BUILDING PULKS

Folks, here is where the real excitement start, when you start building your own pulks! A Pulk is a scandinavian short for low slung tobaggan used for snow sports or for transportation purposes usually pulled by dogs or skiers. These sleds are also used to carry supplies such as tents, food, clothing etc. which in our case will be dragged while we snow-shoe across the famous Kungsleden trail.

Choosing a sled is quite an easy process obviously depending on what activity you are doing to be doing and importantly how many days is your trip going to last. The idea is to still go as light as possible but still carry all necessary equipment and not eliminate anything that you might think "may be this will not be required"!

Building your own pulk only gives you a great option to customize it as per requirement. Here's what we did. We took a plastic sled that was just more than a meter long, deep and wide enough to hold a 140 liter duffel bag.

For customizing we've used:

1. PVC Pipes and 4 x T-joints

2. 5mm cord (about 10 - 15 meters)

3. Duck tape

4. Quick draw Carabiners

5. Bungee cord

6. Pull through's

Now it's pretty straight forward from here and should not take you more than an hour of relaxed working. Firstly the plastic sled had to be made a bit sturdier and also find a way to feed the rope through that would be used for pulling the sled. Drill enough holes all around the sled so that we can use pull through's and fix the pipe on each side of the sled. Make sure the pipe is duck taped all the way, this is prevent the pipe to brittle into pieces. Use alternate holes to use pull through's and tie the pipe to the sled. Use the other alternate holes for creating gear loops. These are very use full as they allow you to hold the weight down. Also, the pipe in the front will use 2 T-joints to which then the rest of the piping will be connected.

The idea here is to pull the weight from the back instead of threading it just through the front and dragging the weight. Hence, when you run the 5mm cord through, don't forget to consider abrasion of the rope against the edge of the pipe.

The piping towards the front will consist of 5 bits and 2 T-joints creating a "H" like structure with the carabiners in the front that will be attached to your harness to be able to pull it.

What we realized was these front piping need to be really sturdy and less flexible as it can be to be able to traverse in deep snow and your pulk stays stable. Also, while packing everything make sure all the equipment that is heavy in weight goes in first, right at the bottom of your pulk and the lighter weight equipment accordingly! Use the bungee cords to tie everything down to the gear loops and enjoy!