Innovations in Exploration by the Belgian Adventurer


Yesterday I posted about Todd Carmichael’s newly designed and built “Pig” which will assist him as he attempts his double traverse of Death Valley in October. Another man who knows a thing or two about long distance expeditions and engineering your own cart is Belgian adventurer Louis-Philippe Loncke, who constructed this cart when he made his trek across the Simpson Desert last year.

Now, Lou-Phi is back with another new design, this time for a new pulka that you can actually sleep inside. You can check out his preliminary designs in this entry on his blog to see what he has in mind, but in a nutshell, the simple, but well thought out design, allows for the explorer to seek shelter inside his sled, while still having access to gear and food.

My first thought on seeing this was: “Why hadn’t someone thought about this before?” Which was immediately followed with: “What is Lou-Phi planning for his next adventure?” After all, this is the guy who conquered the Simpson Desert and then went to Everest Base Camp to deliver Belgian Chocolate. You know he’s got something up his sleeve! So, what’s the plan Lou-Phi? 😉

Kraig Becker

4 thoughts on “Innovations in Exploration by the Belgian Adventurer”

  1. Indeed "Anonymous", it certainly not the first idea of something for sleeping in a pulka/sledge. I mention it on the post of my blog about Cameron Smith (soloice.com) which I started exachning emails with during the past 3 days and Correne from explorersweb sent me the link about Julio a few months ago. So I'm not the first to have the idea, ideas always come from a mix of things done previously. Even normal pulkas (the big ones like Alain Hubert and Dixie Dansercoer use) are big enough to be emptied of the content and sleep in it in case of severe storm.
    So my idea is of course to learn about Cameron's and Julio's sleep'n'pulkas and try to find a solution to my need as I want to be able to carry the thing on my back so make it smaller and less prone to wind in the face. I will contact Julio soon as well.

    For what I plan to do as trip, well it's too early to announce as I have to check if I can get approval to from the Authorities of the place. Of course it's gonna be polar and I have no experience yet in cold places. Someone who did already part of the trip I intent to do gave me 20% chance of success. So that makes it interesting and it will depend on the lightweight and hopefully portable pulka to make me safe.

    Check these videos of Julio & Cameron:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQUzdkuFgBc

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7jKGWMjkWg

    I really like Julio's one, but to comfy and big drawback as he mentions that it's often falling on the side due to wind.

    Anonymous, can you provide me more info about the Swedish guy ? I can't google in Swedsih to find it in google. (a name, expedition title, name of his pulka?)

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