I was thinking about a Donald Duck comic book story from 1956, The Secret of Hondorica. In it Donald and his nephews needed to cross a very shallow river infested with crocodiles. The nephews got the solution from their Junior Woodchuck Handbook, of course: swamp tables/platforms. They’d build 2, get on the one in the front, then move the one in the rear to be ahead of the one they were standing on, and repeat. You can see the platforms in a panel from the comic shown under “Géographie” at this link. Hondorica | Picsou Wiki | Fandom
Of course, when I read this as a kid, I thought it was brilliant. Now I can see a number of serious problems. The legs weren’t cross-braced so the platform would topple. The legs as shown were flimsy and would bend or break. Just a crocodile bumping into a leg could topple a platform. The legs would sink into the mud. And so forth.
I started wondering if someone had invented platforms like this that would actually work. Height 10 feet and all above problems addressed. It looks like that would be hard to do with natural materials. I did several web searches and nothing turned up.
Does anyone know if anything even vaguely like this on legs or stilts has been invented?
Similar to the above, heavy construction equipment may be moved across soft ground by picking up and moving large platforms in that manner. It’s not quite the same as tables because no legs are needed because crocodiles are not a problem for large excavators.
IIRC there was an episode of the TV show “The Amazing Race” where the contestants were in Finland (or one of those three Nordic countries up there…I forget) and had contestants use cross-country skis to traverse a swampy area. The show said Olympic athletes would do that in the summer months to keep in practice. Apparently, done right, the cross country skis will let you skate easily across the swamp. But it takes skill and done wrong you get kinda stuck in the mud and have a bad time.
Yes, you can classic x-c ski at sunrise on a lawn thanks to the dew, but it is slow going because the glide phase is short. Best use overly long skis for greater flotation.
For skate skiing, the USA’s greatest cross-country skier Bill Koch – the fellow who was at the front in popularizing skate skiing – took up sand skiing on beach littoral zones after he retired from competition. http://archives.starbulletin.com/2000/10/31/sports/art.jpg
It all comes down to flotation (so you don’t sink) and friction (which will cause you to get stuck but will also permit you to move by having something to apply your force against).
