I was a river guide at Wildwater Expeditions with Mark for a couple years in the 70's. He was a daily source of our entertainment - sometimes to his disadvantage. We both learned to kayak during those years and made a lot of paddling trips together. In the fall of 1981 Jon Dragan was able to get a Grand Canyon permit and a bunch of the Wildwater guides went out to run the Colorado. Although Mark was in one of the paddle rafts and I kayaked, we camped and shared a tent together. Jon allowed only two large waterproof bags per individual to pack all your stuff in. Mark had this big fluffly sleeping bag that easily filled up one of the bags. I was having touble getting all my stuff into two bags as well, so we snatched another bag between the two of us. We called it the mystery bag (I believe it had the #5 on it as an identifier). Every evening when the boats were unloaded at the camp site for the night, no one would claim bag #5. Then after dark or when no one was looking, Mark or I would sneak it into our tent. 
        I saw Mark in 1987 when my wife and I took a vacation to the NC coast. We sort of lost touch in the 90's and I saw him last in February 2005 when he came back to New River country for Jon Dragan's funeral. I hope I get to see him again. This story is one of my funniest memories of him.

The mornings at Wildwater always started before breakfast. We would have to begin preparing for the daily raft trip by getting the rafts and equipment ready. Rafts that had been used the day before would already be on the water tied up with a bow line. They would also be clipped together at their sterns so that they were more or less a unit of rafts tied up at multiple points to trees along the shore. These rafts would go “soft” from the cooler night time temperatures and have to be “firmed up” using hand pumps. This was usually done by a two man team. One person operated the pump and the other person would place the hose into the valve to inflate the tube. This person also carried a gauge to make sure the raft was inflated to the proper pressure. A Wildwater “New River” raft had nine separate compartments or chambers that had to be inflated. So the person on the pump would be standing on the raft tube so that his weight could bear down with each stroke of the pump handle. This was somewhat of a balancing act since the curvature of the raft tube is round and mushy and the whole raft itself was floating on the water. Once all the compartments had been hardened to 2 psi (1.5 psi for cross tubes) the team would step across to the next raft and usually trade positions and start again. On busy weekend trips when there were a lot of rafts to prepare, this process of pumping up the rafts would sometimes be ending just as the safety orientation for the customers was ending. The trip leader would be introducing the guides as we would be taking care of last minute arrangements in our raft.

            On one particular busy weekend morning Mark and I had just finished pumping up our share of rafts. The river level had risen several feet over night. This left the bow lines with slack in them and gave the flotilla of rafts extra freedom of movement. When standing on the raft it also put your head up in lower hanging tree branches making the balancing act a little more difficult while pumping up the rafts. High water, in many ways, always added a sense of excitement to the day’s river trip. Jon Dragan, one of the owners of the company and trip leader whenever he was on the river, had finished the safety speech and began introducing the guides. Mark, who was running a little late preparing his raft, was stepping from raft to raft to get to the concrete steps up the bank so he could return the pump to the storage building. As he placed one foot onto the next raft, Jon was announcing to the crowd of customers, “… and in the next raft we have Mark “Schroder” Packard …” Mark paused his forward movement long enough to receive the glory of hearing his name. This gave the rafts the second they needed to start their separation. With a foot on each raft, Mark didn’t know which foot to move so he didn’t move either of them. The rafts continued their continental drift with the slackened bow lines offering no opposition and neither of his feet were ready to relinquish their ground (raft) to the other. We all know Mark’s legs aren’t very long so the inevitable was becoming reality. But Mark did not give up. He ditched the pump and gauge he was still holding (splash) and reached overhead to grab a tree branch. As he was thinking – this is going to look stupid, but at least I won’t get wet – the dead branch he latched onto let out a c-r-a-c-k. Mark got his initiation to New River whitewater before he left the Thurmond pool on this day (big splash). All this happened within the seconds Jon was telling the crowd what an experienced and confident guide Mark was. And the crowd roared!

You really didn’t think I would forget this did you Mark?

Kimba

P. S.

I also won’t forget the time 3 or 4 of us were making a kayak run on the lower. After a short stop for lunch we put back in and another group of paddlers caught up to us. One guy seeing Mark’s new boat paddled over and said to Mark, “Hey buddy, Is that a kevlar boat? Mark says, “No, it’s an Augsburg”.