Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Walk highway 20 in 2020 - first, make a trailer

Last year I started walking highway 20 from Williams Lake to Bella Coola. In 2020, I wanted to continue where I left off, pulling my supplies like last year (first of three blogs about my 2019 walk) but this time with a home-made trailer. This would be a great project in the early days of the year while dreaming of a long walk. 

I ordered this trailer kit from Wike in Ontario. It includes a little tow bar that's made for attaching to a bicycle which I didn't need but otherwise it was just what I needed. The black things are sturdy plastic injection mouldings. Four of them are for the corners and the other two are quick-release wheel mounts. 

Do-it-yourself trailer kit from Wike

I didn't work from a proven design so it wasn't a surprise that I had some technical issues. The 1" x 1" fir frame was a good idea but the first bottom platform I made was of thin plywood. A quick test of the trailer revealed that trailer contents vibrated seriously when rolling on a rough surface. In retrospect, this was the lack of a suspension. So I replaced the plywood floor with discarded bike tire inner tubes which were headed for the dumpster (thanks Red Shred's Bike and Board Shed). This eliminated the vibration. Yeah! 👏 To be safe and to prevent things from falling through the little gaps, I stretched another bottom of pack cloth on top of the woven inner tubes.  

Trailer with bottom made with bike tire inner tubes. 

I started my walk on Bailiff Road along the beautiful Chilcotin River west of Bull Canyon. This 20 kilometre section, where I left off in 2019, was part of highway 20 up until the 1960's and is one of the prettiest side trips available. A couple hours into my walk, I noticed that one of the two bungee cords that hold the roof down  had fallen off. I spent the next hour looking for it but I shouldn't have bothered because it only took 20 minutes to make a substitute with a spare piece of bicycle inner tube. Fortunately, I found two bungee cords along the road shoulder in the next two days. I didn't have any other trailer problems that weren't easily fixed. 


Front of trailer with bungee cord
Front of trailer with replacement bungee cord. 

The finished trailer has about twice the volume of a large backpack so it provides a rather luxurious space. Fully loaded with a week's supply of food, it weighed 109 pounds (49 kg) which included a 10 pound bear-resistant container and a lot of cold weather clothes than I didn't need. Pulling it on pavement was easy as pie as long as the grade wasn't more than a few percent. Soft shoulders and uphill grades of more than 5 percent were quite a bit harder. Fortunately, highway 20 is mostly gently rolling and traffic is light enough that I could safely walk on pavement more than 90 percent of the time. 


Trailer on the road in west Chilcotin



Next blog, what's it like camping along a highway?