December 9, 2000


Does anybody make a pull-behind trailer for hiking?

I happily use a BOB trailer for bike touring and a sled for ski touring here in the mountains of Southern Alberta and Northern Montana. I far prefer to pull my load rather than carry it on my person/bike. However, there's been many a time when I've shouldered a monster pack to carry gear on a multi-day trip and have wondered why nobody has invented a pull-behind trailer for hiking. While I realize this wouldn't work for very steep and/or rough trails, there are LOTS of hiking trails I go on where I know this would work just fine. Would such a thing work? Does anybody make one to your knowledge?

— Brad Lethbridge Alberta, Canada

Well...I suppose I've heard goofier ideas. One, for instance, was from a guy who wrote in a few weeks back seeking advice on making his own crampons. I had written a reply thoroughly deriding him, then he wrote in again to tell me that he'd gotten the right steel, milled it to shape, bent the points, and had the finished product in a shop for metal hardening! So what do I know?

Certainly, there's precedent for hauling supplies on long or gear-intensive trips. Just about every climber on Denali, for instance, hauls 30 to 40 pounds of stuff in a plastic sled. But things get trickier on a trail. To be honest, a single-wheel design such as the one used in the BOB wouldn't work—those trailers actually are extremely unstable when they're not moving, so you'd find yourself constantly torqued from one side to the other. A two-wheel design, on the other hand, would likely be too wide.

Still, those are only engineering problems—I'm sure a bright guy like you could spend a few weeks in the garage with a pile of cromoly tubing, a few tools, and an acetylene torch and come up with the just the right thing. I should think the basic design would have two wheels, set fairly close together but canted out at the bottom for more stability. The load basket would have to be low, to keep the center of gravity down. And you'd have to think of some good way to easily attach the trailer to the hiker.

So get to work! Your fortune awaits.

>Agree with the Gear Guy? Think you know something he doesn't? Express yourself in our Gear Forum.