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 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?