Snowsled

A collaboration between Snowsled, the Ice warrior expedition and Buro Happold, structural engineers, has resulted in an exciting new pulk design for extended travel across open water in the Arctic Ocean. It is a combination of a canoe and a pulk shape, having a high level of bouyancy and lateral stability on its own in water, without the need to raft together two units to achieve this. Some design specifications are given below.

The project is at the model stage. The design is on a CAD disc and a small model has been produced from this. It will be proceeding over the next few months to production of a full size pattern, then a mould and then the final first full size 'sledoe'.

The instigation for this came from the Ice Warrior expedition, who required pulks for pack-ice travel and also for safely crossing wide stretches of open water in the Arctic. This requirement is now becoming more of a necessity for expeditions travelling over the Arctic Ocean and one that would allow greater flexibility when expedition plans are being formulated.

Already interest has been shown by several other teams working in the Arctic. It was felt therefore that we should make the project more widely known in order to achieve economies in numbers of sledoes produced at one time.

We invite interested parties to get in touch.