Vermont Sports 22-3 March April Issue

PARALYMPIC STARS | THE MAD SLEDDER | SPRING GEAR

VERMONT

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ACCESS/ ABILITY THEY’RE TOUGH. THEY’RE TALENTED. AND THEY ARE BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS. SEE HOW VERMONT’S ADAPTIVE ATHLETES AND PROGRAMS ARE CHANGING SPORTS.

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HISTORIC TRAILS EVERYONE CAN LOVE

WHAT CLIMATE CHANGE IS DOING TO OUR SPORTS

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NEW ENGLAND’S OUTDOOR MAGAZINE ON THE COVER

Patrick Brown carves up the slopes during Green Mountain Adaptive’s 2022 Stowe Monoski Day. Photo by Mike Hitelman

PUBLISHER

Angelo Lynn - publisher@vtsports.com

EDITOR/CO-PUBLISHER

Lisa Lynn - editor@vtsports.com

DESIGN & PRODUCTION Shawn Braley

MEDICAL ADVISORY BOARD

Dr. Nathan Endres, Dr. David Lisle, Dr. James Slauterbeck —University of Vermont Robert Larner College of Medicine; Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation; Jamie Sheahan, M.S., R.D.

CONTRIBUTORS

Brian Mohr, Phyl Newbeck, Leath Tonino,

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Vermont Adaptive has offered free climbing workshops —both indoors and outdoors (courtesy of Sunrise Mountain Guide) to veterans like this one. Photo Vermont Adaptive

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5 The Start

Aspiring, Not Inspiring

How to combat ableism.

6 News

Earth Day Reckoning

There are some sobering stats from the last 12 months of climate data in Vermont.

9 Trails

Four Trails Everyone Can Love

VERMONT SPORTS IS A PROUD MEMBER OF

Mud season is here, but these historic trails are open to everyone.

12 Feature

15 Special Section: Access/Ability

It’s humans’ tolerance for risk that lead to avalanches. Plus, new avy education online courses and observation sites.

16 Vasu Sojitra Scaling the Biggest Mountains.

19 Spencer Wood, Killington’s Paralympian.

20 Murphy’s Annex, Building

The Mountains Aren’t Risky...

30 Calendar

Race & Event Guide

34 Endgame

The Touchstone

What returning to places like Camel’s Hump can mean.

ADVERTISERS!

A Tribute to Adaptive Athletes:

Access with Vermont Adaptive.

22 Misha Pemble-Belkin, A New Mission.

25 Martha Steele, Recovering Grace.

26 Jamie Heath, Back to the Butterfly.

27 Greg Durso, Blazing Trails.

29 RAD Innovations, Making Everyone Mobile.

The deadline for the May issue of Vermont Sports is April 18. Contact ads@vtsports.com today to reserve your space.

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Vermont’s Outdoors: Accessible for All As members of the Vermont Outdoor Business Alliance, we believe it is essential to the future of our communities that outdoor recreation be accessible to all.

VOBA MEMBERS INCLUDE: 4 Points Vermont | Alpine Luddites | Bicycle Express | Bill Supple | Bivo | Bolton Valley Resort |Burke Mountain Resort | Burlington International Airport | Burton Snowboards | Cabot Creamery | Catamount Trail Association | Confluence Behavioral Health | Craftsbury Outdoor Center | Darn Tough Vermont® | Doug Stewart | Edgeworks Display | Equipe Sport | Formidable Media | Fuse Marketing | GM Consulting | Gordini | Grassroots Outdoor Alliance | Green Mountain Adaptive | Green Mountain Club | Height of Land Publications | Hitchhiker Bike Shop | HULA | Kaden Apparel | Killington/Pico Resorts | Kingdom Games | Kingdom Trail Association | Kit Lender | Local Motion | Lyndon Institute | M.E.T. Consulting | Marmot | Moonrocks | Mountain Road Outfitters | Onion River Outdoors | Outdoor Gear Exchange | Overeasy Apparel | Pale Morning Media | Patagonia Burlington | Petra Cliffs Climbing and Mountaineering Center | Pinnacle Outdoor Group | Place Creative Company | PowderJet Snowboards | Power Play Sports | Press Forward PR | REI Co-Op | Renoun Skis | Ridgeline Outdoor Collective | Sam’s Outdoor Outfitters | Sasha Dietschi-Cooper | Ski Moms Fun | Ski The East | Skida Headwear & Accessories | Skirack | Snowsports Industries America | Spruce Mortgage | Stoner//Andrews | Stowe Mountain Bike Academy | Sundog Creations | Ten Acre Creative | Terry Bicycles | The Mountain Goat | The Orvis Company | The Trust for Public Land | Three Peaks Media | Timber and Stone | T.J. Whalen | Train NEK | Trapp Family Lodge | Treeline Terrains | Tubbs Snowshoes | Turtle Fur | Velocity Sales and Marketing | Vermont Adaptive Ski & Sports | Vermont Bike & Brew | Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility | Vermont Community Loan Fund | Vermont Glove | Vermont Huts Association | Vermont Parks Forever | Vermont Ski + Ride Magazine | Vermont Sports Magazine | Vermont Ski & Snowboard Museum | Vermont Strategy Group | Vermont Trailwear | Waterbury Sports | Wendy Knight | Woodstock Inn and Resort

VermontOutdoorBusinessAlliance.org

Pedaling Burlington’s Bike Path with Vermont Adaptive.

Photo courtesy Vermont Adaptive

4 VTSPORTS.COM | MARCH/APRIL 2022

THE START

E STA B L I S H E D 1 9 7 1

ASPIRING, NOT INSPIRING

IT’S TIME WE THINK OF ADAPTIVE ATHLETES SIMPLY AS THIS: ATHLETES.

WEST HILL SHOP PUTNEY • VERMONT

Brattleboro’s Alicia Dana, a three-time Paralympic medalist. Photo courtesy Alicia Dana

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s I was interviewing Alicia Dana for Vermont Sports’ “10 Athletes of the Year” in our last issue, I said the word that many adaptive athletes don’t like to hear. Dana (shown above in Tokyo 2021) had been telling me how she was in the best shape of her life and how, at 53, she had gotten there.

“That’s inspiring,” I blurted out, thinking only of her age and her level of fitness, her two 2021 Paralympic medals and the third one she was likely to have won, if a mechanical had not cost her the race. In the half hour we had been talking I had nearly forgotten her disability.

There was a long silence.

“I’ve had a hard time coming to terms with that word, but it’s getting easier” said Dana, graciously.

What is it about that word, ‘inspiring?’

“I don’t want to be told I’m ‘inspiring,’ for what I can do despite my disability, like reaching up to get a box from the top shelf of the grocery aisles” says Greg Durso, program manager for the Kelly Brush Foundation. “I’d rather hear ‘aspiring.’”

Durso, who has completed an Ironman, several marathons and is hosting mountain bike camps, nailed it.

“Look at the person, not the disability,” is the cardinal rule of avoiding ableism, racism’s cousin. People have disabilities, they are not “disabled.” Often, they are not “suffering” from a condition, but thriving despite it. What many of the people we profile here have accomplished (summiting Denali, appearing in a feature film, doing an Ironman triathlon) dwarfs what most of us who have no disability have done. (For tips on how to combat ableism, see vtsports.com/ableism/).

In this issue, we tell the stories of a handful of athletes who have disabilities and the programs that have helped them participate in outdoor sports and recreation at all levels. Their accomplishments are impressive, period.

For every person profiled here, there were a thousand more stories we could have told. And for every Vasu Sojitra who summits Denali, there are others for

whom getting out on snow on a sit-ski is an equally big challenge.

“We tend to think of adaptive athletes as those with physical disabilities,” says Kim Jackson, communications manager for Vermont Adaptive Ski & Sports. “But those with cognitive challenges are actually the majority we serve.” As Pascale Savard of Green Mountain Adaptive also noted: “For some of our participants, indoor rock climbing means simply getting to the wall and putting a hand on it and that’s a huge step and just as impressive for them as someone who climbs a mountain.”

Vermont is fortunate to have a wealth of organizations that are increasing accessibility around the state, accessibility to everything from ski slopes to mountain bike trails.

Gradually, we are seeing more and more adaptive athletes participating in mainstream events, more sit-skis on the slopes, more hand-cycles on the roads and trails, and more and more events that benefit adaptive programs.

In March, Special Olympics Vermont hosts its annual Penguin Plunge in two locations and The High Fives’ Fat Ski-Athon takes place at Sugarbush. This June, Vermont’s Adaptive Charity Challenge returns to Killington. In September, the annual Kelly Brush Ride brings more than 700 cyclists and handcyclists to Middlebury. Participating in fundraising events is one way to help these organizations grow. Donating directly is another.

But perhaps the best way to both help these organizations and to raise your own awareness of the adaptive community and all that it has to offer, is to volunteer.

“I started out volunteering to get a free lift ticket,” says Barry Whitmore, a volunteer with Vermont Adaptive. “But it has come to mean so much more.

Now, I look forward to this,” he says.

www.westhillshop.com

­­—Lisa Lynn, Editor

MARCH/APRIL 2022| VTSPORTS.COM 5

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AN EARTH DAY RECKONING

The past 12 months may be a snapshot of what’s to come. Here’s the current climate data and how it impacts our sports.

NEWS

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. his winter is the last winter of dogsledding for Ken Haggett.

Haggett has run his Peace Pups dogsledding business near Morrsiville since 2005. Since then, he’s seen the number of weeks he can take the sleds out on snow drop from 16 weeks down to 8 weeks. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a winter without snow,” he said recently.

He might be right. And the Vermont Climate Assessment isn’t any rosier.

The report was compiled by researchers at University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources and Gund Institute for Environment.

Issued in Nov., 2021, it starkly stated: Downhill skiing, with the help of snowmaking, will likely remain largely viable in Vermont up until approximately 2050. By 2080, the Vermont ski season will be shortened by two weeks (under a low emissions scenario) or by a whole month (under a high emissions scenario), and some ski areas will remain viable.”

It’s not just skiing that’s impacted.

Here’s a look at climate indicators from the past 12 months, and how climate change is impacting our outdoor sports.

Despite sub-zero days in Januarywhen anyone could make snow (above), as of March 1 (below) the total season snowfall on Mt. Mansfield was shaping up to be one of the poorest seasons on record and consistent with a downward trend. Photo by David Brueckner; chart by Dan Mellinger of the vtsnowdata.com dashboard

water temperature has increased by up to 6.8°F (3.8°C) in Lake Champlain since monitoring began in 1964.

Lake Champlain has frozen over less frequently in the last 50 years than it did in the previous 130-year period.”

Impacts: Swimming and water sports, fishing and fish habitat, hiking and mountain biking.

SNOWPACK The measurement tool skiers have looked at to determine snow base – the snow stake atop Mt. Mansfield — has told a sad story these past 12 months.

On April 10, 2021, the National Weather Service recorded just 19 inches at the Mt. Mansfield snow stake, the lowest snowpack ever, beating the 20 inches recorded in 1958. The average for that date is 50 inches.

In October 2021, Mt. Mansfield set a record for the latest freeze ever.

On March 6, 2022, just as this issue went to press, temperatures atop Mt. Mansfield hit 48 degrees and snowpack dropped to 46 inches. Impacts: Skiing and riding. River flows and water temperatures ( which have an effect on fishing), whitewater boating and a variety of other sports.

ICE OUTS Another measurement of climate change is the date when ice on Vermont’s ponds melts. Since 1972, the Fairbanks Museum has been recording ice-out dates on Stiles Pond.

“Despite the large variability from year to year, trends are clear for Stile’s Pond over the past forty winters: Freezeup has occurred later by 4.3 (±1.0) days per decade. Ice-out has come earlier by 2.7 (±0.9) days per decade. Lake

AIR TEMPERATURES AND HABITAT

frozen duration has decreased by 6.8 (±1.5) days per decade. These results show that as our northern climate has warmed substantially in fall, winter and spring, Stile’s Pond is frozen for 4 weeks less on average than forty years ago,” wrote Vermont climatologist Alan Betts in a 2011 paper.

For Vermonters who wager on the ice out on Joe’s Pond, that truth is driven home. In the 20 years between 1990 and 2010, the ice out only occurred twice on or before April 15. Between 2010 and 2020, it happened four times.

In 2021, the block that measures the ice-out on Joe’s Pond fell through the ice on April 10. Impacts: ice fishing, ice skating, snowmobiling, fish habitat.

WATER TEMPERATURE AND PRECIPITATION The Vermont Climate assessment notes that “precipitation has increased 21% since 1900. Vermont now experiences 2.4 more days of heavy precipitation than in the 1960s, mostly in the summer.” Those heavy rains have increased run-off from farms, roads and towns, adding to both pollution and the prevalence of algal blooms in Lake Champlain. They also wash out trails and destroy fish habitat in rivers. Between July 12 and 23, 2021, Burlington had to close its beaches seven days due to toxic algal blooms. The situation is exacerbated by warming water temperatures.

According to the Lake Champlain Basin Program: “The average August surface

Vermont’s annual average temperature has increased by almost 2℉ since 1900, but winter temperatures have increased 2.5 times faster than annual temperatures over the last 60 years.

This has already had a profound effect on wildlife and habitat. Lyme disease in Vermont used to be rare in the early 1990s. It is now common to see over 400 confirmed cases reported in a year. Moose ticks, which are now more prevalent, have also decimated the moose population, dropping it to nearly half what it was at its peak in 2005. In addition, the Vermont Climate Assessment states: “Roughly 70 bird species are expected to disappear from Vermont in the next 25 years due to climate change, including the common loon and hermit thrush. Moose numbers are projected to decline.” Perhaps the one bright spot for hunters? Whitetailed deer populations are expected to increase. Impacts: hunting, fishing, birdwatching, hiking. —L.L.

MARCH/APRIL 2022 | VTSPORTS.COM 7

TRAILS

4

HISTORIC

TRAILS EVERYONE WILL LOVE

THIS MUD SEASON, TRY THESE HISTORIC TRAILS, EACH WITH UNIVERSALLY ACCESSIBLE SECTIONS.

Emma Austin explores Ripton’s Robert Frost Trail, a trail that her father helped rebuild in 2021 so it would be universally accessible.

Photo by Angelo Lynn

I

t’s mud season. Your favorite trails may be closed but now is the time to discover some of Vermont’s most scenic and historic short trails that are open and universally accessible. Over the last decade, a number of organizations— including the Vermont Dept. of Forests, Parks and Recreation and the Green Mountain National Forest, the Green Mountain Club and others—have worked hard to make trails that anyone can use, with a focus on some of Vermont’s important historic sites. These are trails you can access if you are in an adaptive bike, a wheelchair or a stroller, or pushing one.

SENTINEL STATE PARK, LAKE WILLOUGHBY If you want to get a sense of how glaciers shaped Vermont’s landscape, head to Lake Willoughby. The classic photos of the stunning, fjord-like lake are usually taken from the south end, but there’s an equally impressive view from Sentinel State Park in Westmore. The small park sits on just 365 acres, the site of the former Sentinel Rock Farm, which the Wright family donated to the state of Vermont in 1997.

The highlight of the park is Sentinel Rock, a giant boulder or glacier erratic, that sits in a meadow high on a plateau with big views out across the lake and all of Westmore. A short universal access trail built by the Northwoods Conservation Corps in 2018 leads right to the boulder, which geologists believe was left when the glaciers receded 13,000 years ago.

Interpretive signs tell the history and geology of the area and outline how the boulder was cut so portions could be used

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One of the prettiest views of Smugglers’ Notch is from the Barnes Camp Loop boardwalk.

Photo courtesy Green Mountain Club

for the farm’s homestead foundation. Also in the area, The Friends of Willoughby State Forest are also working with the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation to bring CCC Camp 55 back to life. The development will include two wheelchair-accessible trails, one around the swimming hole and one from the old forester’s house to the picnic area, located off Route 5.

BARNES CAMP LOOP, STOWE Route 108, which travels between the ski areas of Smugglers’ Notch and Stowe, is one of the most beautiful drives in the state. In the winter when it’s closed to traffic, it is a favorite route for skiers.

But some of the prettiest views of the Notch, which smugglers used to bring supplies back and forth to the U.S. from Canada during the War of 1812, is from the Barnes Camp Loop in the spring, summer and fall. The 1.8-mile loop starts at the Green Mountain Club’s historic Barnes Camp visitor center near the base

of Stowe Mountain Resort. A universally accessible boardwalk was completed in the fall of 2017, thanks to the Green Mountain Club, Vermont State Parks and an $800,000 federal grant secured by Senator Bernie Sanders. The 600-foot, 5-foot-wide boardwalk crosses a beaver meadow and pond, with interpretive signs along the way. To the west are views of the impressive cliffs of the Notch where smugglers would hide behind some of the giant boulders as they crossed the spine of the Green Mountains.

ROBERT FROST TRAIL, RIPTON While building any public trail can be challenging and expensive, building a trail that has the width, slopes, surface and turning radii that wheelchairs and other mobility devices need —and which meet federal requirements—is even more so. Just ask Brian Austin. Austin, who works with the U.S. Forest Service’s Green Mountain National Forest, helped rebuild the Robert Frost Trail, which opened in

spring of 2021 with a new boardwalk that crosses a wetland and the East Branch of the Middlebury River. Austin’s daughter Emma, joined Sen. Patrick Leahy (who helped secured a $600,000 grant for the trail), at the ribbon cutting, and navigated her electric-powered wheelchair easily across the boardwalk and bridges and up the gravel pathways to clearings and wild blueberry meadows with views of the Breadloaf Mountain Wilderness and the Moosalamoo National Recreation Area.

What makes this a must-see historic trail are the Robert Frost poems posted on placards along the way. For 39 summers Frost lived and worked in a cabin on Homer Noble Farm just across Route 125 and the views and the land have barely changed since his time there.

BALDWIN TRAIL, MT. INDEPENDENCE Anyone who wants to understand Vermont’s place in the history of the United States should head to the Mount Independence Historic Site/ “From July 1776 to July 1777, the fate of the newly independent United States of America rested on this rocky peninsula on the east side of Lake Champlain, located in what is today Orwell, Vermont,” the website states. From Mount Independence, and Ft. Ticonderoga, directly across Lake Champlain the American Northern Army helped foil the British fleet and army that was attempting to move south from Canada. The 1.6-mile universally accessible Baldwin Trail is part of a 6-mile network of trails that pass by Lake Champlain overlooks, as well as replicas of the soldier huts, blockhouses and encampments. Signage along the way tells the stories of the battles.

THE BRIEF HISTORY OF SLEDS

ARCHITECT DAVID SELLERS KNOWS HIS SLEDS AND HIS SLED EXHIBIT AT WAITSFIELD’S MADSONIAN MUSEUM IS WORTH THE VISIT.

T

here is no other museum quite like the Madsonian Museum of Industrial Design on Bridge Street in Waitsfield. If you haven’t been, you need to —and the current exhibit on the history of the sled is good reason to go now.

The brainchild of acclaimed architect and designer David Sellers, the Madsonian is what you might get if surrealist artist and sculptor Marcel Duchamp (known for his objets trouvées), lived in the Mad River Valley and collected antiques and toys.

The difference? Sellers, who has been named one of the top 100 architects in American and is considered one of the fathers of the design/build movement, selects what he displays for both their form and their function.

Sellers, now 83, is endowed with both the crazy white hair and wild energy of Christopher Lloyd’s mad scientist in Back to the Future. “See these, aren’t these just marvelous old sleds,” he says with the excitement as walks past the displays.

Some handcrafted designs are carved of wood, others, like the classic Flexible Flyer, which was invented by Samuel

One of the early Flexible Flyers (left) sits next to Sherman Poppen’s original yellow Snurfer.

Leeds Allen in 1880, use steel runners.

“Those were really only good on ice,” notes Sellers, “but they don’t work in powder.”

There are some of the early jack jumpers – basically a seat attached to a wooden ski. Perhaps the most unique in the exhibit is Sherman Poppen’s original Snurfer, which was the precursor to the modern snowboard. That was one of 10 sleds donated by Mad River Valley resident Dan Reicher, the former U.S. Assistant Secretary for Energy. Next to the Snurfer is Poppen’s detailed drawing showing how he came up with the design which he created as a Christmas gift for his children in 1965.

A second room in the exhibit is devoted to Sellers’ own invention, the Mad River Rocket. “The trouble with most sleds is we kept getting stuck in the deep snow,” he says.

So, in the 1980s, he began thinking about designing a sled of his own.

Inspired by the Mad River Canoe’s design, Sellers and fellow architect and Prickly Mountain neighbor Jim Sanford began designing and worked with Mad River Canoe to mold the plastic prototpyes.

NEWS “The idea is you kneel on the rocket with your knees strapped in and you can steer by using your body weight and hands,” says Sellers. “It just surfs through the deep snow. We created a new sport – backcountry sledding!”

They soon discovered that a ridge, embedded in the bottom of a plastic mold would help the sleds track better. The Mad River Rocket was patented in 1987 and production began. It’s still being produced today.

The Rocket room shows movies customers have submitted of themselves careening through untracked powder in the trees on a Mad River Rocket, catching huge air off jumps, and even doing aerial tricks. “Look at that, can you believe what they are doing!” says Sellers gleefully as he watches the movie. Behind him are drawings from a cartoon book that was made when the sleds first came out, “The Adventures of Rocket Man.” I ask Sellers if he is still sledding. He hesitates and then says, “Well, I had my knees worked on a few years ago but I am going to get back into it.”

With David Sellers, anything is possible.

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THE MOUNTAINS AREN’T RISKY,

HUMANS ARE EVERY TIME WE HEAD INTO THE BACKCOUNTRY, WE TAKE RISKS. HOW WE MANAGE THOSE RISKS IS WHAT MAKES THE DIFFERENCE.

BY BRIAN MOHR

Ian Forgays, skiing in the Adirondacks several years ago. Forgays was killed in an avalanche on Mt. Washington in 2021. Photo by Brian Mohr/EmberPhoto

W

hen my good buddy and longtime ski partner, Ian Forgays, was swept to his death by an avalanche on Mt. Washington last winter, I was thousands of miles away with my family. I could only imagine what happened, based on my knowledge of Ian as a skier, how he

10 VTSPORTS.COM | MARCH/APRIL 2022

tended to navigate the mountains, and his uniquely personal tolerance for risk.

To this day I have these unusually clear visions of how it all went down.

I don’t think he suffered much, if at all, and given the elation he conveyed in a short note and photo he texted to me that afternoon – “Amazing day out

here… Miss ya guys!” ­­­—I know in my heart that Ian went out on a high note.

Ian spent countless days over the last four decades moving about our northeastern mountains on skis, with relatively few mishaps. Some describe Ian’s avalanche-related death as a freak accident, that getting caught up in an

avalanche is one of the inherent risks of traveling through steep mountain environments during winter, and that what he experienced could happen to anyone.

Personally, I look at what happened very differently. I believe Ian was well aware of the risks to which he was

OPINION

exposed, and he accepted them, as he always did. Ian had a penchant for speed and adrenaline and had endured his fair share of close calls over the years. He was also incredibly skilled.

This time, sadly (we miss him dearly), he made a bad call. But it was no accident.

Ian was skiing alone that day, as he often did, and as many of us choose to, as well, happily. There’s tremendous joy, freedom and clarity experienced when skiing solo, be it through remote backcountry terrain, but even along the fringes of ski areas or the larger gladed areas within them. It’s also easy

to assume that there’s an inherently greater risk to skiing alone, and that Ian’s day could have ended very differently had he been with a partner.

Perhaps that is true. Then again, things could have gone doubly wrong, too.

Clearly, risk is relative – utterly dependent on a skier’s experience,

knowledge and skills. There were plenty of ways for Ian to ski in the mountains that day with a very minimal risk of injury, and zero avalanche risk. He had the skills and knowledge to move in this way. Yet, Ian opted for a greater level of risk. It’s what made him feel alive,

MARCH/APRIL 2022 | VTSPORTS.COM 11

energized, and motivated.

In many ways, navigating mountains on skis is not much different than navigating daily life. We all weigh risks, and our choices have tremendous consequences. What kind of food should we eat? Do we drive in the rain and snow tonight? Should we put more sunscreen on our face? We should probably get to bed, yes? Our choices have a direct impact on our future, be it hours, or years ahead, in time. When someone dies from heart disease, or gets banged up in a car accident, it’s easy to say it could happen to anyone.

But could it? Our choices often have a profound impact on our futures.

Ultimately, skiing is a never-ending game of personal risk management.

How we approach every turn, every line through the trees, and every gravityfueled moment, has consequences.

We consider our bodies, our jobs, our friends and families, the ski area staff and the ski patrollers. When we are in the backcountry, we consider how our choices could impact wildlife, the privacy and experience of others sharing the mountains…and limited search and rescue resources. Of course, most of us do our best to stay safe.

Yet, we are also human. We push ourselves. To know our limits, we’ve got to test them. We grow the sport, and ourselves as individuals, by exploring new techniques and by trying new things. And we make mistakes – occasionally big ones – but with some

What’s Your Avy IQ? This season, nearly every course offered by East Coast Avalanche Education (many in conjunction with such backcountry gear shops such as Vermont’s Onion River Outdoors, Outdoor Gear Exchange and Petra Cliffs) sold out. That’s where Mountain Sense (mtnsense.com) comes in with its online avy training. Mark Smiley, a IFMGA Certified Mountain Guide out of Jackson Hole has de-

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wiggle room, we ski away, unscathed.

However, when there’s no room for error, things can quickly unravel.

This past February’s avalanche incident in New York’s Adirondack Mountains drives home the importance of leaving some room for error. While two skiers were ascending one of the Angle Slides on Wright Peak, they remotely triggered a sizeable avalanche that proceeded to run more than 500 feet and bury them both.

The stability of the snow pack was questionable, and a recent spike in temperatures was a red flag, but neither factor kept these skiers out of harm’s way. Luckily, one skier was able to free himself rather quickly. He then scrambled to locate his friend (they were

veloped a series of online courses to teach everything from Smartphone Navigation ($19) to The Ultimate Guide to Backcountry Skiing & Ski Mountaineering ($245). The online courses should not be a substitute for the in-person learning that the three-day American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education Level I and Level II certification offer—and don’t let them give you a false sense of security. But they can help you learn more about traveling in the backcountry and prep you for the Level I and II training. One of the most useful

both wearing avalanche transceivers), who had been buried under several feet of snow for more than ten minutes. He was unconscious and barely breathing.

Yet, miraculously, while his friend continued to dig him free, he awoke.

Fortunately, both skiers were relatively unscathed, and they proceeded to head for home on their own, safely.

While the skiers’ ability to selfrescue played a role in keeping them alive, several factors could have easily led to a very different, and potentially tragic, outcome. Was the avalanche a sign that they should not have been in the mountains that day? No, but it was an indication that some areas were especially dangerous, and that backcountry travel require extra

elements of Smiley’s program is his “ninja” skill level chart which helps skiers and riders gain an objective measure of their abilities, based on belts and stripes (see above) and to choose their backcountry partners accordingly. “I think everyone knows from karate movies that white is the least and black is the most experienced, and brown the second most,” Smiley says. “But then it gets fuzzy with blue and purple and red,” he admits.

caution.

Still, there is always a safe way to move about the mountains, no matter the snow conditions, weather or terrain. It requires traveling honestly within the limits of your knowledge and experience, while making safe choices, repeatedly, throughout the day. If it were only as easy as it sounds…

As the days warm and at least some of us are lured to the steeper alpine regions of our northeastern states and beyond, let’s play it safer than ever this spring. Let’s listen to our instincts, travel more carefully and cautiously than ever, and leave ourselves some extra room for error. There’s no doubt that we can still have just as much fun.

And this way, tomorrow, we can get out there and do it again.

Brian Mohr of Moretwon, VT, has been successfully managing risks in the mountains since he first descended the slopes of Vermont’s Killington Peak, in his mother’s womb. He coowns Ember Photography with his wife, Emily Johnson. They have led and self-guided countless backcountry skiing adventures, safely, through remote regions of the Arctic, the Andes, Alaska, the Alps, and many more.

New Sites for Avy Observations When two Adirondack skiers, Nate Trachte and Caitlin Kelly, set up the web-site Adirondack Community Avalanche Project this winter (AdkAvy.org), they could not have known that their first incident report would be about the Angle Slides avalanche that buried two skiers on Saturday, February 12.

Since the website launched in January, more than 30 crowd-sourced observations have been logged on the site. Prior to Feb. 12, detailed observations noted “whumpfing,” “cracking,” signs of recent slides and, in some cases, show photos of slides in the Adirondacks. They detail the elevation, the location, the aspect and observations.

In the White Mountains, the Mount Washington Avalanche Center regularly posts conditions and incidents reports. To date, nothing like this has existed for the Adirondacks where slides are common.

“I think it’s a good start,” says Joshua Worth who has been teaching avalanche courses in the Adirondacks for 13 years and instructs the National Ski Patrol on avalanche safety. “But you need someone

who has some professional avalanche expertise to sift through the data that’s being put out there and put into some sort of cohesiveness. You have no idea what experience level the people who are posting observations have,” he says.

While many avalanche centers do collect skier observations, ones like the Mt. Washington Avalanche Center or the Eastern Sierra Avalanche Center also have trusted observers and professional forecasters who sift through the reports. “Many people around here believe it’s something the Department of Environmental Conservation should take up,” says Worth.

“But that’s a hard leap monetarily and also comes with lots of risks,” he says.

Recently, the National Weather Service launched an experimental avalanche site for Vermont and the Adirondacks. At present, it posts conditions, recent weather and snowpack history and alerts at weather. gov/btv/AvalancheWeather.

Still, as avy courses fill up and Worth sees the number of backcountry skiers in the ADK double, he believes AvyAdk.org is a good place to start. “We’re getting more tourists and with better gear, people are skiing steeper places than they used to,” he says.

“Getting info from sites like AvyAdk.org is only going to help raise awareness of the conditions.”

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ACCESS &ABILITY A SPECIAL SECTION HONORING VERMONT’S ATHLETES WITH DISABILITIES AND THE PROGRAMS THAT ARE HELPING THEM.

A Vermont Adaptive monoskier carves it up at Mt. Ellen. Photo courtesy Vermtnt Adaptive

I

t’s been a big year in outdoor sports for Vermont.

Vermont athletes came back from Beijing with 6 medals. By the time you read this, Paralympic athlete Spencer Wood may have added to that count.

In last summer’s Paralympic Games, Alicia Dana showed that age doesn’t matter one whit and brought home two medals in hand-cycling. She was a likely bet to win a third before a mechanical failure while she was in first place robbed her of a podium. Dana was one of the 10 Athletes of the Year we profiled in the Jan/Feb. issue of Vermont Sports.

There have been other big milestones over the last 12 months. University of Vermont grad Vasu Sojitra

and Peter McAfee became the first amputees to summit and ski Denali. Vermont Adaptive opened its new 4,000 square foot facility at Sugarbush’s Mt. Ellen. The National Forest Service completed the restoration of the Robert Frost Trail, making it accessible and meeting the Forest Service Trail Accessibility Guidelines (FSTAG).

These are all steps towards erasing barriers to outdoor recreation and expanding opportunities for people with disabilities.

They are important steps. There need to be more.

More than 110,000 Vermonters have a disability.

One in five are living with one disability and one in 10 have two or more. About 55,000 Vermonters have

a mobility disability. With 20 percent of Vermont’s population now over 65, that number is likely to rise.

In the following pages, we tell the stories of several athletes with disabilities, and just some of the many programs and people who have aided them. Over the years, this magazine has told others’ stories and we will continue to do so. But in this special issue we wanted to honor a number of athletes in one place.

Like racism, ableism builds stereotypes—sometimes unconsciously. “See the person, not the disability,” is a mantra to remember. No two disabilities are the same, no two stories are the same. Here are just a few.

MARCH/APRIL 2022 | VTSPORTS.COM 15

SCALING THE

BIGGEST

MOUNTAINS VASU SOJITRA CLIMBED AND SKIED DENALI, ON ONE LEG. NOW, HE’S HOPING HIS CLIMB WILL HELP OTHERS BREAK DOWN BARRIERS AND BUILD ACCESS FOR ALL FOR OUTDOOR RECREATION.

BY DAN EGAN

“S

ix dudes, 1000 pounds of gear, 17 days, a 6000-meter peak and 10 legs” is how Vasu Sojitra’s Instagram story described his historic climb and descent of North America’s highest peak on June 20, 2021.

If you do the math, that is two legs short of a normal expedition because two of its members, Sojitra and Peter McAfee, were the first two amputees

16 VTSPORTS.COM | MARCH/APRIL 2022

to ski from the summit of Denali in Alaska. The expedition was featured in Warren Miller Entertainment’s 2021 film Winter Starts Now. It was not the first time Sojitra was the subject of a movie. In 2013, Sojitra was a senior at the University of Vermont. During his time there, and with mentorship from the UVM Outing Club, Sojitra became a fixture in backcountry skiing in the Green

Mountains. To go uphill, he fashioned what he calls his “ninja sticks,” attaching a snowshoe extender to poles, then swapping the bases out for outrigger skis for the descent.

Tyler Wilkinson-Ray, now an acclaimed filmmaker, graduated from UVM the year before and was a friend and ski buddy. His award-winning 2014 film about Sojitra, “Out on a Limb,” was shown at numerous film festivals across

the country.

“I have a simple saying I like to repeat to myself during big climbs and adventure races, ‘I’ve done hard things and I have the capacity to do harder things’,” said Sojitra.

It is a mantra that rings true not only in his athletic feats, but throughout his life. Sojitra lost his leg at nine months old when he was diagnosed with septicemia. His parents, who

UVM grad Vasu Sojitra descending Alaska’s Denali, the highest peak in North America. Photo by Ted Hesser

MARCH/APRIL 2022 | VTSPORTS.COM 17

immigrated from India, had only hours to act when the doctors informed them that their second son would lose his life if they didn’t operate immediately.

“There was no choice in the matter for us, the decision saved his life,” said his mother, Rama Sojitra. “He was just a baby, this is the only life he knows. His brother, Amir, always treated him as an equal. He has never once complained and my husband and I have never tried to hold him back at anything.”

As a child Sojitra tried to use a prosthetic leg, but found it slowed him down while playing with his friends.

“He just came home one day and said he wasn’t going to use it anymore,” said his mother. “He and his brother played on the same hockey team, Vasu was the goalie, the same swim team, and he learned to ski with their friends, not through a program.”

Sojitra gained notoriety while ripping the Green Mountains and going on backcountry forays with his college buddies. His story started to appear in magazines and films. He earned sponsorships. Recently, he became the first disabled athlete to be sponsored by The North Face.

The relationship with the company started when Sojitra met famed mountaineer Conrad Anker at a climbing gym in Bozeman, Montana, where Sojitra now lives. Anker oversees the marketing for The North Face Global Athlete Team.

“He has ignited the conversation at The North Face about inclusion, disabilities, and what can be done, Anker said, adding “this is important stuff.”

Sojitra has harnessed social media and has over 46,000 followers on Instagram. He is using the platform to advocate for inclusion, diversity, the disabled, public land access, and native people.

He is a founder of The Outdoor F.U.T.U.R.E Initiative, which is looking to build a national equity fund to help youth of all backgrounds get outdoors.

He also co-founded the Inclusive Outdoors Project, which creates affinity spaces in the outdoors for people with disabilities, people of color and the LGBTQ community.

“Consider me your friendly neighborhood disrupter with a goal of bridging gaps between abled and disabled, communities of color, normalizing what human is, what public access is and where our public lands came from,” says Sojitra. “If we understand we are stewards of the land that can elevate the conversation in a way that protects and saves our planet.

It’s about inclusion for me, especially in

18 VTSPORTS.COM | MARCH/APRIL 2022

Pete McAfee and Vasu Sojitra, the first amputees to summit and ski Denali. Photo by Ted Hesser

the outdoor recreational space.”

Mountain guide and activist Don Nguyen, who founded Climbers of Color based in the Seattle area, agrees. “There are so few Asians, Black and Brown people in the mountains and the barrier for access comes down to exclusion,” says Nguyen, who is of Vietnamese descent. “I started my company to provide access for people like me. Vasu is amplifying that by using his platform to show people of color and disabilities, what can be done.”

Nguyen was guiding on Denali in June with clients at the same time as Sojitra. “As a guide my main instruction to clients is efficiency, do not waste energy, but for a one-legged person like Vasu, I don’t even know what to tell him because he has had to develop his own pace and climbing system. He summited Denali faster than my ablebodied climbers,” emphasized Nguyen.

“He is my advocacy buddy,” said Joe Stone, director of mission at Teton Adaptive in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and who survived a “Speed Flying” accident that left him a high functioning quadriplegic. “It is hard to change culture,” he added. “Getting people to shift perspective is not easy. He is using these major accomplishments to shine a light on inclusion and access. Vasu is playing the slow game and has a big mission. And people are taking notice.”

Stone has been preaching and fighting for inclusion for disabled athletes in events such as marathons, mountain biking, skiing and paragliding.

“What Vasu and I are talking about is inclusion for everyone in events, not special access. For us, inclusion means when a family comes to a resort and a family member has a disability, don’t separate the family in a separate building with different instructors.

Rather, educate the entire resort staff on how to provide the services and upgrade the facilities to provide access.

That family will have a transformative experience and come back,” says Stone Julie Markarian, a Child Life Specialist in Boston who worked with Sojitra, can see first-hand his influence on kids with injuries.

“When it comes to advocacy, he is so mindful and now he has all these sponsorships, which he is using every step of the way to leverage and promote the outdoor space for everyone. I use him as an example and when you see Tony Hawk, Conrad Anker and other big names commenting and sharing his posts, it elevates the conversation.”

Roy Tuscany, who grew up in Vermont, is the founder of the High Fives Foundation, which focuses on preventing life-changing injuries and provides resources and hope to athletes who have been injured. His foundation

has raised over $4.5 million since 2009 for injured athletes and veterans. He knows how hard it is to find influencers who will magnify the message and cause.

“In the advocacy world there are no products, rather we trade in words and services and our value is equated in trust and in time,” explains Tuscany.

“Vasu, Joe, and me, we have all been doing this for a long time and now we have able-bodied influencers leveraging our voices, which helps to ramp up diversity and access to the outdoors — and that changes lives.”

Sojitra believes in the Golden Rule 2.0. “Treat others as they want to be treated.”

When asked what he would say to a room full of the outdoor industry leaders, his answer is straightforward: “Help us by providing the resources for the underserved communities of color and disabilities. And build relationships with these communities by hiring a diverse staff within the leadership of your companies. Research shows the more diverse leadership the more profitable the organization becomes.”

It’s a message he delivered recently to the leaders of Vermont’s outdoor businesses at a forum on Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) hosted by the Vermont Outdoor Business Alliance.

“These are not just my achievements,” Sojitra explains, “they are the achievements of my community, my parents, my brother and so many others. I’m just trying to expand the narrative promoting access and how we can help each other.”

To expand that narrative, Sojitra says, storytelling is the key.

“When you go back to our roots, we have always been storytellers. That’s the way humans build connections with communities. The problem is social media isn’t very social. It’s being used to divide us. So building a story around my accomplishments can bridge the divide,” he says.

To keep that narrative going, Sojitra’s next adventure will be an attempt to climb Cotopaxi, an active volcano rising to 19,347 feet in the Andes of South America.

Extreme skiing pioneer Dan Egan has appeared in 14 Warren Miller films and lives in Big Sky, Montana, His book “Thirty Years in a White Haze” provides a first-hand account of the Mount Elbrus disaster and documents the evolution of “extreme skiing”. Egan was inducted into the U.S. Skiing and Snowboarding Hall of Fame in 2017.

F

our years ago, Pittsfield’s Spencer Wood was about to compete in his first Paralympic Games.

Back then, he was a sophomore at the University of Colorado-Boulder, a guy with a big smile who was eager to prove himself on the world stage.

But he had only recently discovered Paralympic skiing, and the 2018 Winter Paralympic Games in PyeongChang did not go as he had hoped.

Much has changed for Wood in the past four years. He is now a college graduate, and his confidence has soared.

At the most recent Para Snow Sports World Championships in January, Wood was the second American in the downhill and super-G results. He also scored a top-10 performance in super-G at a WPAS World Cup in Sweden at the end of January.

Then in early March, Wood was back for another go at a medal, one of 736 Paralympians competing at the Olympic venues in China in 78 events.

So, what made the difference for the 25-year-old Vermonter?

KILLINGTON’S PARALYMPIAN GROWING UP IN KILLINGTON WITH PARENTS WHO WERE SKI INSTRUCTORS, SPENCER WOOD QUICKLY LEARNED TO SKI FAST. AT THE 2022 BEIJING PARALYMPICS, HE WANTED TO SHOW THE WORLD JUST HOW FAST.

BY PEGGY SHINN

THE SKI TOWN HOPEFUL First, some background. Wood’s parent were ski instructors at Killington, and they had Spencer and his older sister on skis around the time they could walk and soon racing gates. Spencer didn’t learn he had a disability until he was 10.

He had a left-brain stroke in utero, which left him with right-side hemiparesis (permanent weakness and muscle deficits on his right side). His parents held off telling him because they wanted him to adapt to his physical impairment without using it as an excuse.

They finally told him when he wanted to try out for the baseball team. “When I was in fourth grade I wondered why I wasn’t progressing in sports, then my parents told me I was disabled,” Wood said. “I run with a limp so my right side challenges are more pronounced in sports that include running,” he told The Mountain Times in 2014.

On skis though, Wood looked like any other kid, “Skiing was something that came so naturally to me being a Vermonter and growing up in a ski town,” he said. “It seemed totally normal to just to go out and rip with your friends and see who could be the fastest one down the hill.”

When he was a high school junior at the Killington Mountain School, Wood’s coaches suggested that he try Para skiing. KMS coach Greg Hadley had worked in the adaptive ski world and knew it could be a gateway to bigger things for Wood. Wood was classified as LW4, the same classification for

Wood onsite in China, getting ready for his Paralympic runs.

Photo curtesy Spencer Woo

standing skiers with a below-the-knee amputation, and he finished fifth in his first Para alpine race.

That was January 2015, and Wood has never looked back. While he was in college at Boulder, he trained at the National Sports Center for the Disabled in Winter Park.

But the PyeongChang Paralympic Winter Games did not go as Wood had hoped. Competing against legends like seven-time Paralympic medalist Aleksei Bugaev from Russia, Wood finished 25th in the giant slalom, and he did not finish the second run of slalom.

“After being 20 seconds out in PyeongChang, I was not feeling too hot,” he confessed.

The following November, Wood was reclassified as LW9-2 after a board of doctors took his right arm deficiencies into account. He competed on the Paraski circuit in three Europa

Cup races immediately after the reclassification and finished on the podium in the last one.

He was happy to finally see his hard work pay off. Two months later, Wood scored his first Paraski World Cup podium — third in a slalom on his birthday. Even better, he was only 1.2 seconds behind American Thomas Walsh, a two-time bronze medalist at the 2019 Para World Championships.

Wood has yet to beat his friend Walsh in a race (the two men both attended ski racing academies in Vermont and are friends). But don’t ask Wood to compare himself to his friend.

Three-time Paralympic gold medalist Alana Nichols once advised Wood not to compare himself to other athletes.

“You’re only limiting how much you can improve,” Wood remembered Nichols telling him. “Compare yourself to yourself.”

A NEW OUTLOOK The major turning point for Wood came this past summer. He had just graduated from CU-Boulder with a degree in communications and was at summer training camps in Europe.

“I was like, I can’t be going to the next Games feeling like this,” he thought. “I can’t have regrets in the start again.”

So he returned to the U.S. and moved into the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, where he mountain biked, worked out, ate, and slept. Every day, he found inspiration looking at the “ginormous” American flag that hangs in the training center.

“It was a solid six weeks of pain cave,” he said. “I really needed it for my mental health, and it was fantastic.”

While working out at the OTC, he also thought of one of his good friends who had passed away earlier in the summer from a fentanyl overdose. It made Wood realize that he could not take any day for granted.

“It upped my game and really helped me focus in on what my goals were, how hard I want to achieve those goals, how badly I need to achieve them because I just have had so many years of mediocrity,” said Wood. “And I just can’t stand for that anymore.”

Wood also began working with a sports psychologist who suggested he try something new in his workout routine every day. As he trained at the OTC, Wood kept asking himself, “Can I work a little harder on the mountain bike? Can I get my form a little more explosive in the gym? Can I eat more food? Sleep longer?”

At this season’s first Para NorAm races in Panorama, British Columbia, in December Wood finished no lower than fifth and podiumed twice.

Wood then traveled to Switzerland for the first Para World Cup races but suffered a concussion in training.

After recovering, then training again at home in Vermont over the holidays, Wood headed to Europe again for World Championships in Lillehammer, Norway, where he scored a series of top 20 finishes in downhill, super-G, and combined.

At the Beijing Paralympics, Wood planned to compete in all five alpine disciplines: slalom, GS, super-G, downhill, and combined, with his best chances coming in the speed events.

“My goal,” he continued, “is to not really focus on the result but just focus on how much improvement I have made and be happy, be content that my finish is as good as I could have gotten and that I did everything I could to make my family and my nation proud.”

MARCH/APRIL 2022 | VTSPORTS.COM 19

BUILDING ACCESS O

WITH A NEW BASE LODGE, VERMONT ADAPTIVE SKI AND SPORT IS CHANGING THE LANDSCAPE FOR ADAPTIVE ATHLETES. BY LISA LYNN

n a snowy day, the parking lots are packed and the base lodge at Sugarbush’s Mt. Ellen is buzzing. A father and daughter walk out to the snow where an orange fence is set up, marking a steep drop.

The father reaches out with his glove tentatively to touch the fence. “What is this?” he asks. He is blind. His daughter tells him, then they meet their guide and head up the lift.

Nearby, the doors at the lower level of the lodge swing open and skiers who have been indoors picking out their sitskis funnel out.

Inside, in an adjacent room, a group of parents with their children, many of whom have cognitive disabilities, are getting ready for the Sunday race series and connecting with their guides. They all seem to know each other and are laughing and joking with their guides.

“We are here for everyone and for anyone who has any kind of disability,” says Kim Jackson, Vermont Adaptive’s director of communications. “People often think of us as just for athletes with physical disabilities, but the majority have cognitive challenges,” she says.

“Here,” in this instance is Vermont Adaptive’s newest facility, the 4,000-square-foot, $2.7 million Murphy’s Annex at Sugarbush’s Mt. Ellen lodge. It opened in December 2021, replacing what had been a crowded, 400-square-foot space in the lodge that dated to the 1990s. Now, a big ground-floor room houses more than a dozen sit-skis, which can be easily moved in and out to the slopes and is accessible from the parking area directly adjacent to the lodge.

“It’s great to be able to fit these indoors now,” says Jackson, noting that at times it could take an hour to properly fit a skier to sit-ski, something which previously happened outdoors.

There are locker rooms, a room upstairs with big windows and a walkout deck that faces the slopes. There’s a room with an aquarium, toys, bean bag chairs, a kitchen and a quiet area.

There’s even a room for support dogs.

The wing is open to the rest of the Mt. Ellen base lodge. “It’s great that we’re not segregated off from the rest

20 VTSPORTS.COM | MARCH/APRIL 2022

Murphy’s Annex is the new structure on skiers’ left at Mt. Ellen’s base lodge. Photo courtesy Vermont Adaptive.

of the lodge. After skiing, people can wander in and get a beer at the bar with everyone else,” she says.

“This building has made a world of difference,” says Josh Carpenter, a volunteer who drives from Craftsbury each weekend to take his daughter Lelia skiing with Vermont Adaptive’s Sunday race program.

Murphy’s Annex is named for Mike Murphy, son of Sugarbush founder Jack Murphy. Mike grew up skiing at Sugarbush—literally starting at 9 months old on his parents’ backs. He became a strong skier, but in 1977 he was in a serious motorcycle accident.

“When I recovered consciousness, I realized I was in a hospital and I looked down and saw I had one good leg and the first thing I thought to myself was, ‘Well, that’s good, I’ll still be able to ski,’” Murphy recalls.

In 1977, there were not many programs for people with disabilities.

He taught himself to ski on one leg and ended up making the U.S. national team for adaptive skiers. In the 1982 World Championships in Switzerland, he won the silver medal in slalom, which is on display now at Murphy’s Annex.

Murphy had been living in Colorado

at the time, but came back to Vermont and discovered Vermont Adaptive, the program that Laura Farrell had started at Ascutney in 1987. Later, Murphy helped connect Sugarbush to the program, a program that then-owner Win Smith and new owners, Alterra, have embraced and supported.

The building is the second in Vermont Adaptive’s plan for three permanent facilities. The organization’s primary base and headquarters at the Andrea Mead Lawrence Lodge at Pico was completed in 2013. The third permanent facility is slated for Burlington’s waterfront where, currently, the Community Sailing Center partners with Vermont Adaptive to offer sailing and other watersports.

There are many organizations around the state that provide adaptive sports equipment and programming — Adaptive Sports at Mount Snow and the Bart Adaptive Sports Center at Bromley are two notable ones. And many ski areas now offer lessons using adaptive equipment. Organizations such as the Northeast Disabled Athletic Association and Green Mountain Adaptive help connect people with the adaptive lessons and programming they need.

But Vermont Adaptive has served as the backbone of adaptive sports infrastructure, providing equipment and facilities, as well as lessons and programs. In addition to its basecamps at Pico, Sugarbush, Bolton Valley Resort and Burlington’s Community Sailing Center, the organization has been working around the state to make outdoor recreation more accessible.

One example is the mountain biking program that the organization launched in 2017. Since then, it has worked with trail organizations around the state, from Kingdom Trails to Slate Valley, Millstone to Stowe. “Biking deep into the woods or pedaling on a gravel or unpaved bike path are not accessible for everyone,” said Jeff Alexander, director of strategic partnerships and business development at Vermont Adaptive, in a release.

Vermont Adaptive has a fleet of adaptive mountain bikes that it will bring to trail heads. “Our bikes roll differently and have a different center of gravity,” he explained. “Tire size is unique. For trail builders, considering off-cambered turns and the width of bridges and trails is important.” For many, an adaptive mountain bike is one way they escape the pavement. “We want everybody to be able to soak in the freedom and outdoor exploration that mountain biking offers,” he said.

In addition to the winter sports and cycling, Vermont Adaptive offers kayaking, canoeing, stand-up paddle boarding, sailing, hiking, rock climbing, tennis, and horseback riding. And alongside, the organization has a focus on environmental education.

“Having an accessible building is key to accessible skiing,” said Murphy about the new Annex at Sugarbush. But much the same can be said for the other sports that Vermont Adaptive, and other organizations, offer access to.

On June 18, 2022, Vermont Adaptive’s annual Charity Challenge returns as an in-person event. Based out of Killington, it will again feature its signature road bike rides, hikes and even a paddle. This year, along with a mountain bike option, it will also host a gravel ride.

SUNDAY RACER

Grace Kirpan, right, and her mother Patty at Vermont Adaptive’s new Mike Murphy Annex at Mt. Ellen, Sugarbush. Photo by Angelo Lynn

FOR NEARLY 20 YEARS GRACE KIRPAN HAS JOINED THE VERMONT ADAPTIVE RACE TEAM AT MT. ELLEN EACH SUNDAY. SHE’S WON MEDALS, AND MORE.

I

’m going to get a photo with Hugh Jackman!” says Grace Kirpan, laughing as she pounds her fist on the bar of the chairlift. We’re riding up the mountain at Sugarbush’s Mt. Ellen and Kirpan, 30, is telling me about her upcoming trip to New York. “We’re going to see ‘The Music Man’,” she says with a big grin. Jackman, of course, is the star.

Grace is a star in her own right.

She loves musicals and was in “Best Summer Ever,” the feature film put on by Bristol’s Zeno Mountain Farm in 2020, and produced by Maggie Gyllenhall and Peter Sarsgaard.

The New York trip is one she’s been looking forward to, and one that got canceled when Jackman got Covid, and then rescheduled. It is one of the few trips Kirpan has been able to take since Covid 19.

“Covid has been really hard,” says her mother, Patty Kirpan. “So many of the activities we’d do with Grace we couldn’t do because of it – basketball, bowling, movies, theater.

Thank heavens we can still ski and get outdoors.”

Grace was lucky, Patty adds, in that her jobs at Red Hen Bakery of Moretown and Rabble Rouser Chocolates in Montpelier, let her take work home during Covid.

In the past, Grace, who has Down syndrome, has played basketball in Barre, gone bowling and swimming in Berlin and done track and field at Harwood Union and U32– all with Special Olympics programs. Before Covid, Special Olympics served 2,000 athletes in the state, giving them the opportunity to compete in sports that range from bocce to snowboarding, and hosted four state-wide competitions.

Covid curtailed some of those competitions and activities, but not Grace’s skiing. For the past 20 years, nearly every Sunday in the winter,

Grace has joined a group at Mt. Ellen that coach Norm Staunton, a staff member with Vermont Adaptive, calls “my race team.”

On this Sunday, like others, Grace slides off the lift and skis over to the Crackerjack trail to position herself in the start gates. Staunton straightens her skis, gives her a little pep talk and sends her off.

Staunton watches his student move through the gates— red, blue, red, blue. Grace skis in total control making PSIA-perfect wedge turns, mixed in with some parallel. “There’s no timing,” says Staunton. “Just getting everyone to go through the gates helps with technique.” In the lodge, he’s posted the goals for the day on a white board: 8 runs total, 4 through the gates.

“It was hard for me to teach her to ski,” says Patty. Grace is her second youngest, the tenth of 11 children Patty and her husband Gary raised in Moretown. Patty was a skier and a kindergarten teacher for many years.

Her husband doesn’t ski.

“We tried teaching her when she was 10, but then someone told us about Vermont Adaptive’s program and we’ve been coming here ever since,” she says.

“From the start, they were great. They had the equipment, the know-how, the tethers, the coaches, the volunteers. It’s been awesome.”

Staunton has led the race program for nearly 20 years. “I had friends with disabilities growing up and I’ve worked with the adaptive community for most of my life,” he says. He has an MBA from University of Vermont and attended the Master’s in outdoor education program at the University of New Hampshire, where he focused on adventure with people with disabilities.

He’s also a member of the PSIA Eastern Division Adaptive Development Team.

Staunton looks each skier in the eye as they approach the start gate and

gives a bit of advice. One young woman in her teens skis up to the start and tells Staunton she wants to try a jump in the terrain park. “I’m telling you the same thing I’d tell any other skier: go look at the jump first then just roll over it,” says Staunton, encouraging the racer to try new things, while being cautious.

At the bottom of the run, a few of the volunteers and parents form a “parade” with the students, a follow-the-leader train where they zig zag down to the lift.

“Norm is just great with these kids,” says Josh Carpenter, whose daughter Lelia is in the Sunday program and is friends with Grace. She too has Down syndrome. The Carpenters drive from Craftsbury each weekend to participate and Josh, a psychiatrist who specializes in wilderness therapy, is also a volunteer.

“Each Sunday is like a father/ daughter date for us here,” he says, as Lelia, who lives in a therapeutic community nearby, rests her head on his shoulder. “The whole community here at Vermont Adaptive is really special, it’s like a big family that you can share pretty much anything with.”

When I ask Grace what is the best thing about the race program she doesn’t hesitate. “Skiing with Josh and Barry,” she says.

She’s been skiing with Josh Carpenter for more than 7 years and, now with Barry Whitmore, another volunteer.

“I started volunteering with Vermont Adaptive because of the free skiing,” Whitmore says. “But it became about so much more. It’s something I look forward to each week.” Volunteers have to commit to five days beyond training, and help out at events, but for those who have committed, Vermont Adaptive will also help them get their PSIA certification.

When I tell Barry and Josh what Grace said, they laugh. “Really?,” Whitmore says, “I thought the best part about the race program is going to the Special Olympics at Pico. Or, more precisely, the dance party after.” Grace, who overhears this, nods her head several times and grins.

Covid put the Special Olympics winter competition at Pico on hiatus again this winter. There were no medals or ribbons or dance parties. “Grace is really competitive, as are many of the others in the program. The medals and ribbons are really important,” says her mother Patty. “But most of all? It’s the social aspect.”

Ultimately, that social interacion is as much what sports is all about as times and trophies. And though Covid has put a damper on the annual show at Pico, the Vermont Adaptive Sunday Racers program at Sugarbush is not to be denied. “We’re still having an end of season party here on March 20,” Patty says. “You should come.” —L.L.

MARCH/APRIL 2022 | VTSPORTS.COM 21

THE RISING TIDE OF

A NEW MISSION

SINCE RETURNING FROM ONE OF THE DEADLIEST OUTPOSTS IN AFGHANISTAN, MISHA PEMBLEBELKIN HAS FOUND A NEW PURPOSE: HELPING OTHER VETS THROUGH VERMONT ADAPTIVE. 22 VTSPORTS.COM | MARCH/APRIL 2022

T

o many of the people who walk into Vermont Adaptive’s Sugarbush facility, Misha Pemble-Belkin is the snowboarder with the beanie and long beard who helped launch, and now runs, the organization’s veterans’ program.

To others who see him from the lift or spy him in the backcountry at Bolton Valley, he’s the guy who snowboards with one ski pole. “I get heckled for that sometimes by other snowboarders,” he says. “Most people don’t know my story,” he says. “I don’t really tell it very often,” he adds, shyly.

It is quite a story.

At first glance, there is little in his gentle demeanor that indicates that Staff Sargent Misha Pemba-Belkin, now 36, fought in some of the deadliest war zones in Afghanistan.

Pemble-Belkin did two tours establishing and defending U.S. outposts along the knife-edge ridges of the Kunar Province where the mountains rise to 16,000 feet. “Nearly every day we were moving up or down at least 1,000 feet with our Restrepo outpost at 6,000 feet of elevation,” he says of his first deployment in the Korengal Valley. “We put on 35 pounds of body armor, a helmet that weighed 10 lbs. and then a standard combat load of 210 rounds of 556 ammo, plus water and food. I was a grenadier, so I had grenades on me, too,” he recalls. All in all, he estimates he was carrying about 70 to 150 lbs. a day, while dodging bullets as Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters sniped at the Americans from the hillsides.

“I saved a few lives on that first deployment,” says Pemble-Belkin, who was 20 when he joined the Army.

But others were killed by enemy fire, including three of his friends; soldiers Timothy Vimoto, medic, Juan “Doc” Restrepo, for whom the platoon named their outpost and Ssg. Larry Rougle.

Sebastian Junger, the awardwinning author of The Perfect Storm” and other books embedded five times with Pemble-Belkin’s unit, the 173rd Airborne Brigade’s Battle Company, between 2007 and 2008. Junger and photographer Tim Hetherington would go on to cover Pemble-Belkin and the troop in a story for Vanity Fair. They later made a documentary, Restrepo that was nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary in 2010 and Junger published the book War, on which it was based. Pemble, who was featured in the film walked the red carpet with the filmmakers at the Oscars. He is still friends with Junger. Hetherington was killed by mortar shrapnel in 2011 while covering the civil war in Libya.

After his first tour ended in 2008, Pemble-Belkin returned to Oregon. But memories of the Kornegal Valley tugged

Before he enlisted, Misha Pemble-Belkin was an avid snowboarder who had summited and ridden Mt. Hood. Now that he lives in Vermont, he spends a lot of his free time exploring the Bolton backcountry, using a single ski pole to help him with balance. Photo courtesy Misha Pemble-Belkin

at him. “I saw all the good that was being done in Afghanistan at the time and I wanted to go back and help,” he says. He reenlisted and at first was put in charge of training younger recruits. Then he asked to be assigned to a unit that would deploy to Kunar Province.

Pemble-Belkin had been in Afghanistan three months when he was caught in a rocket attack. A rocket exploded through the roof of his building. “When you are in a building, the shock wave just bounces off the walls and sometimes it intensifies so you feel like you are being hit six, seven, eight nine times all at once,” he says.

Pemble-Belkin ended up with damage to his cervical spine and a traumatic brain injury. A soldier nearby had his knee-cap blown off.

Though he could have gone home on medical leave, Pemble-Belkin asked to stay in Afghanistan and finish out his deployment. But when he got back to the U.S. base in Hawaii and tried to retrain, he found he was “permanently broken,” he says. He was told he had three options: continue as a paratrooper and further damage his body and risk becoming a paraplegic, take a desk job or retire. He took medical retirement.

FINDING PURPOSE What people who come to Vermont Adaptive do know is that Misha PembleBelkin is quiet, and patient and intensely focused on helping other veterans; For some, it is healing their bodies, for others, their minds. “For some veterans, sometimes it’s simply making sure they have a roof over their heads and connecting them with the help they

need,” he says. “It’s easy as a veteran to go off the grid.”

Go off the grid. That’s what PembleBelkin thought he would do when he moved to Vermont after leaving the Army in 2015. “My town in Oregon, Hillsboro, had grown from 112,000 to 230,000 people. I knew Vermont a little bit, my ex-wife and I had been here. I knew there were like five ski areas near where I would live. There’s lakes, there’s wilderness, there’s land and my goal was to fall off the grid and get isolated,” he says. He bought a house in Essex on 10 acres that he still heats solely with firewood that he cuts and hauls. When he first moved to Vermont he worked at Lowe’s and as an apple picker. In addition to his physical injuries, PTSD, anxiety and depression haunted him. Simply finding passion and purpose was difficult.

“I got through it by giving myself really simple goals,” he says. “Some days, it was just doing the dishes. Other days, the goal was to just step out on the porch and be outside,” Eventually, he connected with one of the Army’s peer support specialists who had known his platoon sergeant from the first deployment. “He pitched Vermont Adaptive, which was trying to get a veterans program going --that was in 2016.” The plan was to meet at Vermont Adaptive’s Bolton Valley base once a week.

Though he loved to snowboard, Pemble-Belkin wasn’t quite ready for a formal program. “I was cranky at the time.

You get institutionalized in the military –it’s your whole life – so reintegration is not easy. I was a paratrooper —what does that transition to in civilian life? So, I went up to Bolton a couple of times and

thought, ok, that’s cool.”

Vermont Adaptive mentored PembleBelkin, made sure he could snowboard on his own (because of his injuries, he uses a ski pole to balance and to help him get up out of the snow) and then gave him a pass anytime he wanted to ride at Bolton.

“That first year, I pretty much just rode alone,” he says.

As a kid in Oregon, Pemble-had been a strong snowboarder. At 15, he and a friend had summited and then snowboarded down 11,249-foot Mt. Hood in a day. “We didn’t have any of the gear then, so we just made our own ice axes and brought just regular ropes,” he said.

The next summer, he started to participate in a few other Vermont Adaptive programs. “I thought ‘This is nice what they are doing’ and I started to volunteer a bit,” he remembers. At the time, he was getting his college degree at Community College of Vermont and discovered he could do an internship at Vermont Adaptive.

Vermont Adaptive had always served veterans but not with a formal program.

“The first year we had a weekly program with 36 vets,” Pemble-Belkin recalls. “The next year it was 78 then the next year, 108, then it kept growing by 50 percent.”

The internship grew into a contract position, then a salaried job running the veterans’ programs. “Vermont Adaptive works around my disabilities, which is really nice. They understand if I need to take time some days,” says PembleBelkin. “I have PTSD, anxiety and about 23 different things on my body that the VA rated as broken –something wrong with me from my time in the service.”

MARCH/APRIL 2022 | VTSPORTS.COM 23

CLIMBING BACK On a Friday in February, Pemble-Belkin goes ice climbing near Killington with his wife, Allie, and another vet. PembleBelkin has trouble raising his arm above a plane and his cervical injury – discs that bulge forward in his neck — makes it hard to lift his head to look up. “You find ways to adapt and to prove to yourself you can do this,” he says. When he snowboards, he uses the ski pole for balance, the same way a tight rope walker would.

Pemble-Belkin first got into ice climbing in 2017 when he pulled a group of six or seven vets together to participate in Ice Bash at Smuggler’s Notch. There, he met another veteran, Alex Sargent of Sunrise Mountain Guides. “Since then, Sunrise Mountain Guides has donated over $10,000 of climbs to us every year,” says Pemble-Belkin. Sargent has remained a friend and climbing mentor.

There are about 37,000 vets in Vermont. Pemble-Belkin estimates that since he joined Vermont Adaptive’s staff in 2017, they have served more than 400, with about 5,000 activities. All activities are free to participants; Vermont Adaptive’s $150,000 budget for the veterans program comes largely through donations, with some grants.

In 2018, the Veterans Administration

Vermont Adaptive’s veterans programs include cycling in the summer. Photo courtesy Vermont Adaptive

reached out to see if Vermont Adaptive could do something to honor women vets.

The retreat has since grown into an annual event, held on March 8, International Women’s Day. This March, PembleBelkin is bringing a group of 12 women to Sugarbush for four days (all expenses covered) of skiing, snowboarding and ice climbing.

“One year we were doing the retreat

at Pico and a woman showed up using a walker. She had been diagnosed with MS and started shaking her head before the retreat even started, saying it was too much for her and she was going to leave,” Pemble-Belkin recalls. By the end of the day, she had done four ski runs. “Her perception of her ability levels changed, and she proved to herself she could still do stuff,” he says. “After a traumatic

event happens and you are no longer able to do what you used to, some people tend to give up,” he notes. “But you don’t have to. There are ways to adapt.”

For Belkin-Pemble, there are so many ways that outdoor recreation can help people heal. “You get that state of flow from going down the mountain, then bullshitting with someone on the chairlift on the way up, and then riding down the mountain again. You get vitamin D exposure from being in the sun and when you go into evergreen forests you breathe easier,” he says. But most of all, what Vermont Adaptive has brought him is a renewed sense of passion and purpose.

“When I signed up for the military, I initially signed up for four years but If I had reenlisted yet again, I would have put in 20 years of service to my country. But when you’re out, all of a sudden you lose that sense of passion and purpose,” he says. “I did nine years in the military and if I can fulfill 20 years of service by doing what I’m doing with Vermont Adaptive— with my mental health the way it is, and my disabilities and everything like that— I’d be really proud of myself,” he says.

The good news? He has five more years to go. —L.L.

Vermont’s “Sweetest” Half Marathon is Back!

After two years off because of the pandemic (2020 and 2021), central Vermont's sweetest half marathon is back on!

But... We're changing the date from the spring to fall.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS FOR

Sunday, Oct. 2, 2022 Capped at 750 runner, so, don’t delay, register today!

MIDDLEBURYMAPLERUN.COM 24 VTSPORTS.COM | MARCH/APRIL 2022

RECOVERING GRACE G

AFTER SHE LOST BOTH HER VISION AND HER HEARING, MARTHA STEELE THOUGHT HER SKI DAYS WERE OVER. BY PHYL NEWBECK

rowing up in Burlington, Martha Steele, now 69, went downhill skiing at Stowe and Smugglers’ Notch. When her family moved to Westmore, where she still lives for most of the year, she skied at Burke Mountain Resort and picked up Nordic skiing as well. But as Usher Syndrome gradually robbed her first of her hearing and then her vision, she skied less and less. By the 1990s, Steele thought her days on snow were over.

But in 2015, she met Frank “Gib” Gibney, the founder of The Gibney Family Foundation. Gibney, a resident of Colchester, volunteers for Vermont Adaptive Ski and Sports. In January of 2017, he got Steele back on her skis at Vermont Adaptive’s Sugarbush facility.

“It had been at least 20 to 25 years since I skied and I was ecstatic,” Steele said. “My muscle memory came back quickly. The hardest part was overcoming not being able to see and struggling with my hearing at the same time — while doing something I used to be able to do with all my capacities.”

Steele was born with limited hearing. The cause, Usher Syndrome, was diagnosed when she was five. She was prescribed hearing aids, but it wasn’t until she was in her 50s that she was able to get the cochlear implants, which improved her hearing to roughly 90%. By then, however, her vision was already severely limited.

“Usually with Usher Syndrome you start with low night vision and then your peripheral field narrows and then your central vision goes,” she explains.

For Steele, the visual issues began in early childhood. “I was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa in 1977 when I was 25,” she says. “At that time, I still had excellent central vision, but was compromised in both night vision and the peripheral field.” Today, her vision is completely gone.

For their first foray, Gibney took Steele out on the green and blue trails at Sugarbush’s Mt. Ellen, where Vermont Adaptive Ski & Sports has a new base.

She wore an orange bib and a headset equipped with a radio, so Gibney could communicate with her.

“Gib went over the standard commands before we headed out so I would fully understand what they mean,” she explained. “In downhill

Steele is back on skis and heads to Craftsbury again each winter. Photo courtesy Marrha Steele

skiing, the guide will explain what’s ahead of you and what the terrain is like. You go a certain distance and stop and discuss the terrain and then do that again, so you’re prepared for changes and turns.”

Guides tell skiers when to turn, say “hold” when they can keep skiing their line, and indicate when a steeper section is coming with the word “pitch.”

“It was very, very exciting,” she said. “It was a little terrifying, at first, especially when we picked up speed, but Gib was terrific.”

When Steele first returned to the slopes five years ago, she was able to make out the trees on the side of the trail, but that visual remnant is now gone. But it hasn’t kept her from skiing.

“That makes it almost easier,” she said, “because my brain doesn’t have to process any vision at all.” Skiing with the same guide is also helpful as she has been able to relax over time as she is

familiar with Gib’s guidance..

Three weeks after getting back on alpine skis in 2017, Steele headed out on Nordic skis with an organization called Ski for Light. She now skis with the New England chapter at Craftsbury once a year and in February of 2020, she took a trip with the national organization to Casper, Wyoming. “It was great to be with lots of other people who were blind and who were very good skiers,” Steele said, noting that she was also able to ski with Gibney as her guide on that trip.

“The highlight really was connecting with others who enjoyed skiing,” she said.

Explaining the differences between Nordic and alpine skiing, Steele said there is less stopping while crosscountry skiing, although a guide will note if there is a downhill that might require either a snowplow or a turn in the track. Cross-country guides can also be either behind, in front of, or next to

the skier, but Steele said most of her Ski for Light guides have skied alongside her.

Steele believes her loss of hearing was a greater impediment to her return to skiing than her loss of vision. “The radios help address the hearing issue,” she said “but if they go out or get loose, especially in alpine skiing, there isn’t a lot of time between being told to turn left and having to turn left. I couldn’t ski without the radios,” she says. “I think downhill is more difficult because it’s scarier,” she added. “Obviously, you have to have tremendous trust in your guide. A steeper slope can be frightening, but it doesn’t paralyze me.”

For much of her career, Steele worked as a scientist at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) and spent 20 years as the Deputy Director of Environmental Health there before retiring in 2015.

“Through adaptive technology, such as devices that magnified print and content on web pages I was able to work successfully and productively until I retired,” she explained.

In the off season, she enjoys hiking near her family’s property in Westmore.

An avid birder, she identifies species exclusively through birdsong. But skiing is her main sport.

Steele especially enjoys it when Gibney brings her to ski a wide hill.

Normally, she is always listening for his guidance, but on the wide-open slopes he will utter the word ‘free’ and then she’s on her own. “Usually he’ll say ‘hold, hold, right, hold, left’ but when he says ‘free’ I can turn right and then left on my own and it’s just beautiful,” she said. “It’s the same with cross-country.

There are times when I’m just gliding and pushing off on my own. I’m not hanging on to anyone or my guide dog.

I’m just skiing.”

One downside to Steele’s cochlear implants is that they have impacted her balance. “These days—especially the last five to ten years—I don’t feel particularly graceful,” she admitted when doing everyday activities. “When you’re blind you always have to be more careful, but you still bump into things.

But when I’m on skis, I’m an athlete again. I’m a graceful person again and it’s an absolutely incredible feeling.”

MARCH/APRIL 2022 | VTSPORTS.COM 25

After relearning how to use her right side, Heath is back in the water and coaching swimming. Photo by Michael Menn

BACK TO THE

BUTTERFLY AFTER A STROKE PARALYZED HER RIGHT SIDE, JAMIE HEATH DREAMED OF SWIMMING WITH TURTLES. THAT DREAM, WITH SOME HELP FROM A NUMBER OF ORGANIZATIONS, GOT HER BACK TO SWIMMING BUTTERFLY.

“I

’ve always loved turtles and wanted to swim with them,” says Jamie Heath, now a junior at Norwich University. Growing up in Barre, Heath learned to swim at age 6. Then, a year later, a rare tangle of blood vessels, a condition known as arteriovenous malformation, caused a stroke. After spending two weeks at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston, and going through weeks of physical therapy, she made a full recovery.

“I bounced back very, very quickly because I was so young and the brain tissue was so fresh and new, that the brainwaves were able to connect back together,” she explains.

But then, at age 14, she experienced a second stroke. This time it impacted her ability to use her right side. She couldn’t lift her arm or do many of the things she used to be able to do. She couldn’t ski or run, play soccer or lacrosse.

26 VTSPORTS.COM | MARCH/APRIL 2022

“My whole right side was impacted.

I can feel the line where it divides—there was just this numbness down one side” she said. There was lasting damage, and she wasn’t sure if she would ever recover or be able to swim again. There were more doctor appointments and physical therapy.

“I was really depressed at the time,” Heath recalls. It was hard for her to do anything, even get out of bed.

To lift her spirits, her family encouraged her to apply to the Make-AWish Foundation, which grants wishes to children who have critical illnesses.

Heath had one wish: She wanted to swim with the turtles in Hawaii. And part of that was learning to swim again.

“My mother knew about Green Mountain Adaptive and I started out by skiing with them,” says Heath. The Stowe-based organization provides grants to people with a wide range of disabilities to help them get the

equipment and training they need to be active and recreate—be it skiing, kayaking or swimming, indoor rock climbing or movement classes.

After skiing with them, GMA connected Heath with Cara Hancy, at the time the coach for the Central Vermont Swim Club and a certified physical trainer. “Cara looked at me and said: ‘Ok, you are on my swim team,’” recalled Heath, who then worked with Hancy and her physical therapists to relearn how to swim.

“I remember intensely trying to do laps because that’s what I was used to,” she says. “One day we had gotten my right arm out of the water and something in my head just knew. I took it out of the water for like a couple of strokes and I looked back at my mom and I was like, ‘Oh my god, did you just see that?’ It was awesome!”

Heath got her wish and in 2015 she flew to Hawaii to swim with the

sea turtles. At the urging of the MakeA-Wish Foundation, Heath wrote a book about her experience, Wishes Are Medicine: How Make a Wish Gave Me Hope and Helped Me Heal, with illustrations by Vermonter Leonard Wells Kenyon. Make-A-Wish published it and since then, Heath has gone on to speak about her experiences.

She’s also back to swimming regularly. Her freshman year she joined Norwich University’s swim team, though she left the team a year later when too many other school requirements got in the way. Now a junior, Heath maintains a 3.9 grade point average, and while she’s no longer competing, she is swimming every weekend as a coach at the pool where she learned to swim.

And about that right arm that she thought she might not lift again?

Heath is now swimming laps doing the butterfly. —L.L.

BLAZING TRAILS

GREG DURSO HAS GOALS...FOR HIMSELF AND FOR THE KELLY BRUSH FOUNDATION.

G

reg Durso is a guy who likes to set goals. For his 37th birthday this past February, he’d planned to ski every trail at Mt. Ellen. (The weather intervened but, as he said, “That’s ok, “I’ll do it next year.”) Other goals he has ticked off in the last decade; finish a marathon, do an Ironman triathlon, ride the 30-plus miles of largely singletrack trails in the Stowe/Waterbury area in one day.

One goal that he’s looking forward to and actively planning: climb Mt. Kilimanjaro.

But perhaps the most life-changing goal he ever set was to bike 25 miles in his first Kelly Brush Ride, the annual bike ride out of Middlebury that benefits the Kelly Brush Foundation’s mission to help people with spinal cord injuries lead active lives.

Durso has always been an athlete.

Growing up on Long Island he played soccer, skied and wakeboarded. He had graduated and was working in banking in New York, when he headed up to Okemo for a New Year’s ski weekend with friends.

After skiing, he and his buddies took sleds out on the slopes. On one run, Durso bailed off the sled and careened into a tree stump. He hit hard enough to sever his spinal cord.

At 23, he was paralyzed from the chest down. That was 2009.

“There was never that lifetime TV moment where I felt sorry for myself,” he says. “I was happy to be alive and I’m a go-getter, so my first question was: What’s next? I was actually eager to do physical therapy,” he says.

His aunt forwarded him information on the Kelly Brush Foundation — started by Vermonter Kelly Brush who had crashed in 2006 while ski racing for Middlebury College and severed her spinal cord.

“I got an entry-level handcycle and thought – ok, that’s my first goal, this 25-mile bike ride.” The ride became an annual event for Durso. The next year, he applied to KBF for a grant for a sitski. He got the ski – “the same one Kelly uses,” he notes— and returned to a sport he had always loved.

“Before I got my own sitski, I was going to programs and using theirs, which is tough because you’re using different equipment and they have to

Greg Durso, left, lead the Kelly Brush Foundations’ first Mountain Bike Camp last fall at Kingdom Trails. Photo courtesy Greg Durso

fit you in. Having my own made a huge difference,” he says.

While some of the Kelly Brush Foundation’s work is dedicated toward preventive measures – for instance, KBF has helped provide safety fencing at ski races, including the Women’s World Cup in Killington – the focus

is providing grants for adaptive equipment.

Durso’s next goal was to do a marathon, which meant he needed a race chair: one wheel in the front, two in the back and powered by gloved hands pushing the handrim. He did the Boston Marathon in 2011 and then the

Long Island Marathon in 2014 in two and a half hours. “Then I thought: I biked 25 miles, I ran a marathon, why not do a triathlon?” Durso knew that to do so he would need a better bike.

“Good adaptive bikes, like good regular bikes, are going to cost a lot more than what you buy at Dick’s Sporting

MARCH/APRIL 2022 | VTSPORTS.COM 27

Goods,” he says. He applied to the Kelly Brush Foundation again and got a grant for one. He completed an Ironman in in 2014 in three hours, 45 minutes.

Durso had been attending many of the Foundation’s events and speaking on their behalf, as well as attending adaptive events around the country.

“Everywhere I went, there were Kelly and Zeke,” he said, referring to Kelly Brush Davisson and her husband Zeke Davisson.

Durso was becoming more and more engaged with the adaptive community.

“I loved doing what I was doing and finally I asked Zeke, are you looking to hire someone?” In 2019, Durso joined the organization and now serves as the program director.

Last year, the Kelly Brush Foundation also brought on Edie Perkins to lead the organization, taking over from Zeke Davisson, who had been running it for six years. Perkins, 50, not only brought many years of experience in education, marketing and nonprofits, she is a top athlete who finished 25th in the Boston Marathon in 2005 and ran a sub-3-hour marathon in New York.

“

We are a minority 99 percent of the time. To get like-minded people together who all have spinal cord injuries to be the majority? That doesn’t happen very often. That starts to transcend the active lifestyle and that’s where bigger things start to In 2017, she was struck by a car while riding her bike. Since her spinal cord injury, she’s joined a paracycling team, finished second in the criterium in the Nationals and has completed two more marathons.

Both Perkins and Durso have helped build on the momentum Brush

and Davisson started. In 2021, the foundation had its biggest year ever, giving out more than 261 grants totaling $861,000. “This year, we hope to hit $1 million,” says Durso.

One of the areas Durso has been helping to grow is mountain biking.

He has worked closely with Vermont Adaptive and other organizations to help make Vermont’s mountain bike trail networks more accessible. “I love riding places such as Bolton Valley and the Hinesburg Town Forest because of the downhill, and enduro-style of riding” says Durso. “What’s harder when you are on a three-wheel bike are side hills. And then you have to think about bridges and trail widths.”

This past summer, Durso, Vermont Adaptive and other organizations worked with trail networks from Kingdom Trails to Slate Valley in Poultney to make their trails more accessible to people on all types of wheels.

Last October, Durso led the Kelly Brush Foundation’s first Mountain Bike Camp. Held over four days at Burke Mountain Resort, it drew riders

from as far as Alaska and Oregon as well as the New England states. “It was amazing,” says Durso. “We had friends come help from Vermont Adaptive, Stowe Mountain Bike Academy, Green Mountain Adaptive, Kingdom Trails and even a friend of mine from the National Ability Center in Utah came out.”

Kelly Brush Davisson was there as well, rounding out the total to 11.

“While doing the sports and all the activities we did was really fun; we are a minority 99 percent of the time,” says Durso. “To get like-minded people together who all have spinal cord injuries and to be the majority? That doesn’t happen very often. That starts to transcend the active lifestyle we’re trying to promote and that’s where the bigger things start to happen. To form all these relationships and to have people go back home and use the skills they learned here and grow from this?

That was something big,” he says. Then adds, “It was the best four days of my life.”

And Durso plans to repeat the camp next year. —L.L.

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https://greenmtnadaptive.org 28 VTSPORTS.COM | MARCH/APRIL 2022

VERMONT’S ADAPTIVE

BIKE BUILDERS ONE OF THE MOST UNIQUE “BIKE SHOPS” IN THE WORLD IS IN CORNWALL, VT.

BY ABAGAEL GILES

J

ust off Route 125 in Cornwall, Vt. on 47-acre Avenir Farms is one of the most unique “bike shops” in the U.S., and possibly the world. You have to make an appointment and you need to want a highly specialized bike.

“But whatever challenge you are facing, we can probably find a bike for you,” says David Black.

Black and his partner Anja Wrede met in the 1999 while co-developing a running stroller for children and special needs families. They launched RAD-Innovations in Oregon, before relocating to Vermont in 2012. Black had worked as an engineer in product development since the 1970s, and Wrede had a long career developing and building adaptive bicycles in Germany before coming to the U.S. Since then, RAD-Innovations has grown into what Black estimates is one of only two or three businesses of its kind: one that will sell and custom-fit bikes and trikes for people with a wide variety of disabilities and make custom bikes and mobility devices to meet special needs.

The business has several components. The couple advises

companies that are developing new adaptive bicycles on ways to make them operate more smoothly for people with disabilities. They import, sell and fit adaptive bikes from companies such as Hase and Ice and they build their own solutions.

For instance, Black and Wrede designed an ergonomic hand- and footpowered tricycle that allows people who can’t move their legs to experience the motion of pedaling when they power a bike with their hands.

“Often those folks can push from their quads and even if they aren’t powering the movement of their legs, the motion improves tone and circulation and comfort,” says Black.

Black helped move the project from what Wrede called a “very expensive Frankenstein bike” with an office chair seat and chrome tubing, to something as sleek and as customizable as a highend road bike. It’s also compatible with FES (functional electrical stimulation), a common medical treatment that applies small electrical charges to a paralyzed muscle in order to stimulate movement.

Today, RAD has everything from adaptive trikes and tandems to Frame Runners, an adaptive running frame that looks similar to a bike without pedals. It allows individuals to run or walk with minimal to no assistance.

For those who want to leave the pavement, there are Catrikes and the Ice Trike, which come with electric assist—the recumbent bike’s answer to a bikepacking bike or gravel grinder with a 26-inch wheel and a broad range of gears. RAD is the exclusive North American dealer for Hase, the maker of a line of recumbent and adaptive bikes.

Getting any bike to fit can be a chore and for adaptive bikes, it can be doubly complicated. Black and Wrede have a guesthouse at their farm where they

RAD-Innovations can fit or make a bike for pretty much anyone. Above, Wrede taking some clients out for a spin, left and one of RAD’s custom creations. Below, Black and Wrede (third and fourth from left) with their Race Runners.Photos courtesy RAD Innovations.

host clients overnight for fittings.

One of the things that Black is most excited about now though is working with programs such as Local Motion in Burlington or Middlebury’s Yellow House Community and the town Rec Center to help raise awareness of the wide variety of bikes and mobility devices available. “We can bring our bikes there for people to try, or to events like the Tour de Farms. It really helps show people what the possibilities are.”

It also adds to the feedback that Black and Wrede get so they can continue to find solutions to various physical mobility challenges people face.

Wrede is half the genius behind the unique adjustments and adaptations.

She is also the managing director for Hase USA, the German adaptive bicycle company. She loves people and solving mechanical problems. And she sees their Cornwall farm as part of the package that the company offers.

“I think that people like to travel here for fittings,” she said. “Often, we work with whole families, and you can see the joy in kids’ faces when they get to follow the geese or see horses for the first time. The farm is a big part of why we are here.”

She recalled a recent fitting she did for a teenage girl from Addison County who has cerebral palsy: “Once we got her onto her bike, she took off, racing her dad (from the barn-turned-bikeshop) to the mailbox. To see a child move like that, knowing they’ve never moved so quickly of their own volition before and to see her laughing with her father? That was really cool.”

MARCH/APRIL 2022 | VTSPORTS.COM 29

VERMONT

SPORTS

LISTING YOUR EVENT IN THIS

CALENDAR IS FREE AND EASY. VISIT VTSPORTS.COM/SUBMIT-AN-EVENT OR E-MAIL EDITOR@VTSPORTS.

COM. ALL AREA CODES ARE 802.

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RUNNING/HIKING/ SNOWSHOEING MARCH 13| Leprechaun Dash 5K/10K, Shelburne Dress in green and race to the pot of gold! First place overall finishers (all 4 of them), plus one lucky post-race raffle winner, will each receive free entries to Race Vermont's series. racevermont.com 27 | G.M.A.A. Kaynor's Sap Run, Westford Celebrate the official opening of the road racing season in Vermont at the GMAA Sap Run. The course is an out and back at Westford Elementary School, and is a scenic 10k on dirt roads. Gmaa.run

APRIL 9 | Half Marathon Unplugged, Burlington The start and finish will be at Waterfront Park and the course will be outand-back along the Burlington Bike Path with a two-mile loop in Colchester midway through the race. runvermont.com 16 | Paul Mailman 10-Miler and 5K, Montpelier A race primarily on dirt roads, this race has been the Road Runners Club of America Vermont 10-Mile State Championship and part of the Central Vermont Runners race series. cvrunners.org 24 | Mutt Strutt, Waterbury Get your dog in shape for this three-mile race on the dirt roads and trails of Little River State Park. cvrunners.org

MAY 5-14 | Peak Bloodroot, Pittsfied Race through the rugged foothills of the Green Mountains in the 500-miler on Wednesday, a 100-miler on Friday, followed by the 50-miler, 30-miler, 10-miler and kids’ hike on Saturday. peakraces.com

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RACE & EVENT GUIDE

7 | Shelburne 5K/10K/Half-Marathon, Shelburne Run past the Shelburne Museum, Meach Cove, vineyards, and orchard, and through gorgeous countryside before heading back. Almost entirely on quiet back country roads. Racevermont.com 8 | Adamant Half Marathon and Relay, Adamant This scenic figure eight course runs past the hills and ponds of Calais and East Montpelier. Part of the Central Vermont Runners race series. cvrunners.org 13| Leprechaun Dash 5K/10K, Shelburne Race to the pot of gold! Each of our first place overall finishers (all 4 of them), plus one lucky post-race raffle winner will each receive free entries for the 2022 RaceVermont series. racevermont.com 15 | Vermont Sun Half Marathon, 10K . & 5K, Lake Dunmore Starts and finishes at Branbury State Park on Lake Dunmore, a spectacularly beautiful and pristine place to run. Amenities include digital photos, post race food and music, aid stations every 1.5 miles, awards to top 5 overall, top 3 in every 5 year age group, tech shirts, Massage, finishers medals and more. vermontsuntriathlonseries.com 15 | Maple Leaf Marathon, Lake Morey Run eight laps of a 3.3-mile course for a full marathon or four laps for a half marathon in the Boston Marathon USATF qualifier at beautiful Lake Morey. newenglandchallenge.org/maple-leaf-marathon 19-29 | Infinitus Trail Races, Ripton Infinitus moves to Silver Towers Camp in Ripton this year. Start dates vary for this 8-mile, marathon, 88k, 100 Mile, 250 Mile, Penta, Deca, 888K relay, and 888k races held on the trails with the shortest races (8 miles to 88K) being held on Saturday, and longer races starting earlier that week.

Endurancesociety.org 21 | Kingdom Games Dandelion Run, Derby Choose between a half marathon, a 10K, a four-mile, a two mile, or a one-mile run or walk through the dandelion fields and the hilly but beautiful Northeast Kingdom. kingdomgames.co 21 | Barre Town Spring Run 5K, Barre Central Vermont Runners hosts this race from the Barre Town Recreation facility. cvrunners.org 22 | Race Around the Lake, Barnard Walk or run a 5K or run a 10K around Silver Lake. The course is on wooded trails, back roads and footpaths with views of the Silver Lake. barnarts.org

29 | Vermont City Marathon, Half Marathon & Relay, Burlington The marathon is back! Run the streets of Burlington and out the bike path to return with views of Lake Champlain.

Half marathon and relay options, too. runvermont.com

8 | Winter Pedal Fest, Jay Peak Pedal Fest includes an on-mountain, timed downhill fat bike race for adults and kids, group rides out in the afternoon and a gear raffle. jaypeak.com

JUNE

23 | Muddy Onion, Montpelier Onion River Outdoors puts on the season opener with rides of 36.9 or 21.3 miles and divisions for everything from fat bikes to singlespeeds. Come for the mud, stay for the BBQ post-ride. onionriver.com

5 | 30th Covered Bridges Half Marathon, Woodstock Run 13.1 miles through scenic covered bridge, starting at Suicide Six Ski Area.

Currently sold out. cbhm.com 11 | 42nd Annual Capital City Stampede, Montpelier Central Vermont Runners hosts this 10K road race out and back, half on paved roads and half on dirt. cvrunners.org

APRIL

30 | Rasputitsa Gravel Ride, Burke Rasputitsa is back. Ride 40k or 100k (there's already a waitlist) on the muddy, icy, gnarly back roads of the NEK. Race it or ride it. rasputitsagravel.com

MAY

15-17 | Vermont 100, West Windsor Limited to 450 runners, and 70 horses, this cross-country endurance race for runners and equestrians covers 17,000 vertical feet over 30 hours and benefits Vermont Adaptive. vermont100.com

7 | Onion River Outdoors Bike Swap, Montpelier Bring a bike by from April 30 to May 6 then show up on May 7 to find kids bikes, road bikes, full suspension and gravel bike. onionriver.com

18 | 20th Annual Basin Harbor 5K & 10K A 5K and 10K at beautiful Basin Harbor – a spectacular seasonal resort on the shores of Lake Champlain.

Racevermont.com

JUNE

18 | Mt. Washington Auto Road Race, Pinkham Noth, N.H. Elite runners and those who won their spots in the lottery compete on this sold-out 7.6 mile course up the Mt. Washington Auto Road sponsored by Northeast Delta Dental. mtwashington.com 25 | Catamount Ultra, Stowe Run a 25K or 50K trail race on wide, hardpacked dirt trails that roll through highland pastures and hardwood forest at Trapp Family Lodge Outdoor Center. The 50K course is two laps on the 25K course rolling through highland pastures and hardwood forest, complete with maple sugar tap lines in place and ready for the spring “run.” catamountultra.com

BIKING MARCH 5 | Winterbike 2022, East Burke Demo fatbikes, participate in group rides fo all levels, attend clinics and more at this epic wintertime celebration of all things fatbiking on the trails of Kingdom Trails. kingdomtrails.org

11 | The Moose, Derby T A 103 mile "timed event" on wide open, "car hungry" roads through Moose Country in Essex and Northern Caledonia Counties.

We start with our hands on the bar and finish with our hands on the bar, Mike's Tiki Bar with 30 beers on tap. It's not a sanctioned race: you have to stop at all stop signs, but, hey, there are only three during the entire ride. We encourage teams of 3 to 10 riders to compete for the Moose Wheel. ythe fastest three times in each team determine the winner. kingdomgames.co 12 | The Ranger, Tunbridge Ride 62, 42 or, 18 miles in this epic gravel riding celebration, with time enduro sections on a loop of dreamy hardpacked dirt roads and minimally maintained Class IV riding. therangervt.com 18 | Bike for the Lake, North Hero The 12th annual bicycle ride through the Champlain Islands and along the Vermont and New York shores of Lake Champlain with30,60,80, and 100 mile options. Proceeds support the Friends of Northern Lake Champlain. friendsofnorthernlakechamplain.org 18 | VT Monster, Stratton This is a challenging course primarily on quiet gravel roads, with plenty of climbing, flowing descents and epic vistas. Monster is best attacked with a cyclocross bike, though road, mountain or fat bikes can handle the courses: 75 and 50 miles of epic and very challenging riding Vtmonster.com

25 | 100/200, A Vermont Double Century, North Troy First ridden in 1984, the 100/200 spans Vermont, north to south, following scenic Route 100. The first 100 miles roll by fairly quickly, but save your reserves, as the big climbs kick in during the second half of the ride, culminating in the 12-mile Mt. Snow climb. 100-200.org

SKIING & RIDING MARCH 2 | Kandahar Mountain Race, Mad River Glen The Kandahar is a race from the top of the mountain to the bottom, over variable terrain incorporating both freeski and alpine racing technique. This event is open to all. madriverglen.com 6 | High Fives Fat Skiathon, Sugarbush Ski laps and raise money for the High Fives Foundation. sugarbush.com 8 | Red Bull Slide-in Tour, Stratton Keep an eye out for Red Bull athletes and 2020 X Games Knuckle Huck Gold Medalist, Zeb Powell. Join the pro’s as they rip laps in the park and then hang out at Grizzly’s for an après-ski party. Stratton.com 11-12 | Freeheel Frolic, Mad River Glen A celebration of teleskiers and gear with clinics, demos and a dance party. madriverglen.com 12 | Blauvelt Banks, Bolton Valley Pro riding legend Jake Blauvelt creates a banked slalom course for this wild snowboard event, which makes for great spectating. boltonvalley.com

12 | Winter Wild Skimo, Magic Mountain Course distance is ~3 miles & 1,450 vertical feet. Up Hocus Pocus to Wand to Trick to Upper Magic Carpet to Summit, then down.

Mass start is at 7:00 am. magicmtn.com 12 | Master of the Mountain, Magic Mountain The final extreme comp to crown the East’s best overall skier/rider! A one-run race, a top-to-bottom of Black Line timed event with up to 9 seconds reduced on your overall time by how well you do in the freeride comp before swinging right into the Giant Slalom gates. $1500 purse. magicmtn.com 12-13 | Vermont Open, Stratton A two-day banked slalom event open to 300 riders in seven age divisions. Each of the age divisions will have first, second and third place finishers recognized. Male and female divisions judged separately. Stratton.com 13 | CATGUT, Craftsbury The CATGUT (Catamount Grand Ultimate Tour) is a skate or classic ski touring experience for all ages and abilities, benefitting the Catamount Trail Association, which cares for for the world's longest backcountry ski trail. catamount.org 13 | Endurance Society Skimo Race, Pico, Mendon Race a 2,000 ft. climb to the summit or three different climbs (6,000 ft.) The LeMans mass start is at 8 am for AT, telemark and splitboard. endurancesociety.com 18 | Vermont Adaptive Charity Challenge, Killington This fundraising event is back in person this year. Do the Cabot bike ride o 20, 40, 60 or 100 miles; join in the Salomon hike or the Yeti paddle or try the new mountain biking and gravel routes. charityride. vermontadaptive.org

19-20 | 24 Hours of Stratton, Stratton The 10th Annual 24 Hours of Stratton is a one-of-a-kind opportunity to join with hundreds of winter enthusiasts from across New England as they lap the mountain.

A a magical weekend that combines the emotional goodness of charity, camaraderie and skiingt Stratton.com 26 | Mad River Glen Triple Crown Family Tournament, Mad River Glen The original Father-Son race dates back to 1942 when it was held on Mount Mansfield (Stowe). Now open to anyone who wants to participate. Racers complete a familyfriendly GS course where a racer’s best time from two runs is counted. The time is then added with other family members (by blood). madriverglen.com

APRIL 2 | Bear Mountain Mogul Challenge, Killington The annual competition will heat up again on Saturday, April 2nd as amateur bumpers take to the slopes of Outer Limits to battle for a place in the finals. The top 32 men and 16 women will compete in a head-to-head competition for the Mogul Challenge Cup. killington.com

WATER & MULTISPORTS MARCH 12 | Penguin Plunge, Burlington It's back for the 27th running. This Vermont tradition promotes awareness about the needs and accomplishments of people with intellectual disabilities, and raises essential funds for Special Olympics Vermont penguinplunge.org/burlington/

APRIL 2 | Berkshire Highlands Pentathlon, Berkshire East, MA Where else can you run, bike, paddle and ski the same day? Be a Braveheart and do all 5 events or form a team of 2-5. berkshireeast.com

MAY 8 | Fiddlehead Slalom, Montpelier For those comfortable with Class II+ rapids, this is a fun whitewater slalom race for canoes and kayaks on the Winooski. nessrace. com/fiddlehead-slalom

JUNE 4-5 | Tough Mudder, Stratton Tough Mudder New England is going back to the beautiful green mountains of Vermont and dare we say: it's gonna be wicked epic. . Take on the 5K, 10K or 15K course on Stratton Mountain. stratton.com 18 – 20| LCI Father’s Fishing Day Derby The 41st anniversary of the Lake Champlain International Father’s Day Fishing Derby, and the event is about so much more than catching fish. Mychamplain.net/fathersday-derby 25 | Vermont Sun & Lake Dunmore Triathlons, Salisbury Try your hand at the USA Triathlon Vermont State Championships at the Vermont Sun Triathlon: Swim 0.9 miles, bike 28 miles, and run 6.2 miles. You can also just do the Aqua Bike option with just the swim and the bike or do the Lake Dunmore Triathlon (600 yard swim, 14-mile bike, 3.1 mile run). The classic, pristine course starts and finishes at Branbury State Park. Participants swim, bike and run around beautiful Lake Dunmore. Triathlons repeat July 17 and Aug. 14. vermontsuntriathlonseries.com

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IKE SHOPS

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99 Bonnet St., Manchester Ctr, VT 802-362-2734 | battenkillbicycles. com Manchester, Vermont's bicycle shop since 1972, Battenkill Bicycles is a Trek and Specialized Bicycle dealer offering advice and sales to meet all your cycling needs.

The service department offers tune-ups and repairs for all brands of bikes. Come to the shop to rent a bike or get information about local group rides or advice on where to ride your bike in the Northshire. Battenkill Bicycles is the number one e-bike seller in Southern Vermont and is an authorized

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BERKSHIRE OUTFITTERS

RR 8, 169 Grove St., Adams, MA 413-743-5900 | berkout@bcn.net We are a full-service bike shop at the base of the Mt. Greylock State Reservation. We also border a beautiful 12-mile paved rail trail. We carry Jamis, Rocky Mountain and G.T. We offer sales, repairs and hybrid bike rentals for the rail trail.

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BOOTLEGGER BIKES

60 Main Street Jeffersonnville, VT 802-644-8370 | bootleggerbikes.com A full-service shop near Smugglers' Notch. We offer new, used and custom bikes as well as custom-built wheel builds for mountain, road, gravel, fat bikes, bikepacking and touring. Rentals offered at our Cambridge Junction shop on ththe Lamoille Valley Rail Trail. Bikes are a passion here.

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BRADLEY’S PRO SHOP SKI & SPORT

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2012 Depot St. Manchester Center, VT 05255 802-367-3118 | bradleysproski.com Bradley’s Pro Shop Ski & Bike is the premier bike shop in Southern Vermont!

We are located in Manchester Center.

Always known as your go-to ski shop we are now your go-to bike shop. We have one of the best bike mechanics in Vermont on staff, Dan Rhodes. Many of you know of his reputation as a master bike mechanic.

Dan runs all aspects of our bicycle operations. We carry the full lineup of Cannondale and GT bikes—mountain bikes,

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CHUCK’S BIKES

45 Bridge St. Morrisville, VT 802-888-7642 | chucksbikes802. com Putting smiles on people's faces for over 35 years. Bikes

by Jamis, Transition, Norco, KHS, Davinci, Raleigh, Marin and Diamondback. Hours: Mon - Wed and Fri 10-5, Sat and Thurs 102. Be well by being smart.

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EARL’S CYCLERY & FITNESS

2069 Williston Rd., South Burlington, VT 802-864-9197 | earlsbikes.com Earl’s Cyclery has been serving Vermont's cycling and fitness needs for more than 65 years. With over 12,000 square feet at the new location, Earl’s has the largest selection of bikes from Trek, Giant, Scott, Bianchi, Electra, Haro, and more. The service center at Earl’s has professionally trained technicians who are certified to work on all makes and models of bicycles, not just the ones we sell. Whether you need a flat tire fix or a suspension rebuild, the service staff is ready to help. Estimates are always free! Stop by our new location at 2069 Williston Rd, South Burlington, or call us.

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EAST BURKE SPORTS

439 Route 114 East Burke VT 802-626-3215 eastburkesports.com We are the original home to Kingdom Trails. Located in the heart of town, we pride ourselves in expert knowledge while providing friendly customer service. A fullservice shop awaits you and your repair needs. We have 100 rental bikes with an enormous selection of clothing, parts, and accessories. Hours: 9 - 6 every day.

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EQUIPE SPORT

8749 VT RT 30, Rawonville, VT 802-297-2846 equipesport.com Serving the Stratton, Rawsonvilel and West Dover areas. Three shops wtih sales, service and rentals. Sales of hybrid, mountain, kids and e-bikes. Service for all bikes. Rental for mountain bikes and hybrids. Hours: 9 - 6 every day.

FROG HOLLOW

74 Main St., Middlebury, VT 802-388-6666 | froghollow bikes.com Take advantage of the most advanced and courteous service in our region, with quick turn-around time in our service shop downstairs. Upstairs in the sales room, we offer the best in new and used road, mountain, lifestyle, and children’s bikes and new gear. We carry brands that offer superior products that balance innovation and performance with reliability and value. Hours: Mon. - Sat.

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THE GEAR HOUSE

16 Pleasant St., Randolph 802-565-8139 gearhouse.com fenergy and excitement to the state's cycling scene. Located in the center of Vermont, we offer Rocky Mountain, Bianchi, Yamaha e-bikes, a rotating inventory of consigned bikes and gear, and a full service repair shop.

Randolph has newly revived mtb trails that combine classic old-school singletrack with machine built zones. Start the 12/12a loop from the shop for 38 miles of well maintained road miles, or map out a day ride entirely on the gravel. The shop is also home to RASTA's outdoor trail hub which features topographical and printed maps. Stop by the shop and plan your next

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GREENMOUNTAIN MOUNTAIN GREEN BIKES BIKES

105 N. Main St. Rochester VT 800-767-7882 | greenmountainbikes.com Located in the center of Vermont, in the heart of the Green Mountains, we are surrounded by terrain that calls to mountain and road bikers alike. Whether you ride twisting trails or back to back gaps, we service, sell, and rent all styles of bicycles, featuring Kona, Jamis, Juliana, Raleigh, Santa Cruz, Transition, and Hinderyckx bikes - hand crafted by our own Rochester boy Zak Hinderyckx. So STOP READING and RIDE YOUR BIKE! Hours: 7

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HANOVER ADVENTURE TOURS

713 US 5 N., Norwich, VT | 802-359-2921 hanoveradventuretours.com

More than a full-service bike store, we are a full-service adventure center. With an expertise in electric bicycles, we live and breathe outdoor exploration through our offering of e-bike rentals, sales, and tours including doorstep delivery and a full-service shop (all bikes welcome). Over 100 electric bicycle rentals, demos, and tours available for individuals and large groups, short and long-term.

13 HIGH PEAKS CYCLERY 2733 Main St., Lake Placid, NY 518-523-3764 | highpeaks cyclery.com

The Adirondacks' source for bicycling and outdoor gear and adventures since 1983.

Sales, service, rentals, cemos, tours, base camp lodging and dirt camps. Bikes by Scott, Yeti, Giant, Liv, Salsa and BMC. Gravel, road, mountain, fat and e-Bikes. Monday Sunday: 9AM - 5PM

14 HITCHHIKER

394 Mountain Road Ste. 6, Stowe, VT | 802-585-3344 hitchhikerbikes.com

Hitchhiker Bike Shop is Stowe's newest shop. We carry bikes from Rocky Mountain, Cervelo, Otso Cycles, Chromag, Open Cycle, and Gazelle E-bikes. If you are looking for a tuneup we offer service for just about every type of bike and budget. Service appointments are encouraged, but not necessary. You'll also find great clothing, parts, and accessories in our shop that is pedaling distance from the Cady Hill trails.

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MOUNTAINOPS

4081 Mountain Road, Stowe, VT 802-253-4531 mountainopsvt. com

We offer bike sales along with fast, friendly service. Dealers of Niner, Scott, Devinci and Jamis, we carry a large assortment of mountain and gravel bikes including a 60 bike Demo Fleet. Our techs have years of experience and our local trail knowledge is second to none. Our converted 1893 barnturned-bike-shop houses a huge selection of bike and lifestyle clothing along with parts and accessories. Looking for a more mellow ride? Rent one of our cruisers for a trip down the legendary Stowe Rec Path right from our parking lot!

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OLD SPOKES HOME

331 North Winooski Ave., Burlington, VT 802-863-4475 | oldspokeshome.com

Vermont’s best selection of professionally refurbished used bikes and new bikes for touring, bike packing, commuting, fat biking, and simply getting around town. Named one of the country’s best bike shops for it’s “plain-talk advice and no-nonsense service.” A nonprofit as of January 2015, Old Spokes Home uses 100% of its revenue to run programs creating access to bikes in the community.

And don’t miss their famous antique bicycle museum! Hours: Mon. – Sat. 10 - 6, Sun.

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OMER & BOB’S

20 Hanover St. Lebanon, NH603448-3522 | omerandbobs.com The Upper Valley's bike shop since 1964.

Offering mountain bikes, gravel and road bikes, hybrid bikes, e-bikes, and kids bikes from Specialized, Trek, and Electra.

Featuring a full service department, bike fitting, mountain and e-bike demos, and a kids trade-in, trade-up program. Hours: Mon.-Friday, 9am-5:30pm, Sat., 9am-5pm

ONION RIVER OUTDOORS 20 Langdon St. Montpelier, VT 802-225-6736 | onionriver.com ORO is Central Vermont's premier bike, car rack, and outdoor gear shop. Friendly and knowledgeable sales and service. We carry Specialized, Niner, Rocky Mountain, Salsa, Surly, and Yuba, and a large variety of clothing and accessories, including Giro, Smith, Club Ride, Patagonia, and more.

GEAR 19 OUTDOOR EXCHANGE 37 Church St., Burlington, VT 802-860-0190 | gearx.com OGE offers riders a premier bike shop with a knowledgeable, friendly, and honest staff. We have commuters and gravel grinders from Marin and KHS, mountain bikes from Pivot, Transition, Rocky Mountain and Yeti and a wide consignment selection as well as a demo fleet so you can try it before you buy it.

Our service department is capable of everything from tuning your vintage road bike to servicing your new mountain bike and offers full Fox shock service. Come see us on Church Street! Hours: Mon. – Thurs.

10 – 8, Fri. – Sat. 10 – 9, Sun. 10 – 6.

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POWERPLAY SPORTS

35 Portland St. Morrisville, VT 802-888-6557 powerplaysports.com North Central Vermont's Trek and Giant Dealer nestled in the heart of bike country.

Selling new and used bikes for every budget and every type of rider from beginner to expert. We service all manner of bike and sell tons of accessories and apparel. Bike rentals for the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail just 200 yards down the road.

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RANCH CAMP

311 Mountain Road, Stowe, VT 802-253-2753 | ranchcampvt.com Ranch Camp is Stowe’s mountain bike base lodge and your hub for bikes, gear, and culture! Ranch Camp offers a full-service mountain bike shop, tap room, and fresh-casual eatery, featuring sales and demo bike from Specialized, Ibis, Yeti, Evil, Revel, and Fatback. Looking for top of the line mountain bikes and components? Got ‘em. How about local brews from new England’s finest purveyors of craft libations? You bet. And if you need a thoughtfully crafted grab-and-go meal for your ride, or a place to sit down and refuel afterwards, Ranch Camp has you covered. Best of all, Ranch Camp is situation trailside with its very own public access entrance into Stowe’s iconic Cady Hill trail network.

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SKIRACK

85 Main St. Burlington 802-6583313 skirack.com

Locally owned since 1969, Skirack provides gear, clothing, expert fitting and accessories for all cyclists, with full service tuning and repairs...plus complete bike suspension service on most forks and rear shocks.

Designated one of America’s Best Bike Shops, Skirack is blocks from Lake Champlain. Open 8 a.m. Mon. - Sat. for bike service, car racks and rentals.

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STARK MOUNTAIN

9 RTE 17, unit b Waitsfield, VT 802-496-4800 Find us on Facebook

Located at the lowest spot in the Mad River Valley so you can coast in when you break your bike on a ride! 21 years of advise,directions and fixing anything that pedals. Thinking about a Yeti? Come ride one of ours,we have been selling Yeti since 2006! Hours: Tues-Fri 9-6*, Sat 9-4, and Sunday 10-2. *Close at 5 on Thursdays for the Shop Ride.

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TYGART

57 Pond St. STE 1, Ludlow, VT (802) 228-5440 Info@tygartmountainsports.com, Tygartmountainsports.com

We are a full service bicycle sales and service center. We carry a wide selection of Scott and Kona bikes and a variety of accessories from Scott, Giro, Louis Garneau, Blackburn, Park Tools and others. We offer service and repairs on all makes and models including in-house suspension service, wheel building, and full bike build-outs.

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VILLAGE SPORT SHOP

511 Broad St. Lyndonville, VT 802-626-8448| villagesportshop.com

Established in 1978, we are a family-owned, passion-driven sporting goods store serving customers for four seasons of adventure. Strongly focused on bike and ski, we have highly skilled knowledgeable technicians and sales staff to assist in all needs of purchase, rental and service. With two locations, one nestled trailside on the world-renowned Kingdom Trails, and the other in downtown Lyndonville, we’re here to make your adventures happen!

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WATERBURY SPORTS

46 South Main Street, Waterbury, VT

802-882-8595 | waterburysportsvt.com A full service bike shop selling Trek and Giant bikes in one of Vermont's most convenient locations. Nestled in downtown Waterbury a short distance from the Perry Hill MTB trails, WBS services all bikes and can handle any repair you might have. We also have a fleet of demo bikes and and an excellent selection of parts and accessories.

Open 7 days a week!

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WEST HILL SHOP

49 Brickyard Lane, Putney, VT 802-387-5718 westhillshop.com

Right off I-91 exit northbound! We're pleased to welcome Specialized as the cornerstone of our broad range of trail, gravel, road and e-bikes. Bikes from Banshee, Cannondale, Devinci, Evil, Transition, Salsa, and Mondraker too. Plus, a curated selection of garments from Patagonia, POC and Specialized. Our service department is widely recognized as one of the best in the region, and our goal is to keep turn-around time to a week or less, and to offer Friday and Saturday walk-in service starting in June. We did it last year, and we've invested in more help. Ask for David to discuss custom wheel builds and suspension service and tuning. Most important, hit us to go for a ride!

MARCH/APRIL 2022 | VTSPORTS.COM 33

ENDGAME

T

oday I do not want to be hiking Camel’s Hump. A winter storm has left the trail coated in a thick layer of ice topped by a dusting of snow. The hiking is slow as my mom and I gingerly step over ice encrusted rocks and roots. Our boots slide, and we occasionally snap brittle branches as we catch ourselves from falling, puncturing the woods’ deafening stillness.

The silence feels awkward. It’s my first day home after living in Denmark for the past four months. When I pictured this moment in my head – as I did many times throughout the fall – I imagined my mom and I eagerly processing how life has unfolded for each of us since we were last together. Books we love, questions we’re pondering, new hobbies we’re exploring, places we’ve been and dream of going, work drama (her), boy drama (me). I imagined a crystal-clear sky and sun making the snow-covered trees around us sparkle. But as I glance up from the trail at my mom’s faded blue backpack in front of me – the only pop of color against the gray winter sky – I find myself fighting back tears.

In the past six weeks, two of my college friends died unexpectedly several weeks apart from one another. I am still reeling. I returned home to Vermont exhausted, grieving and threadbare. I’m wary of the fact that soon I’ll have to go back to Denmark and continue to deal with all of this – with life – on my own.

I’m still not quite sure how I survived the weeks leading up to my return. I spent my days doing school and work. Then at night I would be hit by a deep sense of loss as I thought of – and longed for – home. I don’t think I once slept through the night during those heavy weeks, feeling like I was in the wrong time zone. Was this adulthood? Somehow, I made it home to Vermont. And now I feel myself crashing.

The ascent begins gradually, giving us a chance to ease into the climb until a sharp left turn marks the beginning of a steeper section flanked by tight forest.

Somewhere along the way I got the idea that being an adult meant tracing a linear path toward increasing independence. That I would reach a point where I would no longer need my mom, would no longer crave the comfort and safety of home, would understand my place in the world. Maybe I’m just not an adult yet, I think to myself as I follow my mom up the steep section.

In the final push to the top, the tears finally come. They are almost immediately snatched from my cheeks by the harsh wind, but they keep coming. I don’t linger on the summit. Not even long

34 VTSPORTS.COM | MARCH/APRIL 2022

THE TOUCHSTONE

CLIMBING CAMEL’S HUMP BECAME A CONSTANT IN A LIFE OF CHANGE.

BY ANNEKA WILLIAMS

have big adventures, but young enough to still store most of my stuff at my parents’ house. I’m old enough to live in a new city on a different continent, but young enough to still ask for an assist in scheduling a dentist appointment during my short window at home. “Betwixt and between,” says my mom, wisely naming this stage of life. I feel it.

In the five years since I left Vermont for college, I’ve lived in four different states and two different countries; I’ve changed my mind about what I want to do with my life more times than I can count; I’ve navigated online courses for my last year of college amidst a global pandemic; I’ve met some of my closest friends; I’ve said hundreds of goodbyes.

Throughout it all, hiking Camel’s Hump has come to be a touchstone, helping me to stay strong and adventurous while reminding me of my Vermont roots.

Anneka Williams, left, and her mother Kate, atop Camel's Hump enough to layer up. I turn my back on my mom and begin to head back down the mountain toward the car, slipping and sliding on the icy trail.

I

started hiking as a baby nestled in a backpack carried by my mom, a purple sun hat pulled low over my face. By the time I was four, I had graduated from the backpack and I only hiked for peanut M&Ms. At the Camel’s Hump trailhead, I would perch on the back of our Subaru, dangling my feet over the edge so my parents could double-knot my sneakers, and then we’d begin our ascent. My tiny legs would make giant moves to overcome roots and rocks until tiredness set in and I began to drag my legs, spiraling toward meltdown as my infinitely patient parents tried to coax me on.

“Just around the next corner.”

And sure enough, I’d get myself around the next bend in the trail to find a small pile of brightly colored M&Ms nestled in a leaf or divet in a rock on the trail’s edge. “Trail fairies,” my parents explained. Undeterred by dirt, I would scoop up the handful of M&Ms and eat them by color – saving the best (blue) for last. And then, elevation gain and tiredness suddenly forgotten, I would happily continue onward in search of the next cache of candy.

Camel’s Hump tops out at 4,083 feet above sea level. The nearest trailhead is 26 minutes from my home in the Mad River Valley. As a kid, scaling those 4,083

Courtesy photo.

feet felt like a massive physical feat, deserving of a large post-hike maple creemee and a deep sense of selfsatisfaction.

But the worlds we know seem to shrink as we grow.

By the time I left Vermont for college five years ago, I was in search of bigger adventures. The Camel’s Hump summit became dwarfed by dreams of snowier, taller, more remote mountains.

From working for a guiding company in Chile’s Patagonia, to backpacking through Wyoming’s Wind River Range, to living in the Himalayan foothills, to circumnavigating the Alps’ Mont Blanc massif, I’ve been lucky enough to explore some of these bigger mountains. I never quite know what to expect when I return home from these experiences – even as I often desperately long for home in the crux of these adventures. Sometimes I’m only home long enough to grab some clothes and gear. Other times I’m home for longer, long enough to question whether or not I still belong here and to feel sad that people and places have changed since I left.

Mostly, coming home makes me aware of how I’ve changed, and makes me wonder about what it means to have roots in a place.

Have I outgrown Vermont? Has Vermont outgrown me?

I’m old enough to go off and

A

few weeks later my mom and I are once again summiting Camel’s Hump. I’m about to go back to Denmark. This is our goodbye hike. The world around us is dark, clouds clinging to the mountain and blanketing the valley as we ascend. Perhaps the weather is fitting, my mom tries to joke. I do not smile at this.

But then – magically it seems – we emerge above the clouds.

When we reach the final clearing just below the summit, I look at a large rock formation on its edge. Even covered in snow, the outline of a large indent is still apparent in the rock face: the ultimate peanut M&M cache. I glance at my mom and we smile. And as we ascend to the summit, I’m struck by how many iterations of me – of the two of us – have walked the same trail.

At the top, I turn my back against the wind, removing mittens to zip into more layers. The sun is low on the horizon, but the world around me – a different world than the one just below us – shines a bright, textured white. Rime ice coats the summit’s exposed rock and encrusts the trees on the slopes around us. Mansfield, Mt. Ellen and Stark Mountain with the white trails of Mad River Glen poke up like snow-capped islands out of a sea of clouds.

The Adirondacks are just visible to our West and the face of Mount Washington breaks the horizon to our East.

Sufficiently layered, I stuff my hands back into mittens and turn my face into the wind. I feel a hand on my back and then my mom is enveloping me in a hug. We stand wrapped around each other, listening to the wind swirl around us. Feet planted firmly on the summit, holding each other steady in the wind, we look around at a world that is wide open, as far as the eye can see.

SMALL SHOP, BIG ADVENTURES. SINCE 1995.

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