Taking on the Wilderness

By Lynn Atkinson

I was lying on my back on a trail somewhere in the Skagit Valley of British Columbia when the rain started.

"What colour are the trees?" someone asked.

"Grey," I answered, looking up at the underside of a fir tree turned smoky green by raindrops. In fact, rain and fog had turned the whole landscape grey that day, save for the brilliant reds of Indian paintbrush and purple lupin dotting the alpine meadows in which we were hiking.

Three-degree temperatures, wet clothes and gear, and the unaccustomed aches and pains of two days spent travelling in a TrailRider had begun to turn my wilderness challenge into an endurance test. But the promise of adventure had lured me, and I was loathe to admit defeat.

Six of us -- three men who were quadriplegics, and three women, including me and a friend with multiple sclerosis, and one with cerebral palsy -- had left our wheelchairs behind at Manning Park Lodge for a three-day hike which had been dubbed Access Challenge. With the help of able-bodied teammates, our goal was to cover 60 km, climbing to an elevation of 1,200 m.

The vehicle that was going to make it possible was a lightweight aluminum chair that looked like a cross between a rickshaw and a
wheelbarrow. Christened the TrailRider, it had two long handles at the front and two at the back for pushing and pulling. The 40-pound chair rolled on a single pneumatic wheelbarrow tire that helped to absorb shocks for the rider with a disability, while at the same time giving pushers greater manoeuvrability over difficult terrain. Retractable pull-down legs provided balance when the TrailRider was stationary.

The B.C. Mobility Opportunities Society (BCMOS), created in 1985 to help people with disabilities access British Columbia’s great outdoors, was organizing the event. Its founder, Sam Sullivan, an entrepreneurial quadriplegic on Vancouver city council, had gotten the idea for the device after seeing an innovative Australian recreational vehicle for people who can’t walk. Volunteer engineer Paul Cermak, who makes assistive devices for people with disabilities through the Tetra Society (another one of Sullivan’s innovations), built the prototype.

With funding from the Skagit Environmental Endowment Commission, six TrailRiders were manufactured by Les Bucinias at a cost of $3,000 each. Industrial designer Matt Honsberger added adjustable head, arm and leg rests, custom-fitting the device to each user’s needs.

Project Manager Sian Blythe promised me two volunteers, and I found two more. I was ready to go!

Our first night was spent at Manning Park Lodge organizing and consolidating equipment and food, and the next day we all went by bus to the trail head, where each team was to start at staggered intervals.

I had begun the hike with a mixture of excitement and fear. I wanted to be a part of something that was helping to break down barriers by bringing together people with and without physical disabilities to overcome the access challenges posed by an outdoor environment. I was 47 years old and had lived with multiple sclerosis for 24 years, using a wheelchair for 10 of those years. With the little upper body strength that I had, could I cope?

I was greatly encouraged however, by the BCMOS philosophy, one that aims to help people with significant disabilities access the outdoors. So when a mysterious new hip pain kept me awake half the night on a trial campout in preparation for the trip, I decided to pack the Tylenol and go -- damn the consequences!

So there I was, an unglamourous Cleopatra in my chariot, bundled up to my nose in fleece, tarps and raincape, lying on my back contemplating the rain. We’d discovered that upending the TrailRider and shaking it allowed my butt to shuffle back into place, so we could carry on awhile before another adjustment had to be made. (I promised my team that if we do another trip together I’ll only ask to stop every 200 feet, instead of every 100!)

We covered about 13 km that first day, my four inexhaustible teammates rolling me along as well as carrying all the gear -- one person in front, one behind, and two following, breaking our descent with ropes tied to their waists. By the time we holed up under a tree to make tea and watch the rain come down, I had discovered that Tamara, Adrian, Larni and Nick were the perfect antidote to lousy B.C. weather. Their good humour and countless efforts to make me more comfortable made the ride much more tolerable.

The week before the hike we’d given the TrailRider a rigorous trial run on a local mountain, and I had been exhilarated to find myself once again in the forest I loved. I remembered the old familiar sensation of running down a mountain path, my body working in synchronicity with the earth, each foot instinctively wrapping around every sinewy root, every rock. It was the closest I’d ever come to flying while still on the ground; it evoked in me the sweet memory of health and youth, and pain at the loss of it.

Now here I was bumping and grinding down a steep mountain trail in a contraption that threatened to eject me at every turn. I was happy to be on the mountain again, but I had to admit, it certainly didn’t bear much resemblance to my youthful communion with nature. But then, when can the present, filled with conflicting emotions and realities, ever compete with a memory distilled through the years into a single happy moment?

It was only when I suddenly found myself at the bottom of a trail I had thought moments before impassable that I realized I’d been given a gift equally as precious -- a chance to move out of the past, to turn the present reality of my disability into a positive instead of a negative -- a chance to experience that previously solitary moment with nature in a new and perhaps more satisfying way: with others. The four people who had come together as my team had worked and sweated to bring me to a place I had thought lost to me forever.

Accessible wilderness? The time has come!

(For information about booking the TrailRider, Please call the B.C. Mobility Opportunities Society (BCMOS) at (604) 688-6464. Lynn Atkinson is a freelance travel writer living in Vancouver, British Columbia.)