We started out with a cheap plastic sled, bright yellow (all the better to be seen from the air when I make a bad decision). Since I was working with Carl we over-engineered it and reinforced the holes on each side where the harness would attach with strips of metal. Six feet of rope was threaded through PVC pipes on each side and the rope was tied to the eye-bolt on the sled and a ring attached to a belt. We crossed the pipes for stability and it was time to test.

Although I was all for throwing a kid in and seeing what happened we started with less precious cargo. When I proved I could drag a couple 12-packs of soda around the yard we added Lilly. She looked rather shell-shocked, but it was clearly a success.

Sunday morning dawned and I was itching to get onto the snow. I conned Clara into joining me ("It'll be a special Daddy Clara time, no Tokul or Lilly or Mommy!" Unsaid: "Because they're too smart to go on this boondoggle.") and we headed up to the Pass. We parked in the long line of cars at the Gold Creek sno-park and I got Clara geared up into her new snow clothes. She now has bibs, a jacket, gloves, and a hat specifically for the snow. (I'll turn her into a gear junkie yet!)

We got going and Clara was loving it. I was amazed at how easy it was to pull a sled even with my normal 20 pounds of snow gear and Clara. (I won't mention Clara's weight not because it's impolite to talk about a lady's weight but because she's so freakishly underweight CPS might pay us a visit.) We were making great time up the hill, passing some skiers when I heard, "Oops! Lost your pack," from behind me. Not from Clara who was merrily watching my pack slide backward, but from a kind skier.

I put the pack back in (after unbuckling myself since the semi-rigid harness prevented me from reaching the pulk) and thought of how I could prevent it from sliding out again. (Improvement #1: Holes for bungie cords.) Without tools or material I figured I could just buckle it to Clara and off we went.

A short way up the trail is a barrier intended to keep people from driving up to the Kendall Peak Lakes in the summer. (The only time I've actually been all the way to the lakes was by driving up, though Carl and I made a snowshoe stab at it one other time.) The snow is built up all around the barrier and trenches go on either side.

I gamely started around the left side, but then realized something was amiss. The pulk was pulling me to the right instead of straight back. Oh yeah... it had no horizontal stability so it had slid into the hole. And oh yeah... Clara was being pulled out of the pulk by the weight of my pack I had so conveniently buckled around her waist like a pair of cement shoes. And oh yeah... I couldn't rush to her rescue because the poles kept me six feet away.

No, nothing bad happened except Clara spilled her Nilla Wafers in the snow. I unclipped and pulled her up. This time I put the pack in the front of the pulk, buckled to the harness, and she sat in the back. Lacking a back rest I gave her the waist strap from the backpack and now she had reins.

We continued up for about a mile in total. The snow was getting heavy and I didn't want to burn Clara out. Plus we'd be out for about an hour already and we did need some lunch. As a stop gap measure I busted out the hot chocolate and introduced Clara to it. She LOVED it. We sat in the snow and drank cocoa for a few minutes before heading back down.

If going up was easy going down was even more so. The poles pushed against the belt, but off to the sides so the load was pretty evenly distributed. Clara declared she wanted to walk so I got our her snowshoes and she tromped through the snow making monster footprints for a short distance before being too tired and climbing back into the pulk.

The rest of the ride out was pretty uneventful. We dismounted when we got to the barrier to prevent a repeat performance of the uncontrolled horizontal slide, but otherwise just cruised. (Improvement #2: Ropes attached to the back end of the pulk that I can use to direct its movement.)

We got some approving looks from others both for my display of manliness and for the ingenuity of the homemade pulk. Clara held on tight to the mitten we had found and rescued from a winter buried alongside the road. We placed it at the trailhead sign hoping someone might find it.

Clara belted out White Christmas tunes all the way home in between gulps of the hot chocolate I had put in her sippy. She was quite, quite content and so was I.

Total distance was about 2.3 miles and 450 feet of gain.