[pct-l] cheap sledge

[bharve at dslextreme.com (Bruce Harvey)]

A few years ago National Geographic channel ran a one-hour video produced by
a pair who traveled across Patagonia (in early spring, as I remeber, and
mostly on snow).  Part of the journey was on water, so they took whitewater
kayaks, which they used as sledges on snow.  Descent technique on snow was
with kayak/sledge held by haul rope and sliding ahead of the hiker.  Control
was initially troublesome, but they learned and made it work fairly well.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Doodad PCT" <doodad.pct@hotmail.com>

> The point of my experimenting with an improvised sledge which is tied onto
> the back of the pack is that it can be carried as a normal backpack in any
> situation where sledge hauling gets tricky.  By the way, I use a
lower-body
> climbing harness for hauling it.  Sure, a purpose-built sledge with
control
> rods is wonderful for a trip which only uses it as a sledge, but I would
> assume that most sledges would be too heavy to be carried on the back as
> part of a normal backpacking load.  By the way, I found that a short haul
> line works best -- just long enough to allow for clearance from my
snowshoe
> strides.  I suppose it might be possible to rig trekking poles as
improvised
> sledge control rods.  All life is one big experiment!

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