snow-mo-cart

It's not hard to get the feeling of being a sled dog at our building site. We brought in as many of our building supplies as possible before the snow fell last autumn, but it's inevitable that tools and materials had to be hauled in through the winter. You can get some sense of what that process was like in this post from January.

While the winter proved challenging for hauling, it's got nothing on the spring. We still can't drive right to our site, but now part of the road is plowed and melted, and the other part is still buried in 2 feet of snow. Our windows finally came in and needed to get to the site to be installed, but transferring heavy and fragile windows from vehicle to vehicle to get them to our site seemed imprudent. So, how to make the least number of transitions while traveling over varied terrain? James to the rescue!

Back in January, Ray constructed this sled from scrap 2x4s and an old pair of skis:

A few weeks ago when the windows first started arriving, we beefed up his original sled with extra bracing and a better pull-bar to haul in the heavy windows safely over the diminishing snow.

{picture taken May 7}

James devised a new improvement to the sled for all-terrain use: wheels and skis!

Yesterday we brought in the rest of our windows on this vehicle. As one of our laborer's noted: this is a high calorie way to get windows to a building site. I countered pointing out that human power is a lot more efficient than gas or diesel engines, so it actually uses fewer calories overall that hauling by truck, most likely. But, I will concede that this method, while perhaps more calorie efficient, makes for very sore and tired bodies.

James has plans to add pontoons next. And feels sure he can make the cart fly. Then what shall we call this go-anywhere vehicle? Suggestions welcome...