Building a High Speed Pulk

When winter trekking over long distances most most people prefer to use a pulk rather than hauling a heavy load on their backs. The main problem with using a traditional pulk while snow kiting is that pulks don't fair well with high speeds and rough terrain.









Our attempt to solve this problem is to build a pulk that can hold its own at higher speeds and if it does flip over it won't look like a yard sale. This is what we came up with. Yupper, it is a whitewater kayak, a Perception Phat AKA "The Phat Turtle". The plan is to modify it to function like a pulk by cutting out the cockpit rim, which will make a bigger key hole to get gear in and out. After cutting out the rim large enough to stow gear this idea had enough promise to take the poles and hardware of my traditional pulk and fasten them to the Phat Turtle.

After pulling the Phat Turtle around the yard, I found that it pulled nice and easy, but when traversing a slope it had a tendency to slide out because of the smooth rounded hull. I think I will try to find a way to fasten either a single or a double runner on the bottom.







The next step was to make a cockpit cover, I found what I call Fuzzy Rubber. A fabric that has a thick layer of micro fleece on one side and a layer of rubber on the other. It is very stretchable and I hope durable. To hold the cover on the pulk I fastened some round button snaps to the kayak and the fuzzy rubber. The cover is stretchy enough to have gear in the pulk higher than the keyhole opening and the snaps hold. I did reinforce the outside of the cover where the snaps attach by doubling over the fabric and using seam sealer and sewing the border.



Aaron found a destroyed creek boat with a crack running halfway down the hull, I'm pretty sure that the boat was a victim of spring creeking on the North Shore.






Aaron procured a plastic welder, cut out the cockpit rim and used the plastic to fill the hole and weld the crack.

It looks like he did a good job piecing it back together. I just hope that the the plastic didn't become brittle.

I'm not sure what Aaron is planning to do for poles and cover.

We will update the progress and testing of the pulks as the experiment progresses.