If you’re heading out on a big water inflatable kayak adventure—say on the Grand or Middle Fork—you won’t do much better than the Hyside Stinger.

Long a maker of craft for outfitters, the Stinger is fortified with a multi-layer, 2,520-denier Hypalon chafer on its underside for abuse-at-will performance. It’s overkill, sure, but not when you’re scraping rocks and looking for a craft you can pass on to your kids.

The same heft is found on the tubes, whose 1,680-denier Outfitter Pro Hypalon results in a beefcake hull that’s rigid and responsive. The tubes have a pronounced taper that gives it both a sleek feel and the maneuverability to tackle technical drops. Miss your line and reinforced tips on the bow and stern fend off any errant blows, while multi-layer carry handles help you Brave Sir Robin it around drops you don’t want to run.

For gear, large grab/tie-down D-rings, as well as a large rear compartment with tie-downs, secure everything from drybags to coolers. For seating, a thwart offers both backrest and torsional rigidity.

Other features that got our testers drooling are beefy thigh straps that hold you in when needed, and a great, 12-inch range footpeg configuration to accommodate everyone from Spud Web to Yao Ming. The self-bailing floor with I-beam construction drained water as quickly as it came in. “A total beefmobile,” says one vocabulary-challenged tester. “This baby oozes beefness.”

How we tested it: For this one, we headed to the continuous Class III-easy IV of the raging Elk River coursing out of the Zirkel Wilderness Area, a waterway where you want to trust what’s under butt. We swapped off, with testers not afraid to punch it through holes we avoided in other craft. 

Specs: L: 15’; W: 39”