Exploring the World Off the Beaten Path — Using a Wheelchair
Adaptive chair allows travelers to hike Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro and more
Climbing Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro is challenging enough for young and strong people, but what about a 59-year-old woman with a wheelchair?
This August, Australian Chris Kerr became the oldest wheelchair-using female to scale Africa's highest peak. Kerr has used a wheelchair ever since she broke her back as a teenager while riding a horse. A professional inclusion activist, Kerr refuses to be limited by her disability. She has taken her wheelchair on off-road hikes, and rides an adaptive mountain bike off-road, but Kilimanjaro was a stretch even for her.
"This wasn't something I had ever imagined myself doing, even in my wildest dreams," she says. Yet when the opportunity presented itself, she signed on. "I love adventure. I wasn't going to say no."
It wasn't long before she questioned the wisdom of her decision. "I felt a sense of trepidation," she recalls.
All the Elements
One major worry was the cold, which can be severe. In August, the month of Kerr's trip, temperatures on the mountain can dip to 5 degrees Fahrenheit. Never a lover of the cold, Kerr outfitted herself with merino wool thermals and a puffer jacket, pants and a sleeping bag designed to withstand high altitude.
Another major concern was personal hygiene. While the trip's organizer, Paratrek, an Israel-based company specializing in adaptive hiking solutions, assured her that she'd have access to a portable toilet, Kerr brought along her own collapsible seat and a catheter. Thankfully the toileting worked out.
So did Kerr's defenses against the cold. On summit day, she kept herself warm and comfortable by wearing six pairs of pants, three pairs of socks, puffer pants, thermal leggings, undershirts, jackets, a balaclava and a sleeping bag with a hot water bottle inside.
Specialized Wheelchair
While Paratrek is arguably the only player to venture far off the grid, it's hardly the only company to offer inclusive travel; travel for people with disabilities is a billion-dollar industry. Industry leaders include Travel for All, which has organized over 50,000 trips for travelers with a range of disabilities; Planet Abled, Wheel the World, and Easy Access Travel are other companies that provide this service, though most of their travel is to tamer venues.
On Kerr's journey, she used a unique wheelchair known as the Trekker, the brainchild of Paratrek founder Omer Zur, who invented it to accommodate his father, Shmulik, a paralyzed Israeli army veteran.
On a climb in the Himalayas, Zur thought of his father, from whom he inherited his love of nature and travel. How he would love this trip, thought Zur, but how could he go in a wheelchair? After extensive research, Zur purchased a wheelchair supposedly designed for off-road hikes. With great excitement, Zur took his father for a test drive in their backyard, but the trip was a disaster. Almost immediately, Shmulik begged to get out. "This chair is a death machine," he said.
"It kind of levels the playing field. You aren't a person with a disability. You are one of the group."
"The chair sat high above the ground and had only one wheel below the rider, so he felt no control. He (the rider) needed to feel involved and in control," explains Paratrek chief operating officer Michal Raicher. After a long conversation with his father, Zur reached out to a mechanical engineer, a product designer, and finally, a metal shop to retrofit an existing wheelchair for off-road use.
By adding shock absorbers and adjustable tires, extra large for rocky terrain and small for narrow passages, and creating a slight backward tilt to position the rider's center of gravity so that the people pushing the chair won't feel his weight, Zur and his team created the Trekker.
"The biggest part of the training is soft-skills communication on how to make inclusion impactful and worthwhile."
In 2008 Zur, his father, and a team of friends debuted the Trekker on a challenging Turkish hiking trail called the Lycian Way, which skirts that country's coastal mountains and is sprinkled with so many rises and dips that it challenges even experienced hikers. The friends were needed because pushing the Trekker through rough terrain can require as many as five people. Fearing that his invention wouldn't stand up in real time, Zur packed 88 pounds of replacement parts. Thankfully he didn't need any of them. A camera crew came along, filming the journey for Israeli television.
After that trip, Zur realized he wanted to make his invention available to others, but also that he would need to train the pusher.
"The biggest part of the training is soft-skills communication on how to make inclusion impactful and worthwhile," Raicher says. "We teach people to treat the rider as a person rather than a burden."
Other Journeys
Since then, Zur has led trips to Spain's Camino del Santiago, the Pyrenees, Mount Sinai, New York's Rockefeller National Park, and, of course, Mount Kilimanjaro. Participants come from all over the world. Wheelchair users say they love it.
"The Trekker is like a rickshaw. For most of the time, it requires at least one person pushing and two people pulling," says Peter Eckstein, 63, a partially paralyzed Canadian businessman who has joined Zur's trips in the United States and Israel. One person in front does most of the work, and one person on either side keeps balance, holding onto a pole, which keeps the wheelchair balanced.
"When things get tough, I know I climbed a mountain that very few people have done, and that I can pretty much do anything I want."
Navigating mountains requires additional helpers who attach the Trekker to ropes so that it and the rider can make the climb. In Kerr's case, porters helped her who sang in Swahili.
At center stage is the rider, who isn't always comfortable with all the attention.
"By nature, I am independent," Kerr says. "[But] when you are in terrain that isn't accessible, you need support." Still, she's thrilled to have made the climb. "When I got to the top, I was overwhelmed at how much it took to get there and how many people helped me get to a place where people with disability are not expected to be," she says.
Others agree. "The Trekker gives you a sense of freedom and independence," says Delaware businessman and inclusion activist Fred Maahs, Jr. Maahs, 63, also praises the bonding on these trips. "It kind of levels the playing field. You aren't a person with a disability. You are one of the group," he says.
The good feelings flow into everyday life. "When things get tough," Kerr says, "I know I climbed a mountain that very few people have done, and that I can pretty much do anything I want."
