San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
FORGING A NEW PATH
As surge in outdoor recreation continues, disabled hikers find empowerment by creating guides, pushing for improved trail access
Beneath the wooden boardwalk where Syren Nagakyrie, 40, was on a hike through Lettuce Lake Conservation Park in Tampa, Fla., dark shadows of fish moved in the vegetation-clogged waters, while red-eyed herons strode between the cypress roots that stuck out from the water like knobby, twisted knees.
Nagakyrie, who is nonbinary, pointed out a turtle sunning itself on a log. But to see the wildlife, Nagakyrie’s mother, Vickie Boyer, 59, had to lean out of her wheelchair and peer through cracks between the wooden railings. The short wooden boardwalk loop, near Boyer’s home in Riverview, Fla., was supposedly on an accessible trail. Nagakyrie jotted down the railing’s height measurements in a notebook. It was 42 inches, 6 inches higher than what someone using a wheelchair could comfortably see over.
While some organizations offer to have non-disabled people carry, push or otherwise help people with disabilities navigate the outdoors, Nagakryie, who has conditions that cause chronic pain and fatigue, reflects a growing movement of disabled people pushing for more independent access to the great outdoors, taking steps themselves by publishing trail guides, establishing nonprofits to empower others through equipment, advocacy and training, and testifying before Congress.
Growing interest in outdoor recreation
As a result of the pandemic, more people nationwide have turned to outdoor recreation. A March 2021 report commissioned by the Outdoor Industry Association
found that 53 percent of Americans older than 6 participated in outdoor recreation in 2020 — the highest rate on record. Many destinations managed by the National Park Service also welcomed record numbers of visitors in 2020.
As visitation increases, so do the number of visitors with disabilities, said Jeremy Buzzell, an accessibility program manager with the National Park Service.
Last April, several disability activists testified at a hearing on Capitol Hill, in front of members of the House Natural Resources Committee, which oversees the Park Service, to push for greater accessibility in outdoor spaces and call attention to barriers in public parks.
Buzzell said that parks across the country are receiving increased requests for more accessibility information, and the demand prompted the agency to form an Accessibility Task Force and launch a five-year strategy in 2015 to improve accessibility.
More national parks are partnering with local disability organizations to get accessibility, Buzzell said, and the agency is assessing trails to see if there are improvements that could be made — such as increasing the width of a trail or removing obstructions or steps — that could increase access.
“Very often, even if a trail is not able to meet the letter of the law as an accessible trail, we can still change things to make it more accessible,” Buzzell said.
Hikers want more information
Some outdoors enthusiasts have begun to write their own trail guides for national, local and state parks, such as Nagakyrie. They founded a project called Disabled Hikers to empower others and share detailed trail guides they write. A native of Washington state, they have already completed close to 200 trail guides, most of which are clustered in the Pacific Northwest.
Nagakyrie was inspired to start this project after struggling to determine which trails they could hike — sometimes trails that were labeled easy presented challenges like stairs or rocky, uneven surfaces that a non-disabled person might not think twice about.
“I’m not out here to tell any individual ‘yes or no, you can or can’t do this trail,’ ” said Nagakyrie, who on the hike in Florida recorded details about the width