What would it look like if mermaids took up backcountry camping? It would probably look kind of like swimpacking.

Swimpacking is an adventure sport that involves swimming in open water with a drybag that contains everything a backpacker would normally keep in their pack, like food, clothes, shelter and other gear.

Swimpacking trips are usually combined with hiking or biking, and allow participants to travel by land and water to places they couldn’t otherwise access, like old growth forests and other remote wilderness gems.

Ilya Kapralov has been swimpacking in British Columbia since 2018. He’s even helped start a small but growing community of new swim packers, mostly in Vancouver. Ilya’s trips in 2018, 2019 and 2020 with his friend Martin Cermac were all documented by Cermac in a two-part Youtube series called The Swimpacking Diaries. Ilya has swimpacked in lakes, rivers and even coastal waters throughout Vancouver Island and B.C.’s lower mainland. He’s kept company with seals and glided over many blooms of jellyfish.

On episode 26 of Catch Me Outside, Ilya talks about his adventures and the ins and outs of this growing sport.

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