Pack raft life jacket

[calling4life]

I've seen and read on guys using pack rafts backpacking, but I've never seen the life jackets, I'm guessing it's because they are conveniently forgotten, but they are required where I've looked. Not necessarily to be on, but to at least be in the water craft.

What life jackets are people taking out when you're backpacking with a raft? And I mean when you're actually out packing these things around, not what you'd use if you were just going out on the local lake to fish, but for backpacking.

A life jacket isn't providing me any usefulness here, but is required, so you gotta have it, just wondering what the options are.

 

[sp6x6]

Might not be much help.But boating I fly fish a lot and also fish early cold water and worry about what if,the cold water,hard to last.I have a small self inflate I wear,u pull ring,if co2 fails you can manually blow it up also.Not that big

 

[calling4life]

I got some replies off of here.

--One that is interesting is the Mustang Survival MIT 70, you can get it in a manual or auto inflate, for a packraft situation I would tend to lean towards manual because I've had auto inflate lifejackets inflate from getting wet but not because someone fell in the water.
Noted as the smallest inflatable PFD approved in the US.

You can also inflate it with your mouth, this may be a good way to shed some weight, take the CO2 and anything else accompanying that out that is possibly removeable, wrap the contents up, then when actually using the raft, just inflate the lifejacket with your mouth and have it with.

I believe it's about 1.3lbs, take out the CO2 cartridge and perhaps some accompanying hookup stuff if you can and a person may get it sub 1lb.

These type of vests that inflate have to be worn to be valid, doing it that way where you manually inflate it with your mouth so it's inflated should allow it to be considered good whether worn or not, but I'm not with the US Coast Guard so who knows.

--Next would be the Onyx m-16 belt life jacket, this is a belt style inflatable.
This notes in one part of the ad to be only 8 ounces, I've seen reviewers answer 10 ounces, one answered 15.8 ounces.

Seems like it may actually be the lightest bet, again, can be manually inflated by mouth, so you could take the CO2 cartridge out and lose that 5 ounces or so and then just manually inflate it with your mouth when it's time to raft.

Seems like it may be the best bet for lightest and most convenient to just get out of the way.

Again, the inflatables have to be worn to be considered approvable, but again, if you have them inflated to start that should change as they are now set to their flotation limits, like having a foam vest.


I still have the suspicion that no one actually carries a life vest with them when pack raft hunting, I think I'm going with the Onyx belt one if I go the pack raft way for the future.

 

[sp6x6]

Mines a mustang When younger I hit all kinds of high country lakes in my float tube,great fishing.