A 40-minute drive from Boulder, up a winding evergreen-lined road, comes to a stop near Nederland. In the distance are ski lifts and postcard-perfect peaked mountains.
At the last parking lot is a new lodge into which people traipse with bagged skis slung over their shoulders. There’s slush on the ground, and voices greeting each other on a bright, sunny late February afternoon.
Inside Caribou Lodge, part of Eldora Mountain, sounds of people talking and getting ready to ski fill the air with a buzz. In one corner, there’s a jumbo-sized caged closet containing dozens of pieces of equipment: skis that can be driven by someone from behind; some like a combination of a snowmobile and a tricycle, with skis on the bottom. Another is a single ski with a bucket-shaped chair on top.
Nearby, volunteers get their instructions for the day. Later, they’ll be teaming up to give group skiing instruction to people who use wheelchairs, have epilepsy, Down syndrome, vision or mobility challenges or other situations making skiing with two skis and a pair of poles inaccessible.
It’s all part of the Ignite Adaptive Sports ski program at the resort.
“We’d probably put you in a bike,” Ignite’s program manager Kevin Wilson tells a ski newbie who has balance and anxiety concerns. “It has a bike that you sit on; it has skis instead of tires, and then on your feet, you have smaller skis; you put those on, so while you’re sitting on the seat, you’ve got these that you’re dragging on the ground while you steer down the mountain.”
Wilson, 51, had a car accident and now uses a chair. And he skis at Ignite when he’s not getting people to steer down a mountain — regardless of the mobility challenges they may have.
Volunteers who he coordinates with work with people for whom skiing might be unsafe without support, including Emily, a 28-year-old woman from Colorado Springs who was spending the afternoon snowboarding, surrounded by a few volunteers showing her some new moves. She said she’s had epilepsy for ten years and didn’t think snowboarding was in the cards for her.
That day, she said she’d already had a few good runs.
“We've been trying them throughout the day, but it's like things are just starting to click with the turns and stopping and stuff like that, so it's exciting.”
Ignite Adaptive Sports first opened in 1975, and this year got its own floor of a million-dollar new building shared with its big sister, the Eldora Mountain Resort. It has a bathroom and laundry — an upgrade from the trailer they were in before.
This year, about 450 people with adaptive needs came for a lesson at the resort about 18 miles northwest of Boulder, up from about 350 the previous season, according to Wilson.
Another guest that day was Quinton, who, like Emily, asked that his last name not be used to protect his privacy. A disabled vet with PTSD and adult-onset epilepsy, he’d been planning for a month to come through a program there for vets, not knowing who he’d meet. A few other guys also showed up, and he said he got to bond with them through the shared activity.
Sitting in a quiet room at the lodge set up for people who might get overstimulated, he said: “So something that's really enjoyable that I get out of this program is you're getting to meet and do things in a physical environment with other veterans that are also suffering from symptoms.”
He said he’d experienced seizures where he’d need to ask other people to hold him steady so he wouldn’t hurt himself involuntarily — the sorts of things that would probably not surprise people like his companions for the day.
Mountains and lifts filled the windows around him, and the calm energy of an all-consuming activity was everywhere.
“Veterans getting with other veterans, working through issues together,” he said, nodding. “So, like if you're skiing or snowboarding with another veteran, you could be, ‘Oh man, hey, I've noticed this,’ or ‘I've noticed that.’ Or even just the camaraderie, having a conversation up the lift or riding down, taking breaks whenever they need to.”
Skiers who are part of Ignite’s program — less pricey than their neighbor — take group lessons with volunteers who first spend hours in training to learn to assess and address the needs of each student,
Alex Thackery was one. He’d specifically sought out an opportunity to volunteer in adaptive skiing and said one of the things volunteers learn to do is “dance” with the skiers they’re working with. That’s when there’s a forward-and-back exchange between the volunteer, who might reach forward to protect the skier, who might show signs of a possible fall. Once the skier seemed safe, the volunteer would then retreat back, ending the dance while striking a balance between teaching independent skiing and making it possible for some safe, outdoor fun.
Michael O’Brien, a 78-year-old retired Navy and Marine medic, had been on both sides of that balance. He’d spent three years as a volunteer there, but after COVID and some other health complications he described as his “year of agony,” he’d lost weight and hasn’t regained it, so while skiing, he sometimes gets dizzy.
So now he’s shifted into a new role, that of lesson-taker, skiing and dancing with volunteers down the slopes. That bright late February day, he said he had a moment where he felt unsteady on his feet — a strange sensation where it seemed he was both moving and standing still.
“Twice when I stopped, I would stop and I somehow lost my balance. And [volunteers] grabbed me so that I wouldn't fall," O’Brien said. “They saw what I was doing and these guys are … watching what's going on around them as well as the student that they're mentoring that day. It's just automatic for them. I am so thankful for them. And even after being an instructor for three years, it didn't really sink in to me how good it felt to have somebody like that helping you.”
Although O’Brien came with his own skis, people who need to use some of Ignite’s equipment can find it in a big caged closet, which houses tens of thousands of dollars worth of gear. Borrowing the gear is included in the cost of a lesson. Most pieces, brought from a manufacturer, would start at three thousand dollars; many come from Denver-based Enabling Technologies, according to its owner, Chris Witte.
“There's over 200 programs around the world that buy equipment from us,” he said, describing Colorado as “the epicenter of adaptive skiing.” One of his engineers had taken a trip up to Ignite to let them test out the new mono-ski, one of a handful of adaptive ski selections they manufacture.
“So the mono-ski has one foot and that foot goes into one mono-ski, versus two skis that an able-bodied person would ski on. There's a frame that attaches to that ski, and then on top of that frame is a seat that the person sits in.” A single- or double-amputee could use it, he said. “Sometimes they have one leg, sometimes they have two legs and they just put what in what we call the footwell.”
That’s what Wilson showed up on as afternoon classes wound down. Buckled belts like those in airplanes held his legs in place, and he had poles in hand. About two feet below the seat he was in was a single ski.
When asked about how he teaches, he said his experience using the adaptive equipment guides him. “I'd teach from this [mono-ski] and then my student would be in one,” he said, wearing shades to protect from the day’s bright sun.
“I can teach stand-up skiers, but you got enough mono-skiers that need lessons, so why do I want to teach a stand-up, when I can teach what I do?” Wilson said. “They can learn really easy from me, compared to a mono-skier trying to learn from someone stand-up skiing.”
He and other skiers, along with volunteers, took the lift up an easy hill — it’s like a moving walkway at airports, only on an incline.
A young guy who appeared to have visual challenges and Down syndrome also rode the lift. Moments later, he cruised down the slope, holding a thick white pole about six feet long, with two volunteers on each side of him, holding each end of the pole. He descended at a good speed, then came coasting to a stop as the hill leveled off, his face full of joy as the wind blew his hair back, his team of volunteers cheering him on.
Heard from a landing area at the base of the slope were the swooshing noises of snow and children laughing with their parents. Ignite skiers, instructors and volunteers share the same mountains with Eldora, cross-referring as people’s needs change. Instructors at each program wear different colored parkas so people can tell them apart.
O’Brien, who lived most of his life in Denver but now lives in Wyoming, plans to make it down one more time before the season ends on March 30.
He said that although he hoped one day to graduate from receiving lessons to resuming the practice of skiing on his own, he didn’t foresee himself volunteering again. “I would much rather be an instructor, of course,” he said. “But I have a funny feeling I'm going to be a student for at least this year.”
