How an Ebike Gave an Injured Rider his Legs Back

AFTER A SERIOUS CLIMBING ACCIDENT, RYAN TITCHENER’S ROAD TO RECOVERY HAD SOME PEDAL ASSISTANCE. NOW, IT’S RESISTANCE TO HIS MACHINE THAT OCCASIONALLY KEEPS HIM FROM MOVING FORWARD

After a serious climbing accident, Ryan Titchener’s road to recovery had some pedal assistance. Now, it’s resistance to his machine that occasionally keeps him from moving forward

Eleven months after suffering a near-fatal climbing accident, a simple conversation led to another lifechanging moment for Ryan Titchener. Sitting at a table chatting with some friends at a house in Campbell River, B.C., Titchener mentioned how he would love to ride a bike again. Their answer was simple: “All right. We’re going tomorrow.”

But the plan was absurd. Titchener’s body had gone through some serious trauma in July 2016. During a climbing trip in B.C.’S Bugaboo Provincial Park, a washing machine-size boulder came loose, knocking the Jasper, Alta., resident off the granite wall. Then it rolled on top of his body. In an instant, he suffered 14 broken ribs, a collapsed lung and, worst of all, two broken vertebrae that left him paralyzed.

A helicopter rescue saved his life. He spent the following 10 months in a wheelchair. But determined to walk again, he left the chair in Canmore where he had been rehabbing and flew to Vancouver Island to continue his recovery. “I knew I wouldn’t be able to walk again if I didn’t try to do it 100 per cent of the time,” he said recently. “I started using forearm crutches and realized I was starting to get some movement again.”

And then came that moment in Campbell River.

The day after Titchener’s off-the-cuff remark about wanting to ride again “someday,” his friends carefully helped him get onto a bike and let him coast down a slight hill. “I maybe biked for two minutes, but it was a game-changer,” he said. “I knew it was possible.”

Titchener admits a lot of thoughts were racing through his mind as he tried to do something as simple as ride a bike – an activity he loved to do as a teenager in his hometown of Pickering, Ont., where Durham Forest was his personal mountain biking playground.

“After a traumatic injury, the last thing you want to do is get hurt again,” he said. “But having all my good friends around like that helped push me. I had that drive to do it again. When you think ‘I’m never going to ride again,’ and then this opportunity comes up, it’s pretty life-changing.”

While Titchener had largely used cycling as a cross-training activity to prepare him for climbing once he moved to Jasper, being able to ride became a key goal in his recovery. “After I broke my back, I actually missed cycling more than climbing in some ways,” he said. “It has something to do with not being able to move your legs.”

Titchener returned to Canmore to continue his rehab, but spinning and eventually riding became a major part of that. With virtually no muscle mass in his legs and especially his calves, riding uphill was, and continues to be, a huge challenge. “I’ve lost that athletic edge and the dynamic movement and power, but that’s where an ebike gives me that power back,” he said.

In the spring of 2018, Titchener purchased a Ghost Kato hardtail powerassisted mountain ebike – perfect for the fast, flowy cross country trails around Jasper, where he had returned after even more rehab. “The ebike helped me gain the strength to walk the way I do now,” he said. “That core strength, that drive to push – it was all achieved because of the ebike.”

Titchener started out riding fairly mellow singletrack. He’s now tackling whatever technical downhill routes he can find. When he needs the battery power for assistance, especially when it comes to riding uphill, he likes knowing the Kato is there to support him. “But for me it has been about keeping the assist on as low as possible,” he said.

While Titchener and his ebike have been fully accepted into Jasper’s tight-knit cycling community, he doesn’t feel those same warm vibes everywhere he goes. “Because I walk, people don’t understand I have a spinal-cord injury,” he said. He went to a bike park in Oregon, paid for his lift ticket and went to load up his bike onto a lift when he was told pedal-assist bikes weren’t allowed. It didn’t matter that he needed one. “I feel no pressure in Jasper, but I do have that feeling sometimes when I show up to a trail because I’m not a visibly disabled person. People say things. But an ebike is essentially my access to the trails,” he said.

Titchener’s next big goal is to ride the incredibly challenging Seven Summits Trail – considered one of the greatest mountain biking routes in B.C. Unfortunately, ebikes are not allowed on the legendary Rossland route. “I can’t do it because for some reason, someone has decided that ebikes aren’t allowed. So it is holding me back and it does dictate where I’m going to go, because I want to follow the rules,” he said.

Still, Titchener is undeterred. He knows the role ebikes have had on his remarkable recovery. “I really feel like if pedal-assist bikes didn’t exist,” he said, “I would probably be a few stages behind where I am now.”

“AFTER I BROKE MY BACK, I ACTUALLY MISSED CYCLING MORE THAN CLIMBING IN SOME WAYS.”