Recently I was able to do a bit more testing of the Sandtrakz and I am impressed.
The sand was damp but loose and the old Sidewinders proved useless again, building
up a wall of sand that worked like a wheel chock
The wheels mark how far I got before giving up.
I didn't have balloon wheels with me so I tried the the Wheeleez HD for comparison.
I was able to get a bit further up but it was very hard work
Fitting the Sandtrakz I was able to get all the way to the top with much less effort.
The technology actually works well and this wheel does live up to the hype
Clearing away the sand reveals the innovative 'track'.
The testing was done with the TI hull only, which weighs around 62kg. Railblaza recommend up to 80kg so the fully rigged TI may be a bit much. I didn't get to test it this time as we were preparing for a hull only portage of around 700m. I ended up swapping back to the hard wheels as the portage track wasn't as soft as expected. On firmer surfaces the hard wheels do work better and with lots of sharp fern stalks on the recently slashed track I was worried about damage to the Sandtrakz. A balloon wheel would not have coped here.
Proves there is no wheel that will handle all terrains. An advantage of the C-Tug is that it is easy to swap wheels to suit the terrain.