the business sense, but it was good design. I loved everything I was doing and the team I was working with, which was all women. That was pretty unique at the time.”

The next summer, on a rafting trip to the Owyhee River in eastern Oregon, she tried kayaking for the first time and fell in love. Soon after she bought her first boat and kayaking became her entire life, exploring rivers around the region. But all of it – her business, passions and home life – came to an immediate halt when she contracted an unknown illness at age 34. Almost overnight, everything was excruciatingly hard.

Fighting Chronic Fatigue

For nearly 20 years, Tingey fought what was later diagnosed as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. “My brain didn’t want to give up, but my body wasn’t strong enough to keep going,” says Tingey. “Designing is like painting. It takes a ton of energy and I go 24/7 until there is nothing left. You can’t do that with chronic fatigue. It was the nightmare of my life. And in those days, no one had answers.”

Tingey had to do what felt impossible to her — walk away from skiing, kayaking and designing, to take care of herself. “I had to get healthy before I could do anything again. I spent a lot of time learning to be patient and eventually found a doctor who helped me diagnose what I was going through.” That was the turning point, but it still took years to return to her full self.

Moving To Alaska

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Tingey raised her children in Alaska, after moving there for a fresh start.
Sheri Tingey

Tingey decided she needed a hard restart. “I wanted a blank slate, a place where no one knew me or my background.” So, she packed up her entire life and moved to the Alaskan bush. In a small cabin with no power or running water, she raised her kids, while trying to figure out what was next for her career.

In 1998, Tingey’s son, Thor, won an outdoor grant from his alma mater, Colorado College. Along with three friends, he planned a 600-mile traverse of the Brooks range using cheap inflatable boats. “Every night in camp they spent an average of an hour and half repairing the boats,” says Tingey, “but there weren’t any other options at the time, so they just made it work.”

Two years later, before a second expedition to the Brooks Range, Thor asked his mom to make him a better boat. “It was almost as if the universe gave me a second chance,” remembers Tingey. Using shower curtains and duct tape — the most waterproof materials readily available — she made a packraft which ultimately held up well on his 39-day trip. Dubbed the White Boat, it became the first Alpacka Raft.

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Tingey’s son, Thor, on his initial traverse that helped launch Alpacka Raft. This boat is one of the wholly inadequate boats that helped launch the company and make them want to create better boats.
Alpacka Raft

Designing Early Prototypes

“Sometimes it’s good you don’t know what you don’t know,” says Tingey, who dove into packraft designs without knowing how much she had to learn about materials, production and the industry at large. “At the time there were three inflatable options, Sevylor, Curtis, and Sherpa. They all floated like bathtubs. The floors sunk down and your armpits were on the tubes. That’s when the lightbulb went off.”

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Tingey, busy at work designing and tinkering.
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Tingey saw an opportunity to make a packraft designed specifically for whitewater. It was, she says, a wide open slate, with no other brand in the market. Tingey started designing in the fall of 2000 and had the first samples by April 2001. After a summer testing them on local rivers, Tingey was ready for the first production run by the end of that year.

In early 2002, she launched the Yukon Yak, the first Alpacka boat. A year later the first spray skirt came to market, followed by a new deck. Piece by piece, a fully functional whitewater packraft was coming to life. After dozens of iterations, tweaks and changes, Alpacka launched the Alpackalypse in 2014. Still the brand’s most famous boat, it has stood the test of time as one of the most influential packrafts ever.

Slow, Steady Growth

“At the time, I didn’t have a lot of money and couldn’t afford failure,” says Tingey, describing the peculiar spot she was in, having a novel idea without any capital to scale it. “But, I did have a lot of contacts to call. These friends helped me find the right fabrics and a plastic welding company in Durango, Colorado. That shop made our tubes for a few years as we slowly created a market for packrafts.”

In 2007, Tingey decided they had to bring production in-house. “We needed to improve quality control, to stop riding shotgun. That’s when it became really real.” At the time, Tingey was going through a divorce and decided to make another big life change. “I realized Alaska was too damn expensive, so I found a shop in Mancos, Colorado and just went for it, moved everything in, and started life all over again.”

Using lessons about machinery, operations

and fabrics from her old partners, Tingey rebuilt the factory from scratch. “We took it slow and were lucky to avoid too many growing pains. I knew that we couldn’t handle a big push, so we didn’t advertise much at the start, but the business grew with word of mouth. It was a balance between running the company and getting enough time to design new things.”

Her Second Chance

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Today, Tingey resides in Colorado with her husband, John Baker (left).
james q martin

Today, Sheri Tingey is happy to have found her calling, which she describes as her second chance in life.

“That doesn’t always happen,” she says, full of gratitude. “Life was forgiving for me. It’s the most beautiful thing to have a second chance and honestly, in the base of my soul, I feel like this is what I was always meant to do.”

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