ADAPTIVE MOUNTAIN BIKING
INGENIOUS OFF-ROAD VEHICLES OPEN NEW WORLDS TO DISABLED CYCLISTS
In 1998, Mike Augspurger, a bike builder in Massachusetts, invented the first off-road hand-cycle. A T4 paraplegic then rode the bike, unassisted, to the top of Vermont’s Mount Snow. The feat set a new precedent for what athletes with disabilities can do given the right equipment.
Today, about five manufacturers make some version of a recumbent or kneeling three-wheel mountain bike with knobby tires that you can pedal without using your legs (most are propelled or steered with your hands or chest). A growing number of adaptive sports programs around the country offer guided instruction and equipment rental for anyone from amputees to those with spinal cord injuries.
“You can’t access the outdoors that well with your everyday wheelchair,” says Jake O’Connor, the founder of ReActive Adaptations, an off-road hand-cycle company in Crested Butte, Colo., who was paralyzed in a construction accident 16 years ago. “You need a device like this to go hiking or biking with your loved ones or to go fishing or camping.” The bikes aren’t cheap — most cost well over $5,000 — but nonprofit organizations like Colorado’s Kelly Brush Foundation and the High Fives Foundation in Truckee offer grants to help people purchase them. Just want to try the sport for a day or two? From the Bay Area, your best bets are to head to Mammoth Lakes for a half-day summer mountain bike lesson with Disabled Sports Eastern Sierra (from $95; www. disabledsportseastern sierra.org) or to Shaver Lake, outside of Fresno, for a weekend campout with Central California Adaptive Sports Center, www. centralcal adaptive.org.